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Most pitiful thing youve ever seen a bassist do live

#182
Maybe this incident doesn't quite fit the criteria of the OP but I can't resist telling this story. I was once minding my own business trying out a bass in a music store when some oaf decided to sit right down next to me and "audition" the bass of his choice. He chose some rather hideous looking five stringed monstrosity and decided to violently flop and rub his thumb and fingers on the strings while doing something completely out of context with his left hand. The result effect sounded like a helicopter running out of fuel and desperately trying to make a difficult landing. All the while this moron was staring directly at me with some kind of air of superiority to get my attention and adulation as well I suppose. After ignoring him for a few minutes and gently playing a few blues and reggae patterns to see if I liked the neck, the aforementioned oaf beside me started to say things like "Is that all you can do? Can you slap, man?" I looked up at him and he proceeded to do more percussive burping noises and I finally started to take pity on the poor defenseless bass that he was maligning so mercilessly. There was nothing more to say. I smiled politely and put the Geddy Jazz Bass back on the rack and hoped it would be spared the carnage that this moron was inflicting on the last instrument.
 
#183
My most pitiful live moment was bringing my bass up on stage at a friend's gig to join him and his band for a jam. Hadn't played my bass for some time--was somewhere in the middle of an extended 7-year break--and during that time one of the pots in my bass had gone bad. As soon as I started playing the bass let out an enormous squealing sound that would not stop. The sound man rushed up on stage with cables in hand, thinking my cable was the problem--looked like a total fool trying to play while he kept swapping cables to see if any would get rid of the squeal.
 
#184
bjabass said:
Another non bass player story but really was funny. We were doing a gig with another (young) band playing before us, they were doing their sound check and the sound guy says through the talk back mike "you need to bring the guitar up on stage'....the guitar player took two steps forward......
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At least he didn't shorten his strap!
 
#185
corinpills said:
Not bass, but I really felt for this kid. I was judging a high school battle of the bands and this quartet of 15 year olds played "Bomb Track" by Rage Against The Machine- which I thought a pretty intense choice. A lot of the other acts were girls lip synching to Taylor Swift songs and much more mainstream. The lead singer was throwing himself all over the place during the intro and all his classmates were all pumped up. They built up that intro figure and the guitar player threw this giant pose and leapt onto his distortion pedal like a super hero and...the battery was dead. Nothing came out and the bass player and singer whipped around on him like. "***?", he dove to his knees trying to get it to work and all his friends laughed at him. He eventually came in and played the song Oma completely clean sound with a hangdog expression on his face, standing totally still.
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The exact same thing happened with one of the guitar players in my old hardcore band. It was an original track with a really slow intro the was supposed to build up into a really heavy, chuggy breakdown. Stomped on the pedal at the end of the intro and...nothing. He just stopped and started pouting, took his guitar off and started packing it up (he was a real whine@$$). Finally one of the guitarists from one of the other bands hooked up their distortion pedal for him so we could finish the set.

Here's a story from last night, not bass-related but still funny. We were playing at a bar that used to be a strip club. And by used to be, I mean like it was a strip club last week. Apparently the owners weren't making enough money, and thought they would fire all the strippers and try and have bands come in every week. Well, my drummer's dad was a regular at the joint, and got us the first gig. Aside from the 20 or so people that the guys and I drew in (it was a very last minute show), there was hardly anybody there, but just about every 10 minutes some guy or group of guys would walk in, look up to the stage and see a bunch of fully-clothed dudes in place of the usual scantily-clad women, look VERY confused and just walk out. This literally happened at least a dozen times during our 2 hour set. A couple of them actually stayed and had a drink and listened for a few, but I think that was just to save them from looking creepy.
 
#186
I played a gig with my band on Saturday and, not a bassist but still pathetic...one of the other bands had a guitarist who jumped up in the air during a song, landed wrong, stumbled a bit, THEN stepped on his cord and yanked it out. Felt really sorry for the guy...
 
#188
hudpucker said:
Doesn't anyone wrap their cords through their straps anymore?

n00bs.
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Saw a bassist in December who wrapped his cord through the side handle of his 4-space rack, sitting on top of a 410 with a fake 115 on the bottom. All it took was the first bassist-goes-to-stage-left, guitarist-goes-to-stage-right choreography-gone-wrong-mid-song for their instrument cables to wrap, and when they were coming back to their original spots, that GK bass head and tuner hit the floor while simultaneously yanking out the speaker cable, which made the 410 cab pop like someone had fired a .45 onstage.
The head was done for the night (it rattled like a Pringles can afterwards), and so were the egos......
 
#189
Played in a very popular classic rock/party cover band in the 90's. Did a big outdoor gig, where I drank and smoked too much beforehand. In the middle of the second set, I was feeling quite nauseous. Mid song, I walked to the back of the stage and tossed my cookies in the middle of a song. Never stopped playing though, and didn't miss a note. I still hear that story told at least once a year by the soundman and the singer on the gig.
 
#192
Oh Stupid Me.....
I was in a hurry and running late for a gig ,ran into the house ,grabed my bass and headed to the club.
When I got there and opend my bass case and set my bass on the stand,I noticed there were no strings on the bass !
I forgot I was working on this bass and should have grabed my other bass..
The band stalled long enough for me to run back home and grab another bass and man they never let me forget that one ....LOL
 
#193
When I had been playing bass for about a year, I was all set up to play a private backyard party in a fairly upscale neighborhood. I think it was for one of our drummer's law school professors. It had been arranged and agreed upon beforehand that a few of the guests would perform a song using our instruments for the guest of honor because if there was anything wrong with them, said guests could definitely afford to replace them.

After they played some song by Michael Buble, we got up and grabbed our instruments to start off set 1 with Brown Eyed Girl with just bass, keys and drums (guitarist was running sound and also already drinking.) The keyboardist was using a digital keyboard which, for some reason seemed to be a perfect 4th sharp. After insisting it was his keyboard I finally relented and made the assumption that my bass must have been tuned down to cop a 5 string feel, even though the tension seemed fine.

In the frustration of the moment and not wanting to look bad on a gig, I started tuning up mid song to match the keyboard which, as it turns out, had been transposed up a 4th. I snapped my low E string at 3 on a Sunday afternoon and had to play the show with 3 nylon tapewounds and a roundwound string.
 
#194
epirokker said:
We were playing at a bar that used to be a strip club. And by used to be, I mean like it was a strip club last week. Apparently the owners weren't making enough money, and thought they would fire all the strippers and try and have bands come in every week. Well, my drummer's dad was a regular at the joint, and got us the first gig.
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So...much...win.... :p
 
#195
How `bout a pitiful audience story?

Back in the late `90's I saw The Smithereens at a medium-sized club in Nashville. It was (lead singer) Pat DiNizio's birthday and the band had beers or shots lined up six wide across every amp head before the show even started. Things got a little sloppy as the evening wore on, but they rocked, as always. Anyway, about halfway through the show, Pat unplugged his Rickenbacker guitar and tossed it out into the audience!

This being Nashville, within a minute, the crowd had passed the instrument back up to the front of the stage and someone in the front row handed it back to Pat. Pat, quite surprised to see his Rick again, looked back and forth between the guitar and the audience a few times and then said, "I don't know about you; but if I was you and you was me, and you threw me a guitar...I'd keep the m---er f---er!"
 
#196
hrodbert696 said:
It wasn't all that pathetic, but about a year and a half ago I saw a cover band at a county fair, playing southern rock/modern country kind of stuff. They were actually pretty good and the female singer was phenomenal (and half the age of the rest of the band).

Anyway, the bass player was... competent. Nothing wrong with his playing, nothing interesting either. But he seemed to have this vague awareness that the band would have more stage presence if they moved around. Meanwhile nobody else in the band had heard of such a concept, they played their parts rooted solidly to the stage like they were oak trees that had been planted there. So the bass player, from time to time, would hesitantly, just... drift.... from one part of the stage to the other. He would show up at the lead guitarist's shoulder and the guitarist would kind of startle, like "What are you doing over here?", and the bassist would then... awkwardly... drift... back to his original spot.

The music was pretty good, not a set list I would personally much care for but not bad either, but the drifting was just excruciating to watch... felt bad for him.
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Dude, that seems to be me in every band. Even worse is when the lead singer doesn't know how to talk to the crowd between songs or when there is a few seconds of equipment hick-up. And invariably they are pissed if someone else picks up the slack and says or plays something funny during those awkward moments. I actually practice stuff for those moments....
 
#197
Not bass player, but I had a guitarist who tried to leap up on the drummer riser, missed the edge and went face down into the drummer's floor tom cymbals and stuff. I'd like to say we were playing Train Kept A Rollin...we did. Drummer sat there tapping on one cymbal looking very ***.
 
#200
edpal said:
Dude, that seems to be me in every band. Even worse is when the lead singer doesn't know how to talk to the crowd between songs or when there is a few seconds of equipment hick-up. And invariably they are pissed if someone else picks up the slack and says or plays something funny during those awkward moments. I actually practice stuff for those moments....
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Tell me about it. We were playing a party a few months ago (gigs have been few and far between) and the guitarist went to switch guitars between songs. I felt the void and started laying down a groove to fill the dead space, just some basic thing, and the drummer falls in with me with a beat... and the guitarist glares over and shushes us.
 

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