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Most pitiful thing youve ever seen a bassist do live

#41
bassteban said:
Man, if I had to tune anyone's instrument for them, I'd certainly do it as incognito as possible- to avoid *rank amateurish by association* status
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Funny story...The drummer in my last band was in a relatively successful band years ago. They never got a record deal, but they came pretty close. Breaking Benjamin was just starting out and they opened on occasion for my drummer's old band.

Ben Burnley didn't actually know how to tune his own guitar. I guess Ben is (or was?) a relatively quiet guy, and he would sheepisly ask my drummer's guitarist if he'd mind tuning his guitar for him. Yep, the front guy for a major national level rock band was gigging and didn't even know how to tune his own guitar. I wonder if he ever learned. Of course, he's at the level that he'd have a guitar tech doing that for him every night. :D
 
#42
powderfinger said:
I should include myself on the pitiful list...

Back in 2000 (summer) I was playing an outdoor gig. I had tuned by bass right when we were setting up, and my bass stood on a guitar stand in near (it had been about 85 when I tuned it) 100 degree weather for about 3 hours before we played. I didnt bother to recheck the tuning, and as soon as we played, the first note I hit was WAY out of tune, and it sounded horrendously bad. I tried to tune as I played but it was just a mess all around.
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I experienced something similar years ago. I was playing on an extremely small stage and it was almost impossible to move without bumping into my mic stand. Well, my bass got bumped into my stand at one point during the night and knocked one of my tuners. We went into Sweet Child o' Mine. The first note of opening bass melody sounded good, then I went to the G string to play the second note. It's probably the closest thing I've ever experienced to having my pecker hanging out in public. :scowl:
 
#43
bloobass said:
Way back when, I saw a band do the song "Why Do You Think They Call it Dope?"...it actually has a pretty cool slap bass part, and the bass does it solo for 4 or 5 bars. This guy choked the very first note, stopped playing and did a facepalm, so the bass break ended up being 4 or 5 bars of total silence.
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There are bands that actually cover Love/Hate?! Talk about obscure material. Did they bust out some Mind Funk and Kingdom Come too? *lol*
 
#44
Oh, I have another funny anecdote about myself. About a year and a half ago, I was playing a gig in my hometown. I hadn't played my hometown in like 11 years. The last time I did was with a garage band I was in right after high school. So I was really energized, playing really well, and had my stage presence turned up to 11.

The venue didn't have a stage, so we were set up on the floor. I often used my Aggie GS112 with that rig, which I'd set on the floor. I would sometimes stand on the speaker box like a "pose stand" that some bands use. During the whammy guitar solo in Killin' in the Name of, I got really rambuctious and did a back jump off of the Aguilar. Unfortunately, I landed imprecisely on a mic cable going across the floor and slipped. I felt myself losing balance and knew I was hitting the floor. I fell onto my back in the audience, and I thought, "Well, I'm down here. I might as well use it." So I rocked out for a few bars on my back down in the audience holding my bass up, and then jumped up to finish the song without missing a note. The audience dug it and thought I did it on purpose (and I think my singer thought I did too). Most punk rock moment I've ever had. *lol*
 
#45
two fingers said:
Ha! In the late 80's I used to play a club that had two rooms (both kinds of rock..... Southern and hard). Anyway, during our set break we would go next door to watch. Bass man puts his big flashy boot up on the monitor wedge and leans forward. The monitor tips over. The "point" on top of the wedge actually cracked his tail bone. He was carried away in an ambulance. The head on his bass broke off (really nice black Spector). And his chord yanked his rig over. I have no idea what damage (if any) was done to his rig. I actually went up with the band and did a few tunes to help them finish the night and get paid.
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Wow! Crazy story. I used to work on a regular basis with a sound engineer who had these self-powered JBL monitors with a really high center of gravity. Oh, how many times I've watched them teeter back and forth, wondering if they were going to fall over.
 
#46
Playing on a Thursday night around 1990.

Not a big crowd so I decide to start screwing around. I pulled a chair on to the dance floor and stood on it. That went fine, landed on my face when i tried to walk up the seat back.

No damage to the T-40, just my ego.
 
#51
LiquidMidnight said:
I experienced something similar years ago. I was playing on an extremely small stage and it was almost impossible to move without bumping into my mic stand. Well, my bass got bumped into my stand at one point during the night and knocked one of my tuners. We went into Sweet Child o' Mine. The first note of opening bass melody sounded good, then I went to the G string to play the second note. It's probably the closest thing I've ever experienced to having my pecker hanging out in public. :scowl:
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Man. Same exact thing happened to me last week. G string was tune to G. Rest of strings 1/2 step down.. Totally blew the bass intro..
 
#53
The lead singer of my last band wanted to make good use of the three chords he was familiar with and decided to throw a couple acoustic tunes into the opening of the 3rd set. These three chords were the extent of his guitar knowledge and asked me (sheepishly) to tune his guitar for him. I went the extra step and made it look good by plugging the guitar into my peadalboard tuner and unneccesarily hold an allen wrench up to his tuners while tuning. "I can't tune this" is lame...but, "I can't fix this" is somewhat less lame.
 
#54
Red Hot Chilli Peppers cover band, first act of three at a small bar in 2009.
On their 2nd song (Give it Away) the bassist (20-25 yrs old) decided he should try to sound (and look) as close to Flea as he could, so he started jumping like crazy on the stage.

Five seconds later he lost balance and landed with both feet on top of his guitarist's Digitech board. The shrieking hellish sound that came out of it nearly exploded half the audience's ear drums.

The guitarist in an instinctive reaction shoved the bass dude so hard that sent him flying across the stage until he fell on his knees crashing part of his P-Bass neck against a cymbal stand.

Before we knew the bassist stood up and left the stage never to come back !! The band suddenly stopped and laughter erupted from the 30 something folks watching.

On the way out the bassist was so ashamed/pissed and in such a hurry that he had the bass in one hand dragging the cord still attached and the bass case on the other hand!

Later on we found out that was the bassist's second gig EVER !!! Talk about trauma...
 
#56
I once was so nervous (band contest) that I drank a helluva lot of red bull

Ended up dancing on stage like a rock star, while making a musical fool of myself. Missed timings, missed notes, everything.

Sad thing was that we had a friend video taping from the crowd, and you could hear the audience laughing and calling me an idiot.
 
#57
Webtroll said:
I like Michael Anthony, but his bass solo at the Monsters of Rock in Dallas however long ago was just plain stupid. Jack Daniels bottle and bass. Do a sloppy riff, drink some Jack, crowd cheers. Do another stupid riff, drink more Jack, crowd cheers. Hell, he could have put the bass down and drank Jack and the crowd would have cheered. I wasn't expecting Billy Sheehan, but it would have been nice if he'd tried or skipped the solo entirely.
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He did that same solo with VH in the late 80's. Playing a Jack Daniels bottle bass. Sad.
 
#58
This one time in band camp.....

The first time I saw Slayer live I noticed that when Tom (Araya the bass player / screamer) would stop playing nothing would change sound wise. Watching his fretting hand he's definitely busy playing the parts so I'm guessing he's just being over powered by the two screaming guitars or just needed something to do with his hands during the show so strapped on a bass.

Either way they still put on a great show and can get the crowd going big time.
 
#59
Webtroll said:
I like Michael Anthony, but his bass solo at the Monsters of Rock in Dallas however long ago was just plain stupid. Jack Daniels bottle and bass. Do a sloppy riff, drink some Jack, crowd cheers. Do another stupid riff, drink more Jack, crowd cheers. Hell, he could have put the bass down and drank Jack and the crowd would have cheered. I wasn't expecting Billy Sheehan, but it would have been nice if he'd tried or skipped the solo entirely.
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The really pitiful thing is that the Jack Daniels bottle contained iced tea. He did it because he thought people would think he was cool if he could down a bottle of Jack.
 

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