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What was your/band's worst screw up while playing live?

#21
This didn't happen to MY band, but to a band that I'd gone to see because I was friendly with the guitar player. They started playing "Billie Jean" and the LS comes into the song in a key that's from Mars. Everyone in the band, plus some of the audience including me, tell him that he's singing in the wrong key, but he gets halfway through the song before he finally decides to accept it. While he makes some lame excuse about the bass player having "technical difficulties" (and the BP being a nice guy and fiddling with his instrument to cover up the LS's lameness), he then turns to me and says "Well, how do YOU sing the damn song?" I proceed to show him, pitch-perfectly. They resume the song, with everyone in the same key.

My guitar player friend, who told me to expect this kind of stuff, quit the band a week later. Shortly after that, they fired the LS as well.
 
#22
Guitarist getting song names mixed up, playing the intro to a song that wasn't even on the set list. Drummer decided to go along with him, so me and the singer scrabbled to keep up, to. By the second verse it wasn't going too bad. This wrong song is in drop d. I was tuned to e standard.

Using the house drum kit, which turned out to be a bit unstable. Snare drum fell over in the middle of a song.
 
#23
This is not a band screw up per se, but it probably sounded like one to the audience. We once played a wedding where the bride's best friend was supposed to sing a Beatles ballad (don't even remember which one). The band learned it in advance in the original key, had it down cold.

The wedding comes, the bride's friend comes to the stage, the keyboard player plays through the four-bar intro and the singer comes in at just the right time--a half step sharp. She sang the entire song a half step sharp! It sounded like cats being disemboweled. The band was unable to transpose on the fly. Nothing we could do would get her to adjust down a half step. She must have had absolute pitch or something and just could not perceive that she was horribly out of pitch with the instrumental.

The audience applauded her performance enthusiastically :-)
 
#28
I was in a hard rock band in late eighties and i was doing a show in front of about 2500 people .. Earlier that morning my grandmother passed and I decided to dedicate a piano solo i wrote in her memory. It was meaningful to me and it felt right as I had many out of town family come to the show.
The actual piece I performed very well and I was really emotional about it. And the end of the piece I put my hands up in the arm to signal to the band I was coming to the end" very dramatically mind you"...when I came back down for the final note.....not even close to being in key!!!! I literally could hear the gasping from the audience( and band)......that single note was soooo freaking awful....

never did quite live that one down from the rest of the band.....you know the dramatic two hands and all..every stinking practice I would be reminded especially if I ever played anything incorrect.. TWO HANDS UP!!
 
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#29
Well, we had a share of them last night. The gig was kind of weird for us - outdoor private party, for a high school graduation. Started playing at 5, it was still light, and most of the people were eating, chatting, playing volleyball, stuff like that. Basically meant that we were background, which is fine, but we weren't used to it; our set is a lot of high-energy dance stuff and it's weird to be pumping that out as background, with only a couple people paying attention. I definitely had my share of flubs, but the drummer was just totally distracted. Started the completely wrong intros to a couple of songs, at one point we had to stop him and I literally sang to him "this is the one that goes bum bum-ba-dah bum, bum bum" to get him on the right track. Later on he cut off "Satisfaction" with a whole verse still left to go, just stopped dead. Then we did Superfreak and the singer totally lost the second verse, skipped straight back into the chorus. The guitarist keeps going through the verse, I follow the singer, and we had us a grand ole train wreck.

So at this point we've played two sets (four scheduled for the night) and I'm figuring it's a complete disaster and I just can't wait to finish and pack up. Some of the party guests are leaving, it's about 7:00 or so. We start the third set, sluggish and discouraged - about 7:30 the sun goes down and all of a sudden everyone FLOODS the dance floor. And they DON'T LEAVE. All of a sudden we go from crickets to everybody dancing, everybody singing, song after song, we're the best band in the world and the hottest party in town. Finally closed up shop about 9:30 or so and they're all clamoring for one more song.
 
#31
Must've been about 20 years ago - we played rock; Zappa, ZZ top - that kinda stuff.
The boys figured it would be cool to get this parrafin-based fog-machine for the gig. Not sure why, but I was supposed to be in charge of pushing the button. It was one of those foot-pedal instruments - I'm sure you can see where this is going??

Long story short; maybe the second or third song into the first set I give it a go. Had no idea how long to press it. Apparently I pressed it WaAAYAYY too long. Nobody could see a thing. Probably 100 people in the venue. All blinded by the fog.

Awesome!
not..

Regards
Mark
 
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#32
I used to play in a jam band and we would rent a place and have weekend festivals with bands,vending, etc. At one of these festies we were towards the end of a 4 hour plus all nite set when I had to pee very bad. It was winter and we were playin indoors and i was about 15 feet from a side door with a 20 foot cord. I tried to get the attention of the band leader (guitar player) to see if we could get a quick break in between songs, or a drum solo so I could relieve myself. Being like 3am or so and semi chemically altered, he instead announced a bass solo with the drums and percussionist. While the rest of the band walked off the stage, I proceeded to jam for another 5 or so minutes before I could take it no longer, signaled the others and ran for the side door, made it outside enough, my back still in full view of the crowd and peed for what seemed 3 minutes. When I got done and turned around, the rest of the band was making its way back to the stage, laughing there asses off at me. Got back in and continued the song and set. The fans that noticed will never let me forget. The show was recorded and is on the interweb somewhere. Gotta look it up and have a listen and a laugh. Have a ton of crazy stories from that band.
 
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#33
Oh man, I just had an experience a couple weeks ago. We were in a four piece with a new drummer and he's just dragging on every song. The band leader keeps leaning over whenever he isn't singing to tell him to keep up the tempo and it just isn't happening. Halfway through the last song he says,"If you don't pick up the f*cking tempo I am walking out of here." The drummer stops right there mid-song and leaves. A brief eternity of awkward silence later and the band leader gets on the mic and says,"Thanks everyone". And that was our gig.
 
#35
Apart from the occasional guitarist forgetting to take a capo off, the worst was one of the guitarists forgetting to make the key change for the final choruses of Cher's Turn Back Time and not realising!!!!!
Had to walk over and bring it to his attention by holding my bass up in his face.
 
#36
So this winter my band is playing the local bar scene around us (generally to 150 person or so crowds) about 3-4 days a week. Then as the season is coming to a close, we get a gig at the local theatre with the promotor promising he will seriously promote and that it will be epic. We show up and sure enough there are at least 1000 people there which excepting festivals is the largest crowd we've had for a gig where we were headlining. Gig is going decently, I am having a grand old time but our singer has this god awful habit of eyeing up chicks in the audience and kinda creeping them out. To the point that in the past many of my female friends have told me that they just can't look at him because he will just stare them down. So this time he is eyeing up all these chickitas and he picks one who's boyfriend takes exception, walks up to the stage rather drunk and just clocks him. Dude goes straight back, falls into the drumkit, creates an absolute disaster (mid tune) and throws out his back (which was already dodgy). I am somewhere between being absolutely horrified, so surprised I don't know what to do and laughing hysterically until I realize that he can't get up and needs serious medical attention. So he gets carted off to the hospital because he literally can't move and we finish the show as an instrumental trio playing improvised mountain psychedelia. Which then becomes my current project after we dropped the singer because he is too creepy.
 
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#37
Back in the 70's I was a lead singer. I waited offstage one night for my cue to run on stage, grab the mic off the stand and sing. But as I ran on stage, I slipped and went feet first into the drums, like a runner stealing home plate.
You can imagine the chaos that followed.
We still laugh about that today.
 
#38
jnuts1 said:
had a guitar player once capo the wrong fret & completely destroy a tune to the point he had to stop & start over. he had no clue what was going on until I told him the capo was in the wrong spot. to be fair it was almost pitch black when he put it on
Click to expand...

The very same thing happened at my last gig with a country artist. He put it on the wrong position cause it was dark. We started playing and he was more or less stuck with it. I don't know if he did any on the fly transposing or not but it sounded gawd awful. The other guitar player was told not to bother learning the song and just noodle on some leads so he could not help any. After 3/4 of the song was done he managed to get it on right. Next was a new song and I can't load them up on youtube for the guy because the first one is a wreck. I can't figure out my editor.
 
#40
interp said:
This is not a band screw up per se, but it probably sounded like one to the audience. We once played a wedding where the bride's best friend was supposed to sing a Beatles ballad (don't even remember which one). The band learned it in advance in the original key, had it down cold.

The wedding comes, the bride's friend comes to the stage, the keyboard player plays through the four-bar intro and the singer comes in at just the right time--a half step sharp. She sang the entire song a half step sharp! It sounded like cats being disemboweled. The band was unable to transpose on the fly. Nothing we could do would get her to adjust down a half step. She must have had absolute pitch or something and just could not perceive that she was horribly out of pitch with the instrumental.

The audience applauded her performance enthusiastically :)
Click to expand...

This can happen if you play in a very reverberant place. It happend to a solo singer in our high-school choir. We were singing in a church in France and when the solo singer started, she started out of tune by a half step. And believe me, she was always on pitch no matter what. So lately I found out that becasue she was positioned out of the choir formula, the acoustics made that everything she was hearing was half step off.
 

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