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

#62
mellowinman said:
Both on the same gig:

1. Guitar player starts in one key. My wife, on bass starts in another. As the singer, I can't find the pitch, so I do the unthinkable: STOP THE SONG.

2. Drummer's girlfriend is going to do a guest vocal on "Tell me Something Good." She is out of time with the song, and I am playing bass. I am trying to line up my timing with her, and now I'm off with the drummer and guitar. They hear me out of time, and start trying to compensate. Soon, we are all four doing a different song. My wife is by the sound board, and out of embarrassment, tries to crawl under it, so she can't be seen. She triggers the break music, which is set to almost as loud as the band.

We never played there again.
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We tried to get "Tell me Something Good" down. Every time I thought we had it, the guitarist decided he couldn't count into it the way we had just done, or the drummer had no concept what we were doing, or something. I even scanned and emailed around the transcription they had in Bass Player a while back to show them how to count it, and we still couldn't get it right. Never tried to play it out, thankfully.
 
#63
Jazz gig, outdoors on a generator - the generator was working fine for the preceding 5 bands, but when we got up there, maybe 5 tunes into the set, it apparently runs out of gas. I'm playing electric bass, BTW, and the stage has a backline, so I don't care if the piano, PA, bass, and guitar amps blow. It's not my amp. Each one went out in its own way, creating a racket, on top of which the sax player was trying to solo. And, even with the amps all dead, he continues to solo. All that is left making sound is him and the drums. After maybe 24 bars of this the sax player realizes that the power is not coming back on and he sort of fades out his solo. As soon as he takes the reed out of his mouth, the generator comes back, all the amps power up and amazingly, we all came back in in the right place as if nothing happened.
 
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#64
hrodbert696 said:
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.
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Man ... I never understood the purpose of the "background live music" ... There is a record for that, live music is an art in pure form and needs to be appreciated.
I always lose my "mojo" when ppl are not paying attention, since it seems like no one gives a poopie. I can totally relate.

They should have just had you 7-9pm.. done, fresh music for the masses!
 
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#65
hrodbert696 said:
We tried to get "Tell me Something Good" down. Every time I thought we had it, the guitarist decided he couldn't count into it the way we had just done, or the drummer had no concept what we were doing, or something. I even scanned and emailed around the transcription they had in Bass Player a while back to show them how to count it, and we still couldn't get it right. Never tried to play it out, thankfully.
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What's funny is, we rehearsed it without her, and I sang Chaka Khan's part. It sounded OK! Not good enough that I would want to feature it, but it was easier to time to my own vocal than that drummer's wife.
 
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#67
Early 90's, I'm in a retro-psychedelic band, and through a connection with our lead singer, got a (non-paying) gig at a frat house. Guitarist doesn't have a tuner, so he borrowed mine; it was the old-style tuner with an analog meter. Unfortunately, the battery in the tuner was weak. This caused the guitarist and bassist to tune sharp, probably by 2 or 3 half-tones. I played a small combo organ, so I never tune. We start playing - we usually opened our set with an instrumental - and it sounds TERRIBLE. I think we played another song too before I finally convinced our guitarist to re-tune to my organ. I learned to use the "batt check" function of the tuner from then on!
 
#68
This is a pretty entertaining thread. Partly because I can read through and think of something similar that happened. Oh, well. Live long enough and you will screw up pretty much everything at least once.

The worst was the first time I ever played on a raised stage. The "band" got thrown together less than a week before the show, and it didn't have a drummer. So, I was the rhythm section. As I found out, the guitarist and singer/guitarist didn't have a great grasp of things like rhythm. To top it all off, we had a very short set of songs, but we changed them all around because I made up some riffs the others liked during our one practice session. Nothing was written down, of course. You can guess how it went. The worst part was when the guitarist, who supposedly knew the songs, lost is place completely and started looking at me during a B section that was different enough that winging it was a bad idea. So, I winged it anyway and we got through. It wasn't exactly a shining moment.
 
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#69
Dr3thepooner said:
Man ... I never understood the purpose of the "background live music" ... There is a record for that, live music is an art in pure form and needs to be appreciated.
I always lose my "mojo" when ppl are not paying attention, since it seems like no one gives a ****. I can totally relate.

They should have just had you 7-9pm.. done, fresh music for the masses!
Click to expand...

That's what everyone was saying afterward (not just the band). The host apologized, he said that one side of the family basically goes to bed early and he was afraid they wouldn't come at all if things started later, so he was kind of stuck trying to juggle a schedule that would work.
 
#70
hrodbert696 said:
That's what everyone was saying afterward (not just the band). The host apologized, he said that one side of the family basically goes to bed early and he was afraid they wouldn't come at all if things started later, so he was kind of stuck trying to juggle a schedule that would work.
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Bottom line is, I might find that a nightmare, but as long as I got paid...
 

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