What was your worst on-stage screwup?

[Planespotter]

I was in an original indie rock band playing a gig in a tiny local theater. It maybe seated less than 100. Back then I used to use a 50' cable so I could roam around stage freely. Anyway, I spotted a group of friends sitting at a table in the back and decided to jump off the stage and get friendly with them. Unfortunately my cable caught the lead singers monitor and spun it around to face away from him and also pulled my bass head (svt3pro) off of my cabinet. Some how we held it all together and everything kept working and we finished the song without it turning into a complete train wreck. Needless to say, we went over great that night.

 

[Spent]

Just getting up on stage some nights. My best was as a fill in for a very high profile gig at a great venue (the band wanted to make a good impression). We were opening for a terrific AC/DC band (Back in Black). We only had to do 8 songs, and they were pretty straightforward, ending with RATM Killing in the Name of, which I was really looking forward to. The event was being recorded (two cameras and sound directly off the board), no pressure. Didn't realize my volume pedal was off (responsible tuner that I am) for the beginning of the first song. Recovered quickly and did a great segue into the third song instead of second. Recovered again and finished the set without a hitch. Watching the video, it wasn't quite the trainwreck I thought it was, you could see it more on my face that hear it. Apparently no big deal, the band kept calling me back and I eventually joined them for three years until I changed jobs and had to give it up. The moral is that I often blow my mistakes way out of proportion like the OP.

 

[McG]

Great stories. I feel bad liking some of them because they are so painful.

 

[Humbled]

I fell backwards into the drum kit once. That was either in Lac la Ronge or Peace River, I barely remember the difference. I still own the bass with the resulting neck-scar, however.

I sang lead for a set once with a bad case the hiccups too. Both of these were 35 years ago.


Lots of Alcohol was involved both times. Oops.

 

[QweziRider]

Too many to pick the worst. But the most hilarious? Running late for a gig. Rush rush rush to be on time. Set up fast on restaurant patio. Only time to tune now, of we go. The whole band sucks!!! What in the world are they doing? Don't they know how to tune their own instruments? This is hideous!!!! I know I'm right, I just tuned, for crying out loud.

Wait a minute. What's this? Bloody hell, my three year old likes to play with the metronome feature on my wife's tuner. Seems he learned how to also calibrate the tuner to 443 or something off a tad.

 

[Mark McClelland]

Big gig, guitars start it. One-two-three-four. Bass and drums kick in and we're off. But my first note is so horrendously out of tune. The guitarist turns and shouts angrily at me and I'm adamant I'm in tune. But something is very wrong so I quickly retune there and then, instantly adjusting my machine head to where I think it should be. Sounds OK. Then he turns to me and shouts, 'Sorry, it's me.' He'd tuned to some different setting in his tuner before the gig. Still in the song, he retunes, leaving me now properly out of tune and having to stumble to get myself back in again. All this in a massive rocking opener.

 

[trevcda]

Opening for an, at the time, national act with an originals band in a sold out 3,000 seat venue. Most of our songs were heavy rock guitar based tunes with sequenced synth tracks for live shows. A piano based ballad I'd written was getting some regional air play so we added to the set list. Unfortunately, that piano track was sequenced as well and some one back stage pulled the plug on the keyboards shortly after the drummer started the song. Somehow I pulled off my bass, put it in the stand and by that time the keyboards had rebooted and defaulted to a piano patch and I played that song live in front of all those people for the first time since I had sequenced it maybe a year and a half earlier. That was a seriously scary five minutes. We are fortunate that we had brought a keyboard for this show rather than a rack of modules or I would have been S.O.L. Everything, including the rest of the sequences, went fine for the rest of the show. More of a recovery than a screw up, but I think it counts!

 

[maxschrek]

Opening for Adrian Belew in front of 3,000 peeps and popping an E string with no backup bass on the third song of a set of ridiculously complicated prog rock. I still have nightmares about it and have never gigged with less than three basses since.

 

[jacolyte]

i've been lucky; nothing more serious than the odd flubbed note here and there.

but i played in a band once with a guitarist who had the most elaborate rig imaginable. 12 stompboxes plus 8u of rack gear into true stereo cabinets left and right. after a few years gigging and building our reputation, we got a nice break opening for a national act. 2 songs into our set, his rig dies. he can't figure out what the problem is and he refuses to play out the rest of the gig just playing straight through the amp - he was completely dependent on his bells and whistles. we had to pack up and go home; he refused to play. i was livid - the show must go on; you have to have a plan B. i quit the band that night after we unloaded at the garage. i played the rest of the gigs that we already had booked and that was the end of it.

 

[Blister]

Back when I didn't know how to finesse myself and relax, my hand cramped up so bad that I had to stop playing during the song - Luckily it wore off after a minute or so - Also the rest of guys still kept playing of course

 

[ThuzzleFump]

Sitting in sh**faced with a decent blues band in Chicago, back in the day.

I was fine until I basically fell on my face, which took about 60 seconds.

It was the kind of drunk where you can't see...pretty far gone.

I'm older and MUCH wiser now.

 

[beaglesandbass]

I took the battery out of my bass to test it in-between the 2nd and 3rd sets and forgot to put it back in.

 

[Doner Designs]

Mine are too numerous and embarrassing to admit. I'm relatively new to playing out. A small satellite campus of my church has been a good place for me to get some experience.

I think maybe the funniest is this: First the background - I'm really easily startled. At work when somebody comes up to my door I usually jump out of my seat and have even screamed a couple of times when I was deep in thought. That's the background and here is the story:

Twice that I can remember, I hit a wrong note fairly hard while confident I was playing the right note. When the sound came out of my amp, I nearly jumped out of my skin. If anyone noticed my jump, or the look on my face, I imagine it was fairly amusing.

 

[BigNotes]

So many mistakes so little time. So I grin a lot!

IMHO you can screw up a song 10 ways to Sunday and no one cares but if you have to stop and start over you will never hear the end of it.

 

[pacojas]

if i make a mistake i feel very normal.

 

[Fingerpickingood]

I got REALLY drunk and vomited onstage before a crowd of about 600 at a benefit show we were headlining. This was probably twelve or thirteen years ago. This was during the third song in the set, so I had to avoid slipping in it for the remaining seven songs.

In other news, I'll be eight years sober this year.

 

[Grey.Wolf]

Breaking into "Slow Ride" by Foghat while everyone else plays "Slow Ride"" by Kenny Wayne Shepherd. Just awesome.

 

[TJH3113]

Long time ago, playing "Long Distance Runaround" by Yes on a small stage. So small, that I was forced to stand nearly front and center. After the intro and just before the verse, in the quiet part with just the bass playing those two sets of three descending notes - I played every note wrong. Every note.

 

[stringthrough]

My first ever gig was a nightmare. I was 18 and it was a "society" gig; lots of standards and a handful of popular soft rock tunes. The other guys in the band were my age but they were jazzbo's and fairly experienced at gigging. I was treated to one rehearsal and was given chord charts to take to the gig. At that point in my life I was just scratching the surface on how to create a walking jazz bassline over changes. Well, I kept the 4/4 walk thing going for all the swing/ bop tunes but I'm pretty sure at least 1/4 of the notes I played were wrong... And no jokes please about how "there are no wrong notes in jazz" because I sure found them that night.

 

[logicman69]

Lets see.....

I'll start with the time I actually got roofied on stage. Had my drink at the front of the stage and someone in the crowd slipped something into it. My guitar player told me after I went from stone sober (I had ONE drink before that one) to barely standing within the course of the first song. The way he tells it I was looking at my bass like it was some alien that had attached itself to my body. Luckily the old bass player was in the audience. He jumped up on stage and took over for the rest of the night. All I remember is playing the first song to the 2nd set and then then next thing I know, I woke up in the parking lot at my work the next morning.... it was actually pretty damn scary.

The worst that was actually MY fault... at a recent gig we were playing "Sweet Child of Mine" and when it went to the first solo, something sounded off. Me and the guitar player are looking at each other trying to figure out what was wrong. I looked down and realized I had started the riff on the wrong string (playing it a 5th above what it should have been)... Whoops.