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Whoops, hot mic....

#23
Playing a Special Olympics fund raiser, sax player calls the trumpet player a "dufus" over the mic.
:banghead:

Played a swanky riverfront wedding. We had just played our last song. Bride's father walks up with the check and says to the sax player "I hear you're pretty good at squeezing all this stuff in that truck over there." He says (not only to the father of the bride, but over a hot mic) "Yeah I'm the king of this MFer." (Only he didn't abbreviate.)
:banghead::banghead::banghead:
 
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#24
Our singer is Latino and writes all the lyrics, and when he waxes socio-political it is always to the left. So he has this song "Less Than Human" that criticizes the tendency of a society to treat the peoples of their opposition as the title states, esp. in warfare. Since he is a drunk he will babble about a song's meaning when introducing it. During his little speech for this song he would, while speaking AGAINST slurring, use the "N" word to drive his point home. What he didn't consider is that he is less than 5 feet tall, so whoever is not paying close attention will hear this word over the PA, look over in shock and only see three white guys on stage. NOT COOL by any means, especially in front of a diverse LA punk crowd. So we ask him to stop, and cantankerous drunk that he is, takes offense to someone telling him what to do, so he starts doing it more obnoxiously than before just to piss us off. So myself, the guitarist and the drummer developed a signal so that we could abruptly start the song right as that word was going to leave his mouth, and it worked. He don't do it no more, but damn that was a rough episode!
 
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#26
Ellery said:
Our singer is Latino and writes all the lyrics, and when he waxes socio-political it is always to the left. So he has this song "Less Than Human" that criticizes the tendency of a society to treat the peoples of their opposition as the title states, esp. in warfare. Since he is a drunk he will babble about a song's meaning when introducing it. During his little speech for this song he would, while speaking AGAINST slurring, use the "N" word to drive his point home. What he didn't consider is that he is less than 5 feet tall, so whoever is not paying close attention will hear this word over the PA, look over in shock and only see three white guys on stage. NOT COOL by any means, especially in front of a diverse LA punk crowd. So we ask him to stop, and cantankerous drunk that he is, takes offense to someone telling him what to do, so he starts doing it more obnoxiously than before just to piss us off. So myself, the guitarist and the drummer developed a signal so that we could abruptly start the song right as that word was going to leave his mouth, and it worked. He don't do it no more, but damn that was a rough episode!
Click to expand...

Geeeez. What a dipstick.
 
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#28
We change up parts of Talk Dirty to Me to NSFW language (i.e. "You know that I can hardly wait, just to **** you" amongst various other lines). We almost always play bars and late nights, so it generally doesn't matter. Unfortunately, we were playing a county fair one night (reasonably small, fairly adult crowd, but still contained some kids). I was on auto-pilot and during the first verse used the improper language instead of cleaning it up. Drummer gave me a pretty dirty look. I switched it up to standard lyrics ("Just to see you" and so on) after the first time, but I felt bad about it the rest of the night.
 
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#29
Killed_by_Death said:
The lowest common denominator aren't usually very good at laughing at themselves.
Click to expand...
I don't know, after last November it seems like "our betters" in academia, Hollywood and Wall Street are just as uptight. I'm poor working white trash and I'll have to disagree , as a matter of fact if you take Jeff Foxworthy or Larry the Cable Guy's routines and compare them, let's say, to Jimmy Kimmel or Samantha Bee you'll see rednecks are more down to earth than you're giving them credit for.
 
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#30
Playing a Gig at a Fancy Restaurant in a Boat Marina. So some women are dressed to the T, others in a lot less. Either way you have to keep your concentration if ya know what I mean. All of a sudden a woman dressed like an Adult Actress walks right in front of the Band. Me and my dumb self not realizing the Mics are hot (she walked by between songs and everybody just froze to gaze at her) said she looks like a P&^% STAR LOL!!!!! Needless to say we quickly counted off and played the next song.
 
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#31
gustobassman said:
The microphone. It can be your best friend or worst enemy. Considering my vocal range is very limited, the mic tends to be on the enemy side of things. But, that isn't what this thread is about. This is about those times where you wish you had a do-over, a rewind, a "oh I wish I didn't say that" moment. We've all heard the jokes about the singer calling out the wrong city -"Hello Cleveland!", as the fans in Cincinatti shake their heads in dismay. Or worse.....

I'll start this off with a good one. There's a part of town that is always knocked as being a meth hub, some really shady people live there, decent crime rate, etc... just like any other major US city. So one night at a gig in this particular Burg I was introducing a cover tune and said "We're gonna give this one a good 'ol college try, something that doesn't happen often here in _________" :facepalm:

Crickets. Silence. Dirty looks. Golf claps. :help:

Luckily the drummer saw the err in my ways and quickly counted off the next tune. Sure I didn't swear at anyone, or throw a beer bottle for that matter - but it's never a good idea to insult the entire community you are playing for. :thumbsup:

What is your worst hot mic moment?
Click to expand...

Good ol' college try? Did this story take place in the '50s?
 
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#33
Mine was, of course, self inflicted, but oddly
I was aware of the problem and *thought* I had
it headed off.

Having long ago discovered that if you leave your
PA hot on breaks, drunks will find it and play with it,
I started putting the power amps on a single power strip
to be able to kill or restore power with a single switch.
So, break time comes, I kill power and turn to the guitar
player to ask if he noticed the hooters on the redhead
in the back.

The catch here is that old Crown D series amps have
HUGE freakin' filter caps in the power supply.
Until they drain, the amp is on.
It can take several seconds.
Longer than it takes to comment on the attributes of
the bar's patrons. :roflmao:
 
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#34
I had a friend who was in a band that made "hot mic" jokes a part of their shtick. They would casually say these absurdist things to each other during quiet moments -- between songs, when tuning, etc. -- with the full intention of confusing/amusing the audience. The only did it once or twice per show, and they were pretty good at making it look like it was just functional, intra-band banter, as opposed to staged theatrics.

For example (making this one up myself):

Singer to guitarist (casually, almost off-mic): "Oh hey, did you get that fruitbat returned to the jewelry store?"

Guitarist responding to singer (equally casually): "Yeah, after a new set of spark plugs it tasted great."

My friend swore that these antics made the audience pay more attention to them.
 
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#37
A week ago at an acoustic set in a fancy grocery store pub playing my fretless to Going up to the Country and doing multiple glissandos from the G on the E to the octave G. Suddenly my middle finger got tapewound burn, hurt like hell. So I played the rest of the song with the naughty finger sticking straight up, giving everyone the Michigan state bird.

At the songs end My drummer asked what was wrong as I shook my finger.

"Flamed my fck finger," I said. "I won't be able to use it for a week."

Hot mic. Uncomfortable silence.
 
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