Live gigs gone wrong.... name yours!

:D
Great topic and a great slant on your experience, MG.
I don't have a personal anecdote, but I remember a great Dave Chappelle story about bombing at the Apollo Theatre (I think). He's a young comic phenom and it's his first big gig in NYC. His Mom's in the audience...and the audience spends the whole set heckling, 'you s@#k'!, 'get off the stage!'
Like you, he said (after the initial shock wore off) that a great feeling of serenity came over him. There was no way a gig could ever go worse than that, so it was like he'd 'touched bottom'. Building on that, he grew a lot more fearless.
Guess you have to build up those calluses performance wise as well.
Welcome to GN.
:)

the worst gig involved some props we ordered. they was to be these monolith stones that appeared out of stage fog.
when the set arrived just before show time the monolith was only eighteen inches high. cracky, they came up to my knees.
just terrible. worst show ever.

I dont know if you would consider this as a gig but here it gos any way I was asked to play a song at a friends church for the youth so when I did it I play sunday morning comeing down and I forgot the threrd verse to the song in the middle of playing and It took a wile to remember the words

this isn't exactly a horror story but when i look back on it a cringe and laugh

playing at high school assembly one day, our band only knew two songs, somehow though we were called back to the stage after we played our vast repetoir. We came back on stage, and simply had to play the first song again as we didnt know any others! we didn't live that down for a while :twisted: :lol:

Wasn't a gig.

I was playing 'Harvest Moon' at my dad's company's annual function. My item was the first and somehow I forgot the lyrics.

Then what happened I don't know. I totally ruined the song in every possible way - repeating lines, playing wrong chords, playing G chord endlessly and even stopped (briefly) in between...

Surprisingly at the end, people did appreciate the music !

Many, many moons ago, when most of you were little twinkles in your fathers' eyes, I was a student. Every Friday we had a gig in the Student's Union building, and every Friday I was dragged out to "warm up" the audience. Usually it was a simple job, but one particular Friday everything went wrong. Some joker detuned my guitar about a tone and a half, so everything I was singing was coming out PECULIAR, to say the least. The natives were getting restless and I was going down like a lead balloon. Then came a burst of inspiration from the stage crew - they rescued the situation, and me, by creeping up on me and carrying me offstage, still sitting in the chair, singing and playing. Trouble was, the audience's cheers were for them ... ah, well, at least I got in for free!

Love this thread!

That's hilarious, dotfret! :lol:

the worst gig involved some props we ordered. they was to be these monolith stones that appeared out of stage fog.
when the set arrived just before show time the monolith was only eighteen inches high. cracky, they came up to my knees.
just terrible. worst show ever.

A real Spinal Tap moment.

i think one of the worst things that happens is if you come off stage happy enough with a set and have someone say 'oh man having a bad night? dont worry we all have them!" :S :(

:lol:

my strat has a nasty looking ding on the bottom curve where it landed after my strap snapped off. I was playing in a band and we were doing a few songs in my school's festival. I quickly put another strap on and was about to tune up again when the lead singer decided to dive right into the song (it was a v. v. spinal tapish band with spoken word intro, lol)and everyone else followed, so I was stuck having to be v. careful about which notes I played. after we came the singer criticised me for not playing the riffs fully! dude, my guitar is out of tune!!

I only managed to live it down because the previous year I'd performed a kicking version of Freddie King's Hideaway (the EC versh off the Bluesbreakers album), and some of the audience had seen me playing out around town several nights a week.

suffice it to say I didn't remain in that band very long.

and I have used the expensive straplocks ever since.

I was playing with my band at my high schools guitar night, and I was playing the song, when the low E sting snapped. The string gave me a pretty nasty cut, but I continued to play, but this song is almost all on the low E sting, so I had to play on the high E sting. Unfortunetly, that was the one string I forgot to tune, as our singer didn't wait long enough and I didn't get time to tune it.

My first note in a live gig was the wrong one.

I was lined up to play bass on Paul McCartney's Yesterday, it's in F and the arrangement hadn't messed around with very much, and I launched into my big fat opening note....

... G

I realised it instantly and managed to play it as an 8th note G followed by a joined 8th note and half note F and got away with it.

I learned a heck of a lot in that couple of seconds

A :-)

the worst gig involved some props we ordered. they was to be these monolith stones that appeared out of stage fog.
when the set arrived just before show time the monolith was only eighteen inches high. cracky, they came up to my knees.
just terrible. worst show ever.
:mrgreen:
Stone`enge....Where the dewdrops cry & the cats meow...