LMinnie
Hehehehe.... We all make mistakes I bet the most common would be forgetting the words while playing.
My boet and i played my moms 50th birthday and halfway thru Cats in the cradle by Ugly kid joe I lost my train of thought and forgot the words...I musta played the chorus three times before my boet gave me a kick and just like that the words popped into my head.....the crowd didnt seem to notice and we got applause but I still felt pretty kak.
Satriani
I don't know about embarrassing, but I have 2 little gig stories.
I was watching a band play at some join in Edenvale, and the guitarist had heard that I played Gar Moore's Still go the Blues really well, so he called me up to play with his band. Not very far into the solo, I broke hi High E string, and handed him the guitar and got the hell outta there. Jut goes to show, gotta use what you're used to. It was a Les Paul...go figure
Second was opening day at Allenby Campus in Bramley (now called Damlin). MY band was the opening band for all the future students who rocked up for opening day. I was on lead, and my best friend was on Rhythm, but he was meant to play the solo for Sweet Child o Mine, and as he hit the very first bend, his string broke, and quickly pointed to me to take over. I hadn't even bloody learnt it, but still managed to get it pretty close with my trusty Ibanez. IT seems string breaking is always running after me....
Lethe
During one of your shows in my previous band I was asked to go on stage a play a solo after our set (don't ask me why). anyways, not really knowing what to do, I started making more noise than melody doing tapping and 'cool' looking stuff... my buddies in the front of the stage were cheering me on and basically telling me what to do... "do some tapping! yeah yeah! some sweeping!! yeah!" the suggestion came to play with the guitar behind my head... being quite hyped by the cheering I thought I'd go for it... not having done it often before, as I swung the guitar the strap got hooked somehow and I smashed the guitar into my face. Being nearly unconscious and dazed... i tried to carry on playing... but I don't really know what happened from there... It was fun none the less...
NorioDS
Love these! Keep 'em coming.
nicovlogg
Let me resurrect this slightly old topic..
One night we were playing as part of the Serenade at varsity, which is basically a twenty minute song and dance thing that all the men's residences do for the ladies. Well, the night was long and here by 2 in the morning I was pretty tired. Snapped a string and no worries, second guitarist covers me, I have a minute or two to change, get my new string tuned up and good to go, just in time for my big solo..
The whole band gives this pause where I need to fill in a few epic notes - and I left my amp on Standby while I was repairing my string. There was just this sudden hush and everyone looked around wondering what happened to me.. :-[
DonovanB
nicovlogg wrote
Let me resurrect this slightly old topic..
One night we were playing as part of the Serenade at varsity, which is basically a twenty minute song and dance thing that all the men's residences do for the ladies. Well, the night was long and here by 2 in the morning I was pretty tired. Snapped a string and no worries, second guitarist covers me, I have a minute or two to change, get my new string tuned up and good to go, just in time for my big solo..
The whole band gives this pause where I need to fill in a few epic notes - and I left my amp on Standby while I was repairing my string. There was just this sudden hush and everyone looked around wondering what happened to me.. :-[
Lovely. Thats also one of those moments where someone is probably shouting loudly about something untoward as well. You know the times when the room goes quiet and you suddenly hear the word penis yelled really loud? you dont? oh well....
AlanRatcliffe
Lethe wrote
as I swung the guitar the strap got hooked somehow and I smashed the guitar into my face.
Ouch! I felt that.
You remind me of the one and only time I tried wearing a very low strap - Page style. At some point I bent down and swung the guitar between my legs (I know, I know...). In retrospect, an ill-advised move for one who is so clumsy he struggles to turn corners without knocking some extremity or other. All went surprisingly well until I stood up straight and tried to swing the guitar round the front again. Turns out I'd stood on the cable while bending down and the cable jerked the guitar back between my legs... but I was now standing straight and the clearance was no longer what it once was. Also turns out that bruising your trouser furniture isn't conducive to giving your best performance. Who knew?
Lethe
UUAAHHA!! Epic!! ? thats better than mine! ?
Alan Ratcliffe wrote
Lethe wrote
as I swung the guitar the strap got hooked somehow and I smashed the guitar into my face.
Ouch! I felt that.
You remind me of the one and only time I tried wearing a very low strap - Page style. At some point I bent down and swung the guitar between my legs (I know, I know...). In retrospect, an ill-advised move for one who is so clumsy he struggles to turn corners without knocking some extremity or other. All went surprisingly well until I stood up straight and tried to swing the guitar round the front again. Turns out I'd stood on the cable while bending down and the cable jerked the guitar back between my legs... but I was now standing straight and the clearance was no longer what it once was. Also turns out that bruising your trouser furniture isn't conducive to giving your best performance. Who knew?
AlanRatcliffe
I didn't think so at the time... ?
[deleted]
Though there've been plenty of gigs where things went awry, two really stand out for me:
1) I was in a band in Durban that was invited to be interviewed on (I think) the WERQ radio station from Maryland, USA - the DJs had come out for a few days' promo tour and were broadcasting from the Beverly Hills Hotel in Umhlanga. Anyway, after we'd recorded a little jingle for them in the hotel, we were invited to hook up with Phat Marc and the other DJ (whose name I can't remember) on their way through a nightclub tour they were doing that night. We were instructed to set up at this Muslim techno joint near the beachfront, and they'd apparently arrive at just after 10:00, when we were to play.
We got to the nightclub, set up our stuff (much to the amusement of the patrons, who were unaware of the plans) and bellied up the bar, which wasn't at all a problem because nobody in the whole nightclub was drinking alcohol...except for the band. Now, most of the band had issues with alcohol - some weeks before I'd had to rescue our drunk singer from an enraged late-night hotdog vendor (who'd punched our singer in the face) outside another Durban nightclub, after he'd been on top form again. The problem was that the American DJs arrived a little before 2:00 in the morning, and the band was mostly shitfaced. We lurched onto the stage and I started our funkiest, most James Brownesque song, and as the band came in the DJs were rapping over the top of it, waving their hands from side to side - things were going swimmingly. Until they got off at the end of that song. The DJs got back in their bus and we were supposed to keep playing. As soon as we started our second song, the dancefloor cleared like cockroaches scurrying from the light, leaving only one guy who stood at the front of the stage extending his middle finger to us. He just stood there like that - resolute when other people eventually tried to pull him away. When we finished that song, people started screaming, "Play Who let the dogs out!" When we declined and started our third song, that's when the patrons started to get angry. Things were starting to fly around. Our singer (miraculously showing good judgement) said, "This is our last song," and the crowd cheered from the shadows. We got out of there pretty smartly. Ironically enough, when the newspapers came out the next day, the photo from the club was taken just as the crowd was getting into the DJs' rap act, so the dancefloor was full and it looked like it had been a highly successful gig.
2) My first tour to Joburg with the same band: one afternoon we were scheduled to play at Morgan's Cat. I had been up in Joburg for something else and the band decided to use that as an opportunity to book some dates, so they'd broken into my house with the assistance of my landlady back in Durban and brought what they thought I'd need. They'd actually brought only my seldom-used backup guitar, and of course in the very first number I broke a string. However, while it was actually the G string that had gone (and now I didn't have a quick-swap backup guitar), I for some reason thought it was the D that had snapped, and in between playing and doing backup vocals I was pulling frantically at that string, trying to get it out of the way - I thought it had snapped the core but the outer coils were just being difficult. All I succeeded in doing was loosening the D string significantly, with the G string already hanging loose (unbeknownst to me). Suddenly the band fell silent for one of my two unaccompanied breaks in the song and I just remember the bass player turning to me and going, "Ooooooh" with this screwed-up expression, because it really did sound like I was killing Morgan's cat... Funnily enough, we weren't invited back there.
Sean
What a great thread...ha ha ha, and the 2 stories from Alan, the Springy cable and the low slung guitar, brilliant!! Amazing how another guitarists' pain and discomfort can be so amusing ? ha ha ha thanks Alan!!
AlanRatcliffe
Sean wrote
Amazing how another guitarists' pain and discomfort can be so amusing ? ha ha ha thanks Alan!!
Just call me the Schadenfreude Soloist...
[deleted]
Okay, there are some funny stories there, but can you honestly say it was embarrassing when your band members are drunk. Come on, the smashing the guitar in your face story, THAT'S embarrassing.
Here are some of my moments of inadequacy.1) Playing while the bride walks down the isle and going stone cold blank (I just repeated the first phrase a few times till she got to the end of the isle).
2) Singing in a restaurant and besides singing like a cat slowly dying, the cable for the microphone had a bad connection and made a huge noise just when people were starting to be able to ignore me. Everyone lifted off their seats in unison.
3) Playing in a restaurant for the first time in a while and not noticing a carpet of dust on my amplifier before the manager did, just as I was saying "I haven't played for a while"(I lived in a flat next to the railway line, so things did get very dusty).
Well, it can only get better hey?
lindsmuse
Alan you are hilarious! Wish I could cartoon this stuff! But you need someone really funny. Musicians get themselves in such funny and bizarre situations! Love the guys falling drunkenly or daftly off their stools! You supposed to be such a god when you're playing guitar - what you doing lying on the floor ?
nicovlogg
DonovanB wrote
nicovlogg wrote
Let me resurrect this slightly old topic..
One night we were playing as part of the Serenade at varsity, which is basically a twenty minute song and dance thing that all the men's residences do for the ladies. Well, the night was long and here by 2 in the morning I was pretty tired. Snapped a string and no worries, second guitarist covers me, I have a minute or two to change, get my new string tuned up and good to go, just in time for my big solo..
The whole band gives this pause where I need to fill in a few epic notes - and I left my amp on Standby while I was repairing my string. There was just this sudden hush and everyone looked around wondering what happened to me.. :-[
Lovely. Thats also one of those moments where someone is probably shouting loudly about something untoward as well. You know the times when the room goes quiet and you suddenly hear the word penis yelled really loud? you dont? oh well....
In my case it's normally just when I get to the punchline of a really dirty joke - then I utter that last line just as everyone quiets down. ?
