Can we share live confessions?

joeyowen

I'll start with a shocker

I once played Sweet Child of Mine on a strat bridge pickup through a boss os2 through a keyboard amp at an outdoor gig.

(I then dropped a stack of cymbals whilst a young girl was singing the welsh anthem, she cried)

I've never been back

Post your worst?

stickyfiddle

In my old band we used to do Mumford & co's Little Lion Man and The Cave. In 18 months of countless gigs and rehearsals I never really knew which was which until the other guitarist started, then I joined in... 

Still not sure which is which if i'm honest, but if you do the intro I can sing and play along to both of em!

bluechargeboy

- Did a song in drop D then forgot to tune back up for the next song.

- Spilled my own pint into my own pedalboard.

- Had my tuner set on something other than A=440 for a whole gig, was not happy with our bass player's tuning all the way through.

- Have played Sweet child of mine on ACOUSTIC guitar including the guitar intro (shuddering at the thought, it was all done in fun though).

- Was briefly in a folk band.

not_the_dj

I have a chord/cheat sheet for Brown Eyed Gitl.

freakboy1610

Second gig I ever played was at The Red Lion in Gravesend, Kent. It was a reasonably big venue and was quite busy when we kicked off. Halfway through our set about 3/4 of the audience left. We later discovered that they had one of the Nigel Benn v Chris Eubank fights on TV in another room.
In another band, my co guitarist was dyslexic and was sometimes confused by the set list. He would occasionally start playing the wrong song but would usually realise by the chorus!

EricTheWeary

not_the_dj;964125" said:

I have a chord/cheat sheet for Brown Eyed Gitl.

Obviously not yet caught up with my ska punk BEG tutorial yet |)

We played a thirty minute set at a charity thing and I was using the supplied amp. During the last song I had a complete blank ( on a song that is C and F all the way through...) and proceeded to pretend to have problems with the amp. Afterwards the organisers apologised to me and I didn't explain. X_X

BGG

I played half a song in Em instead of Dm on Saturday night nee wonder the bass player was giving me a death stare ! lol

failed_astronaut

Watching Wayne's World at the weekend and during the Alice Copper gig when Pete Friesen is tearing people's faces off, my gf goes "It must take a lot of confidence to play without a shirt on." To which I said "I've done it..."

Then I thought about when, where, and my general physique whilst I did it. 

And then I felt the shame.

RocknRollDave

I've had a few "oops forgot to swap guitar back after swapping to the Eb one for one song" moments and once where I think I tuned down a whole step instead of a half step and wondered why everyone else was all over the shop....oops..

Before I started using straploks I had my LP slip from my shoulders (caught it just before it hit the ground) not only mid-song, not only mid-riff, not only mid-opening riff to the song, but mid-opening riff to opening song of the night. Well, THAT helped settle my nerves for the night................

gazzauk

Very drunk, I played a cover of Summer of 69 (on the bass - those two things are shameful in themselves) and managed to hit every note know to man apart from the 3 or 4 in the song. Extreme brain fade!

Moe_Zambeek

I went for a behind-the-head solo on a borrowed rig at a birthday bash. Bad enough in itself, but i was also standing on the lead at the time...

DesVegas

I've had one occasion were i've totally forgotten which song we were playing .. i was thinking "this certainly sounds familiar" very strange, it wasn't until the chorus came around and it clicked which one it was and i was off again .. and it used to get to a point were before a gig it'll be "i wonder how many songs i'll get through before i snap a string"

Dave_Vader

G string downtuned an octave in dropped-SG-off-back-of-stage-just-before-opening-number-electronic-tuning-without-listening-in-a-hurry moment.

(It was a Yamaha SG, so the headstock stayed on)

Kirsty Maccoll has never sounded so metal, and have you ever tried to do a vaguely country lead break without a G? I have...

Retuned again before second song, all better.

ESBlonde

Far to many to recall most of them:
Playing about 4 numbers into the second set with the wah on and wondering why it way so trebly.
I was the dep electric guitarist in a folk band, I was with them longer than any permanent guitarist in the end!
I've played and sung '500 miles' at a wedding - as the bride and grooms special request!
I've played a Rock and Roll set (bass guitar drums with the aforementioned folk band) at a folk gig when the audience requested it!
I've gigged in a tent on NYE when it was snowing, the dozen or so PAR CAN lights were placed at ground level and tucked in at the sides to create enough warmth.

thecolourbox

Quite a few wedding playing fiascos (I play church organ) but the worst was a funeral where they wanted a hymn I'd never heard of before that was the deceaaed's favourite. I sought it out and learnt it, played it.... Nobody sang. Wrong tune mortified (I know I wasn't the only one )

I also was a band leader in an Easter passion play at a church (I'm not religious by the way... Honest), and I'd got lumbered with somebody who volunteered to play his guitar with me, but was awful. He also only had a really badly set up Jackson metal guitar with very flappy strings, no amp except one of those battery powered mini amps. So I may have accidentally given him a faulty back lead to put between the multi fx I lent him and the mixer on the big night whoops

Danny1969

2 years ago me  and a bunch of session guys had to pretend to be another well known band  at a  gig at the Queens house in Greenwich  London so the actual proper band who were supposed to be there could go off and do a very well known celebrity's daughters wedding ...... 

Last Tuesday I turned up at the gig with no guitar strap, so I took the strap of a laptop bag and used that. Only trouble was it was only long enough to put the guitar level with my chin!

I was once so drunk on my 25th birthday I played Gimme all your Loving while the rest of the band were playing sharp dressed man, I didn't notice but they did

When I was 18 we put so much thunder flash powder in the drum riser pyro it blew the high hats off the riser

I lost my jeans on the way to a gig once. They were clean and washed but not dry in time so was hanging them out the window on the way to the gig and when we got on the motorway the wind took em ..

gusman2x

Danny1969 said:

When I was 18 we put so much thunder flash powder in the drum riser pyro it blew the high hats off the riser

I lost my jeans on the way to a gig once. They were clean and washed but not dry in time so was hanging them out the window on the way to the gig and when we got on the motorway the wind took em ..

Fantastic

stratman3142

Danny1969 said:

I lost my jeans on the way to a gig once. They were clean and washed but not dry in time so was hanging them out the window on the way to the gig and when we got on the motorway the wind took em ..

So that's where they got the idea for the opening scene of Breaking Bad

BigMonka

Danny1969 said:

2 years ago me  and a bunch of session guys had to pretend to be another well known band  at a  gig at the Queens house in Greenwich  London so the actual proper band who were supposed to be there could go off and do a very well known celebrity's daughters wedding ...... 

Oh come on, you need to tell us which band you had to pretend to be! My money's on Girls Aloud.

ElectroDan

I got to a gig in Winter. Took our mixer out of the freezing cold van and it was dripping wet with condensation. I opened it up and gave it a thorough drying with a heat gun (being careful not to damage it of course). When it was dry I closed it up and screwed it back together. It was only when I picked it up I realised that there was a burnt black square on the carpet! :-O

stratman3142

Here are quite a few I've been jotting down over the past couple of days. Sorry about the size of the post, I'm an old fart old with lots of memories.

Others must have experienced this one. Happy Birthday, the simplest song in the world, what can go wrong? The amount of times someone has called the key as the first note of the song, which is actually the 5th.

Doing a gig in a gorilla suit standing next to a dry ice machine. My head was boiling hot and my feet were freezing cold. When I looked down I couldn't see outside the mask - not my best performance. Then a home made confetti cannon went off with more power than planned, blasting itself apart and blowing a hole through the polystyrene ceiling tiles. It looked like snow at a wedding.

Not paying enough attention to the readout on my first automatic tuner and tuning my second string to C. I didn't notice at first because the rhythm part was power chords on the low strings. The gig was recorded on cassette and the fast solo didn't sound as bad as expected, having a strange Holdsworth quality.

Having a brain fart and forgetting to bring things back in after break in Long Train Running. I thought I'd finished and I couldn't understand why everyone was staring at me. It wouldn't have been so bad, but the gig was being video'd for promotional purposes.

Mishearing 'Let's Stay Together' as 'Let's Stick Together'. Amaj doesn't 'work together' with Bbmaj7.

Giving a dep bass player a chord chart to a song he didn't know, but I put page 2 before page 1. It went in and out of phase being right then wrong.

Playing at a smart 'marquee in a garden' gig. The crazy lead singer turned his back to the audience and waved his willie at the band. There were a couple of stunned old ladies standing off to the side.

Another gig, same lead singer, trying to get everyone up to dance, saying "you, the lady behind the table, I want to see you up dancing". Then the other guitarist leaned over and said "John, she's in a wheel chair".

Not me, but musicians I knew: A girl singer did this act when she lay down on the stage. She had two pigtail hair extensions. The guitarist accidentally stepped on one. When she stood up she only had one pigtail.

Playing Goldfinger at a first rehearsal with 'proper' musicians. The Intro sounded huge with all the brass. I thought I'd go really for it with a big power chord on the Intro fourth repeat. The WTF expression on their faces was not the best way to learn the meaning of mp.

Playing at a rugby club wedding and the band leader asking the bride if he could see her ring.

The worst experience is in my response to "10 questions we ask everyone". I learned the solo to Kid Charlemagne note for note. I didn't count on someone in the band messing up. Totally threw me and I actually froze and stopped playing. I now know it's fairly easy to blag through it using a bluesy C major scale. Learned the hard way to be comfortable improvising over the chords when learning note for note solos, in the event of things going wrong.