Weirdest thing that's broken/gone wrong mid gig?

stratman3142

Bod said:

guitarmangler said:

I’ve got a few involving drummers, alcohol and falling off stools. But, haven’t we all…

I played with a drummer who stopped mid-song to go for a piss.

Yes, I've experienced both of those.

Although, to be fair, I had to run off stage once, which is part of the reason I never drink too much liquid before a gig.

digitalkettle

Bod said:

guitarmangler said:

I’ve got a few involving drummers, alcohol and falling off stools. But, haven’t we all…

I played with a drummer who stopped mid-song to go for a piss.

What...on stage?!!

Bod

digitalkettle said:

Bod said:

guitarmangler said:

I’ve got a few involving drummers, alcohol and falling off stools. But, haven’t we all…

I played with a drummer who stopped mid-song to go for a piss.

What...on stage?!!

I'm pretty sure he considered it before running off to splash his Converse in an appropriate place.

Keefy

I was playing bass in a pub covers trio when the guitarist/singer had some kind of mental wobbly caused by the pain killers he was on following a car crash. Fortunately it only lasted a few minutes.

Kebabkid

Using a backline at The Marquee in a Nordoff Robbins Charity Music Industry Battle of the Bands Competition and running the original Zoom 9002 into the clean channel of the hired Marshall for my sounds. 

In the middle/breakdown section of a rocky version of 'Heard it through the Grapevine..the FM version if you know it, it was dark and I hit what I thought was preset for my solo sound and was ready to go but I accidentally hit the metronome button and you can imagine that tinny and shitty sound going through that powerful PA. To make matters worse, it was out of time with the drummer and to the perplexed audience, they thought it was his doing/fault as why would a guitarist have a metronome???

Even though it didn't last for a long time, it seemed like a lifetime...OOPS! We did, however, come second out of 6 bands with the equipment hire company cheekily entering a band and having the best sound of the night and winning!

hollywoodrox

DefaultM said:

Had a girl fall flat on her face on the dance floor, she got up holding half of each of her 2 front teeth, blood everywhere.

How awful , poor girl 

bloodandtears

Bod said:

guitarmangler said:

I’ve got a few involving drummers, alcohol and falling off stools. But, haven’t we all…

I played with a drummer who stopped mid-song to go for a piss.

not mid-song but mid-set here..

bloodandtears

digitalkettle said:

bloodandtears said:

digitalkettle said:

bloodandtears said:

1) Drop my Ibanez Jem on a stone floor in pub once.. had to stop myself from a cry/spew!

...

Was this the result of a 'sling it over your shoulder' manoeuvre?

I wish I had such an excuse.. nope, I was naive and wasn't aware of strap locks..

How on earth do you get a Jem without a Cliplock attached?

Hahahaha yeah, contrary to belief they aren't standard!!

PeteC

I once walked backwards on stage at a gig (Leeds Poly) and fell off the stage Spinal Tap style.  Ouch! 

Another time at Piggys Notion in Huddesfield we got changed down in the cellar and ran up the steps that went onto the stage…..

there was a door frame just befire the stage - manged to run straight into it and entered the stage with a full on nosebleed

another time one of our roadie mates was in charge of the flashbombs at the sides of the stage - got too close as he was hooking up the fusewire from the car battery and removed his eyebrows in a flash(literally) 

how i miss those days…..

thecolourbox

guitarmangler said:

I played bass in a jazz band ... All wrong notes. Can’t make it sound any good. Angry keyboard player shouting changes at me. 

Par for the course isn't it?

jca74

My favourite youtube fail: https://youtu.be/3O72lItS4OA?t=68 

Paul_C

My biggest fail at a gig was during one of those song endings where everybody strums and the drummer hits anything in reach, when my hearing cut out.

Fortunately just for a couple of seconds and it's never done it again, but it definitely put the wind up me and I quickly bought some earplugs.

ScreamingDave

Our drummer used to lose what little sense of timing he had completely if his wife dance with any other man while we were playing. 

p90fool

More human error than a breakage, but we did a gig as a 3-piece a little while back where I dragged out my old Zoom G3 to use its looper function on a couple of songs. It was a very quiet electro acoustic restaurant gig where you could hear a pin drop and we had the full attention of the audience.

I'm a bit rusty with the looper to be fair, so although it worked perfectly on the first song, halfway through the first verse of the second song (a ballad, naturally) the G3 started blasting out a recording of me tuning up followed by the intro of the first song again, which of course was in an entirely unrelated key. 

The only way I could stop it was to power it down and start again, so verse two was just cajon and vocals.  

ICBM

p90fool said:

More human error than a breakage, but we did a gig as a 3-piece a little while back where I dragged out my old Zoom G3 to use its looper function on a couple of songs. It was a very quiet electro acoustic restaurant gig where you could hear a pin drop and we had the full attention of the audience.

I'm a bit rusty with the looper to be fair, so although it worked perfectly on the first song, halfway through the first verse of the second song (a ballad, naturally) the G3 started blasting out a recording of me tuning up followed by the intro of the first song again, which of course was in an entirely unrelated key. 

The only way I could stop it was to power it down and start again, so verse two was just cajon and vocals.  

My Line 6 DL-4 did almost exactly the same thing - I tried to record a new loop, but it played back the one from the last song instead, and nothing would stop it other than pulling the power plug out. Luckily it wasn’t on batteries!

Some sort of software glitch, not user error - I had it in non-true-bypass mode so the switches did nothing, and literally even turning all the knobs randomly made no difference. It worked fine after unplugging and restarting it, but I never trusted it again.

trolley

Keefy said:

I was playing bass in a pub covers trio when the guitarist/singer had some kind of mental wobbly caused by the pain killers he was on following a car crash. Fortunately it only lasted a few minutes.

We had a singer who got to the pub at 4:30pm for an evening gig. He never learned the words - he had them written out. He was so pissed he couldn't read them. We launched into the last song - 'Ace of Spades' - he did the first verse, put the mic down & lurched off! The landlord was very unimpressed. As were we - he went a few weeks later.

p90fool

ICBM said:
It worked fine after unplugging and restarting it, but I never trusted it again.

Me neither, it's never left the house since!

Lewy

I can't remember who it was but ages ago someone posted on here about how he was playing in a pub and a bloke sitting close to the band on a bar stool slipped off it and launched the contents of a bag of skips all over him while he was soloing and to this day just thinking about it has me crying with laughter.

PolarityMan

my wizard hat fell off

CountryDave

Playing in a 2 guitar band, I was using basic stomp boxes, my mate had a G-system all programmed up.
Half way through a drunken lass fell over and ended up sat on his G-system. For some reason, pressing multiple buttons at the same time wasn’t appealing to the pedal. It started giving out all kinds of weird, but amazing noises. No matter what he pressed, it wouldn’t revert to anything approaching a guitar sound.
Unplug and restart got it back, by which time we’d finished the song (in fits of laughter) and were ready to start the next one.