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

bloodandtears

CountryDave said:

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.

@CountryDave G-Sytem user???  was that Tony ?

CountryDave

bloodandtears said:

CountryDave said:

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.

@CountryDave G-Sytem user???  was that Tony ?

Nope, it was Happy Daz as Mrs Moff’s birthday. Rick will remember it well.

digitalscream

We did have one gig at the Met Lounge in Peterborough, where the sound guy was from the "Just make everything louder than everything else" school of mixing. He kept fiddling with the sound to the point where we couldn't distinguish anything in the monitors because of the front of house sound bouncing off the far wall, so he kept turning the monitors up.

I've no idea exactly what caused it, but the drummer's monitor caught fire half way through the first song.

At a weirder gig, we had...guitar trouble. My pedalboard inexplicably died right at the beginning of our set so I played the whole set without it, I broke a low E two songs in (managed to replace it while the singer was chatting), the other guitarist broke his A string in the penultimate song and then all but one of his neck pickup ring mounting screws fell out in the last song (brand new Gibson LP Studio), leaving the pickup flapping against the strings.

RocknRollDave

Had a guy crash into our gear, flat on his face during, would you believe, “I’m Still Standing.”

slacker

First gig with a band in 86. I was on bass, dep keys and brain dead singer. Support act went on first without a sax player who hadn't turned up.

The cunning plan was that we would start playing in the dark  the curtains would open and smoke would gently billow from the stage.

What actually happened was that a roadie charged with task of taping down loose leads had gaffa taped the guitarists lead to the floor rendering it immovable. Said guitarist also had fresh stitches in two right hand fingers.

Whilst the guitarist was losing a tug of war match someone stumbled into my bass detuning most of the strings. I'm tuning up at 250w with no idea why the guitar player hasn't started.

So after a lot of coughing we get some guitar. Curtains open and 10 minutes of smoke operation fills the entire hall. Guitarist has tape hanging from his lead and bleeding from two popped stitches. Sax player starts playing oblivious that he's in the wrong band. 

I left after another gig two weeks later where the drummer inexplicably forgot how to play.

jeztone2

I played a very rough miners welfare place in Nottinghamshire about thirty odd years ago. At the time the tabloid press were going on about Chinese Death Stars, which were some sort of banned weapon. My drummers crash cymbal was very old and as he hit it a small piece broke away and whizzed past my ear. I was terrified someone in the audience was trying to harm me. 

digitalkettle

jeztone2 said:

I played a very rough miners welfare place in Nottinghamshire about thirty odd years ago. At the time the tabloid press were going on about Chinese Death Stars, which were some sort of banned weapon. My drummers crash cymbal was very old and as he hit it a small piece broke away and whizzed past my ear. I was terrified someone in the audience was trying to harm me. 

Shuriken...Japanese.

Chinese Death Star sounds like something the Empire got at the space station discount store

jeztone2

digitalkettle said:

jeztone2 said:

I played a very rough miners welfare place in Nottinghamshire about thirty odd years ago. At the time the tabloid press were going on about Chinese Death Stars, which were some sort of banned weapon. My drummers crash cymbal was very old and as he hit it a small piece broke away and whizzed past my ear. I was terrified someone in the audience was trying to harm me. 

Shuriken...Japanese.

Chinese Death Star sounds like something the Empire got at the space station discount store

Ahh…I think it was the tabloids nickname for them at the time. 

Paul_C

jeztone2 said:

I played a very rough miners welfare place in Nottinghamshire about thirty odd years ago. At the time the tabloid press were going on about Chinese Death Stars, which were some sort of banned weapon. My drummers crash cymbal was very old and as he hit it a small piece broke away and whizzed past my ear. I was terrified someone in the audience was trying to harm me. 

At a rehearsal (I was the drummer) I watched with fascination as a split in a cymbal started to move parallel to the curve and then head back out towards the edge.

At the end of the song there was a piece hanging by a thread so of course I whacked it as hard as possible, and the chunk of cymbal flew off and stuck in the side of the bass player's head.

As we all laughed he looked about him to see what was so funny with the bit of cymbal still sticking out.

When I plucked it out and showed him I thought he was going to kill me

At another rehearsal the same bass player (sadly no longer with us) stepped up to the mic. belted out a note as loud and as long as he could and then collapsed backwards onto my drums, again to all our amusement.

JayGee

digitalkettle said:

jeztone2 said:

I played a very rough miners welfare place in Nottinghamshire about thirty odd years ago. At the time the tabloid press were going on about Chinese Death Stars, which were some sort of banned weapon. My drummers crash cymbal was very old and as he hit it a small piece broke away and whizzed past my ear. I was terrified someone in the audience was trying to harm me. 

Shuriken...Japanese.

Chinese Death Star sounds like something the Empire got at the space station discount store

I was just thinking that it would be a great name for a band…

:-)

fretfinder

Not particularly weird but… at a pub gig a drunkard staggered across the floor and fell into one of our speaker stands with large cab on top and they all hit the floor with a resounding crash. The cab was fine (Celestion Road Series, indestructible), the stand was broken and the drunkard cut his head, blood on the carpet, ambulance called. We just carried on after a short pause to find a table to put the cab onto.

At another pub gig I turned round between songs to have a slurp of my full pint of beer, which was on a windowsill behind my rig… only to find that during the previous song the pint glass must’ve vibrated to the front of the sill and tipped forward releasing its entire contents all over my Cornell Plexi head and Marshall 2x12 cab. Amazingly the beer didn’t get into the circuit of the amp so it was fine, and I discovered that Marshall’s salt n pepper grille cloth is impervious to beer stains as it didn’t show a single mark once the beer had dried off!

ICBM

fretfinder said:

At another pub gig I turned round between songs to have a slurp of my full pint of beer, which was on a windowsill behind my rig… only to find that during the previous song the pint glass must’ve vibrated to the front of the sill and tipped forward releasing its entire contents all over my Cornell Plexi head and Marshall 2x12 cab. Amazingly the beer didn’t get into the circuit of the amp so it was fine, and I discovered that Marshall’s salt n pepper grille cloth is impervious to beer stains as it didn’t show a single mark once the beer had dried off!

This is (one of the reasons) exactly why amps should not have the controls on the top, nor the vent panels known as 'beer traps'. Controls should be on the front, and sufficient ventilation can be arranged through the back panel.

For some reason, after quite a long period where most amp designers got this right, there seems to be a fashion for a return to having the controls and vents on top. It's just asking for trouble.

Trude

I've posted this before in a similar thread, but it's probably worth another airing...

One of my favourite incidents happened during a Stones tribute gig at the Brook in Southampton a few years back. We're playing "She's a Rainbow". Lots of very intricate piano parts, so it's a real showcase for our keyboard guy.

He gets to the part where everyone else stops and he bashes out a solo instrumental verse. Right at that moment, his iPad slipped and somehow pressed a frigging DEMO button on the Roland stage piano. None of us knew that this thing even had a demo mode, but there it was. It kicked in with some crazy bossa-nova thing, complete with percussion, carnival whistles and all sorts. Much confusion all around. It was very loud. Keyboard guy had NO CLUE how to stop it.

I was laughing so hard I can't even remember what happened, except I think he pulled down his volume and rebooted the thing just to shut it up, as the rest of us crashed into a chorus and tried to carry on. I was almost hyperventilating whilst trying to do those creepy high backing vocals.

I don't think we've played that song since.

JMP220478

Band I’m in currently had an album launch gig at a local venue before I joined  - vocalist decides to reach up to a lighting rig n swing on it - luckily it didn’t collapse but he fell as he swung out on it - he breaks his fall with his arms but breaks both forearms - Adrenalin n alcohol masking the injuries - he jumps back up n finishes the set - relying on his mic stand as he was struggling to hold his mic . End of gig band are mingling, soaking up the plaudits , feedback etc - vocalist in cab to local AnE , emergency surgery follows, now has plates in both arms !  

Fez

Some belting stories here.
One from years ago first song big power chord and a dive bomb (Kahler trem - it was the 80's) bottom E string broke, switch to back up guitar for the rest of the set.

Our last bass player broke his A string no back up, no spare strings, fortunately it was our local so we had a break and my son nipped home and grabbed a bass so we could carry on.

At a gig in Worthing a pool table with contactless payment interfered with our current bass players wireless unit.  

icu81b4

We set fire to the drum riser! 

Welcome Inn - Blackpool, Had a large functions room with a proper stage (Curtains and everything) We had fire bombs that were controlled by a 12v Car battery that was next to the drum kit with wires leading to the four fire bombs at the front of the stage. 

The drum riser had some kind of silver paper wrapped around it fastened with gaffer tape and I don't think the connections on the battery were quite on right, when halfway through the set smoke and flames started to lick it's way up the drum kit, so we all stopped and started stamping on the flames, the other guitarist managed to get some of the gaffer tape stuck onto his trousers and his jeans caught fire. - eventually we put the fire out, but we were lucky we didn't set the curtains behind us on fire and destroy the building. 

The punters thought is was hilarious. Luckily the owner was in the main bar unaware of the mayhem. 

On another occasion I set fire to the singer. 

We were playing in a working mens club in Consett (North East England) and we had set up the fire bombs as usual with the switch safely tucked away near the drum kit, halfway through our second set I was prancing around like a loon trying to look like a rock guitarist when I landed on the switch that sets the bombs off, just as our lead singer was leaning over them. 
A flame shot up 6ft and burnt the side of his neck, (could have been a lot worse) So we stopped the show, but the 'Concert Secretary' said we hadn't finished our time slot, and if we stopped now we wouldn't get paid. 
The singer was taken to hospital and we carried on (me and the other guitarist singing) until we completed the set. 

Our mates in the audience said that we played better once the singer left as we were really angry and it showed in the performance!!!! 

Anyway, we stopped using fire bombs after that. 
  

CountryDave

Another was my mate in the two guitar band was playing a face melting solo, when he went quiet.  He starts stepping on his pedals, looking round at his amp in a panic, rest of band looking over at him wondering what he'd done.
I walked over and calmly flicked the switch on his Singlecut back to the bridge pickup.  He'd caught it with his right arm whist getting all fancy.  He never used the neck pickup and used the selector with the neck volume down as a mute.

stratman3142

I've mentioned this one before, but I think it's a candidate for this thread.

I once tuned my B string to a C, when silent tuning and not paying close enough attention to the note being diplayed on my tuner.

The rhythm part was power chords on the low strings. When it came to the solo, what I expected to hear wasn't what came out of my guitar. It was weird trying to resolve the lines I was playing. The gig was being recorded and it didn't sound as bad as I expected afterwards, and was like poor man's impersonation of Allan Holdsworth.

Lebarque

I remember at a @fastonebaz cock rock gig once, he came to the front of the stage and let rip with a fire-breathing solo.

A keen groupie leaned forward and undid his flies as he widdled away. In his scramble to do them up again, he caught his tallywacker in the zip and recoiled backwards into the bass player, who was creasing up.

The pair ended up on the floor, Baz still with half his mangled maggot hanging out. Five stitches and it's never pointed the same way since.

fastonebaz

Lebarque said:

I remember at a @fastonebaz cock rock gig once, he came to the front of the stage and let rip with a fire-breathing solo.

A keen groupie leaned forward and undid his flies as he widdled away. In his scramble to do them up again, he caught his tallywacker in the zip and recoiled backwards into the bass player, who was creasing up.

The pair ended up on the floor, Baz still with half his mangled maggot hanging out. Five stitches and it's never pointed the same way since.

I can confirm this did not happen in real life. I think it was one of @Lebarque s erotic dreams.