What's the worst thing that has ever happened to you when playing a live show?

chipped a tooth on a mic.

cut my knuckles playing an acoustic and didn't notice until the blood got sticky. looked worse than it was.

played "fuckin' up" without realizing the speakers to the street from the bar were on. not a big deal.

bombed a 7am television appearance.

generally fucked up half the songs i tried to play.

good times.

I hate to admit this because it makes me feel like a real dumb-ass (especially since it was my 1st time playing on the Lollapalooza Tour).
I got a little crazy before one of the shows (I don't recommend mixing Patrone & Jose Cuervo - Remember, tequila is NOT your friend before a show). Anyhow, I actually wound up falling off the main stage while playing (this was during the show '03 Lollapalooza Tour).

I think the crowd thought I was attempting to do a stage dive (NOT REALLY). I almost lost my Les Paul to the crowd (luckily the gods of rock smiled on me, and I only lost my hat). I don't recommend this to anyone - kids, don't drink and play Luckily I only had to replace one of my pretzeled klulson tuners.

Honestly, breaking strings, having to switch out guitars, having bad patch cables, instrument cables, and mic cables, blown amp tubes and fuses, broken drum heads and drum sticks, or having effects pedal mishaps are all fairly typical problems for the active musician (especially on tour).
Seems like something along these lines happens every few gigs - if not to me or someone in my band, then one of the other bands.
Cheers . . .

- Ian C.T. vom Saal

Once in 1999 me and my band mates were too stoned to play...actually it was really fun...seeing all those faces that looks like "what the hell are they playing??"

Getting hit in the face with a cymbal.. ouch

bharQ wrote:

Getting hit in the face with a cymbal.. ouch

DAMN!! OUCH!!




Vedderlution, yes ALWAYS have a back up guitar! *puff* ..sorry for yelling

The electricity fell out when we plugged in the last amplifier.......

Going on out of tune...

ive only had one mishap, luckily not on stage:
so, it was about 1 year and 1 month ago, and i just started a new band. we were about halfway through our first parctice in the drummers basement, when i backed up really fast, slammed my back into his ride symbol, which caused me to get spooked and jump side ways. no biggie right? well his basement was very small, and at first i laughed for a second, than i turned my hear. my guitar's neck was about 6 inches into the drywall! luckily, i only needed a new string tree and 2 new tuners.
long story short, we're not a band anymore. for some reason his mom didnt like that i put a hole in their wall:)


True story too

i've only played maybe 20 shows in my life to varying size audiences, with many different groups and many different styles. I can pretty honestly say I'll never play a show that i would be happy with musically, but that after a couple weeks cooldown time, i can live with anything and chalk it up to life experience. That being said .....

There was this one show.
It was a 6 or seven piece ROck/Industrial band (not my cup of beer/tea). I was the only guitar player, and besides the singer/writer, the only one who had any right being in a band. This band had: 1 drummer. 1 drummer Electric drumset. 1 Dat machine playing whole song loops. 1 keyboard playing white noise. then bass and guitar also. The bass player and both drummers were unable to play anything remotely in time with the Loops which dominated the mix.

On the positive side, between me and the singer, their was enough pure intensity and hatred being poured at the audience, that we sorta of scared people into paying attention. I was used to all of this by the time we played our third or fourth show.

the drummer playing the real set got extremely stoned, and was about 40 clicks tempo behind the loops, the electric set drummer had taken 35 minutes trying to get any sound out of his kit besides a snare click, and me and the singer had had enough.

Up on the drum riser, he was sort of screaming part of a song into my face, and sorta pushed the shit out of me, leaving an incredibly long black streak down the neck of my guitar (a rental). So i swung my guitar at his face, hit the mic into his face and sent him off the riser.

Threw the guitar ar the back wall with two songs left.
But like i said, in retrospect, it was sorta fun.

tuner vibrated off my amp and fell into my bar glass sized jack and coke. had to get another jack and coke.