Author Topic: Your most embarrassing moment on stage (Read 203 times)

john_judge · « **on:** May 06, 2009, 09:03:22 AM »

The year was 1979 in New york, my manager Jerry hooked me up with a fast gig very Fast, Patti smith was scheduled to play CBGB's the infamous New York club in the Bowery but their Bassist Tony Shanahan had come down with an illness and was going to be laid up for about a week or two, so they were looking for someone to fill in so they wouldn't have to break Contract, So I rehearsed the gig, learned the material in a week and was going to perform that night with the doubleneck Alembic at CBGB's infamous Punk bar.
For those of you that may not know , CBGB's was where a lot of bands back in the day got there start, Talking heads, Ramones, Joan Jett, Blondie Etcc...it was considered the Armpit of all clubs, Nasty stage, nasty bathroom, but everyone went there and played there one time or another. This was to be my first performance there.
Well to make a long story short, I pulled it off Ok, and then came the cheers for one more song, which was to be, Because the Night which Patti wrote with Bruce Springsteen..well it started out fine and when drummer Jay Dee hit his cymbal crash he knocked it over stand and all, towards me and I jumped away to avoid the Alembic from getting hit.
the roadie picked up the cymbal while we all kept playing, which a moment later I noticed that my Bass was not working.

After looking at the amp and checking all the knobs, I looked down and it was then that I noticed that when the cymbal fell it cut my cord to the power supply in half, I tried to get the roadies attention but with no success, and people where watching me play starring at the doubleneck, so I took a moment and with a hand I reached down and pulled up the cord about 4 feet long where it was cut and stuffed it in my pocket to try and hide it from the crowds view.
Well at the end of the song this guy came up to me by the stage and said he loved the tones of my Bass all night long and asked me how did I get such a errie tone in that Last song so different from the rest of the night...and he thought it was very electricfied looking and cool that I ran my cable through my pants and down my leg so I could feel the energy of power and that was far out...Go Figure!..Drugs back then were very powerful...Needless to say the band never knew until after I told them, the energy levels were loud and high! LOL
anyway that was by far my most embarrassing moment 1979

bsee · « **Reply #1 on:** May 06, 2009, 09:42:16 AM »

A friend that I had been working with for ten years asked me to fill in with his band. They were a bunch of guys in their 50s and their bass player had moved away. There were a couple old pros, a great guitarist and one guy with folk guitar skills who wanted to be a rocker. Overall, it wasn't a great scene, but I told him I'd play with them until they located another permanent member. A year or so later at a gig, these guys go to start a song. The two guitar players start it together with the drummer and then the sax comes in after eight bars. Four bars later, everything stops. The guitarists had simultaneously started the tune a full step flat, so the sax coming in just created a hellish mess and these guys couldn't recover. I'm not sure they even knew what was wrong until after they stopped.

Admittedly, it wasn't my error that resulted in the embarrassment, but I am fortunate that it has been the most embarrassing thing to happen to me on stage while playing. I was trying to crawl behind my amp at the time. A very difficult task for a 250 pound bass player using a Baby Blue II for a low volume gazebo gig.

Honorable mention, because it was during a break, goes to the time Lisa found an inchworm in the salad that came with her chicken finger dinner. As we came off for a break, she comes running over with the plate to show me and trips on the step up to the stage sending sweet and sour sauce all over everything.

A second honorable mention goes to the night I was running the vocal PA for a small public park show and couldn't get the feedback to go away. Three songs and much ear pain later, I realized that the low cuts weren't activated and the drums were being picked up as they reverberated off the granite wall we had as a backdrop. I felt like an idiot. Embarrassing to inflict that on the audience, and for my bandmates to see my screw-up.

-bob

john_judge · « **Reply #2 on:** May 06, 2009, 09:58:37 AM »

Gee Bob and I thought I had it Bad! sounds like Reality T.V. live on Bob's stage, or there is a more simple way to sum it up in one word....
DOMINOS !!!

olieoliver · « **Reply #3 on:** May 06, 2009, 10:10:31 AM »

I've had that same thing happen John except the cymbal came off the stand and severed my cable.

My most embarrasing moment actually happened backstage. We were opening a show for Omar and the Howlers in Dallas. We had just hired a new guitarist a few weeks before. A young kid, 17 or 18, but a smoker on guitar. Were all hanging out in our dressing room and John, our lead singer, ask where Jeff (the new guitarist) is. Well upon looking for him we find him in Omars dressing room with about 3 of his buddies. And they had consumed all of Omars food and drinks the venue had provided for Omar.
Omar was real cool about it and laughed it off but man did I feel small.

On sad note, the same venue had us booked to open for Stevie Ray in Oct. of 1990.

OO

bsee · « **Reply #4 on:** May 06, 2009, 10:19:23 AM »

I suppose I was lucky in that we were only performing for about 150 people at the time, but most of them knew the guys who screwed up. I'm sure you had a much larger audience than that, John, but it would seem like most of them had no idea that anything was wrong. It's not like either one of us was truly at fault for the circumstances, though I will take some blame for stepping on stage with a bunch of hackers...

artswork99 · « **Reply #5 on:** May 06, 2009, 10:21:29 AM »

Embarrassing yet funny!

About the same time, some 30 years ago, I was playing at Joe's Bar in Wheeling, West Virginia for a biker/college crowd outside of Pittsburgh (hometown) and a entourage of our singers friends and relatives showed up to see her band. Aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends were all in attendance... turns out that night was also an advertised wet t-shirt contest that we knew nothing about and the whole family was initiated. It was very embarrassing at the same time as being quite funny.

artswork99 · « **Reply #6 on:** May 06, 2009, 10:22:40 AM »

Well, I guess fun for those of us not related... embarrassing for our singer...

BTW, I just remembered that the guitarist was the brother of the singer... I imagine there was more embarassment than I recall for them.

(Message edited by artswork99 on May 06, 2009)

lbpesq · « **Reply #7 on:** May 06, 2009, 10:25:25 AM »

Not exactly the typical music stories around here, but here goes two of 'em:

I was about 12 or 13 in summer camp (Camp Willoway in Winterdale, PA, near Hancock, NY). We were putting on a prodution of The Pajama Game a broadway musical that originally starred Bonnie Raitt's father. I was playing Hienz At one point, Hienz is ordered by his boss to drop your pants. I had on some oversize polka dotted boxers. This as about the time that flashcubes had just come out. (For the younger set, cameras originally had flashbulbs that had to be changed for each picture. Then they came out with flashcubes which had four built in bulbs, one on each of the four sides of the cube. As you took each picure, the cube rotated 90 degrees to the next bulb, so you could take four pics before you had to change bulbs.) Anyway, as soon as I dropped my pants the entire auditorium was filled with flashing cubes. I was quite embarrassed.

Many years later, I was appearing in a college production of An Italian Straw Hat. I had a scene where I was supposed to be drunk and say the line you want me to sit at the piano, sure, I'll sit at the piano. Just before the dress rehearsal (in front of an audience of visiting High School students), the director told me that I wasn't playing it drunk enough and to look more drunk. Well, we get to my line and, trying to appear more drunk, I slur my words, proclaiming (without realizing it) You want me to shit at the piano, sure, I'll shit at the piano. With the High School Audience, it brought the house down. The director, however, was not amused.

Bill, tgo

lbpesq · « **Reply #8 on:** May 06, 2009, 10:41:22 AM »

And then there was the time we were about to start playing and our fiddle player (classically trained, very inexperienced in band situations - IIRC this was his first or second gig with us) wasn't getting any sound. As the crowd watched, he checked his rig, wires, etc. The sound guy came on stage and started going over all the wires, connections etc. After about a LONG 5-10 minutes, I noticed that the fiddle player hadn't plugged his wireless unit into his fiddle!

Bill, tgo

57basstra · « **Reply #9 on:** May 06, 2009, 11:10:27 AM »

Bill that was really funny. It got an out loud laugh from me.....

thanks...these are great, guys!

kenbass4 · « **Reply #10 on:** May 06, 2009, 12:09:15 PM »

OK, here goes...

My first paid gig, in the mid 80's at a place the SF Bay Area folks will remember, the Mabuhai Gardens on Broadway, my band was a 3 piece Art rock power trio, and they booked us on their New Wave Thursday gig. Ok, we'll start mellow and build up. We get to the club thinking that since we're new, we'll go firat. Nope, this band Haas Balluva DEMANDED that they go first. They outnumbered us 3 to 1, so OK (again). The opening line to their first song was Something's wrong, and We are IT, our music sells but sounds like Sh@% We had 20 people there to see us, and you could see their jaws dropping as their set progressed into Disease of the future.

Then our set started, and as the lead singer/guitarist stepped up to the mic, a hugh blue bolt of electricity jumps from the mic to his mouth, causing a 30 second delay for the first verse. After that, the show improved dramatically...

Ken (TEO)

hydrargyrum · « **Reply #11 on:** May 06, 2009, 02:47:44 PM »

When I was about 14 I was playing a local dance. I had changed strings earlier that day, and was using my tuner before we began our first song. Little did I realize that I had accidentally bumped a transpose button, and I ended up tuning the guitar about a quarter of a step from standard. Needless to say, we had a bit of a false start when we hit the first chords, followed by some rapid retuning mid-song on my part. Definitely embarrassing.

2400wattman · « **Reply #12 on:** May 06, 2009, 04:05:38 PM »

I'm embarrassed every night.......I wear women's clothing!!

jedisan · « **Reply #13 on:** May 06, 2009, 04:43:08 PM »

Ok Adam... do tell please. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

mike1762 · « **Reply #14 on:** May 06, 2009, 05:30:54 PM »

I never played in an intoxicated state except for 1 occasion early in my music career. A buddy of mine procured some thai-stick AND a new liquor store had opened in the town we were playing. A big joint and a 5th of Canadian Whiskey later... the next thing I remember we were loading out. I have NO memory of the gig, but my PARENTS (I was still in High School) have it nicely documented with photos. Too stoned to be embarrassed at the time, but not now. I can only imagine what I sounded like.