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

bloodandtears · September 2023

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

2a) Line 6 Flextone II HD stopped working, had to play the rest of the gig with a POD v2 Bean

2b) Line 6 PD HD stopped working, had to play the rest of the gig with a POD v2 Bean

3) At St Annes festival 2 weeks ago, raised stage, large open sided marquee, seats to rear affair.. a cyclist pushed their bike across the dance floor to take a short cut!!
4) Last Friday a fella came up mid-song and asked us to stop playing cos the boxing is on!!

ICBM · September 2023

maltingsaudio said:

I was taking part in an acoustic session at a local pub, and the bloke playing his double bass had the headstock fall off mid song. No coming back from that one!

Was it a Gibson?

DefaultM · September 2023

Same time I played the tent in the field, we got there to set up in the morning and the farmer had told us that when we arrived later we shouldn't drive on a certain bit of grass or the cars would get stuck in the mud.
I came back later and couldn't remember where he'd said not to drive, but soon realised when my car was stuck in the mud.
We couldn't get it out so I had to carry all my gear across the field, find the farmer and he pulled it out with his tractor a few hours later.

digitalkettle · September 2023

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?

bloodandtears · September 2023

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..

Bod · September 2023

On Saturday night, my wireless pack flew off my strap, disconnected from its cable and just disappeared - nowhere to be seen. I quickly grabbed the output from my board, adjusted the amp and carried on. I found it a couple of songs later in a gap between the stage and the wall.

Bod · September 2023

Same gig. A male and female couple on the dancefloor started kicking each other. They were laughing initally and it was reasonably gentle but quickly escalated, with them taking full swipes at each other. It was utterly bizarre. It ended with the bloke stumbling backwards against the low stage and falling into the guitarist's mic stand kncking it over and sending his mounted iPad flying and narrowly missing his Helix. Mic stand leg completely broke off. She was later seen in tears outside.

digitalkettle · September 2023

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?

guitarmangler · September 2023

I played bass in a jazz band outside in a posh hotel garden. Sitting on top of the amp and playing not notching that half of the amp started gradually sinking into the grass. At some point I came unbalanced and and toppled off, almost, but was saved by the keyboard player (mid song, impressive). Phew! Onto the next song quick! All wrong notes. Can’t make it sound any good. Angry keyboard player shouting changes at me. Stop the song. Find out that he’s whacked the transpose button on his keyboard.
I’ve got a few involving drummers, alcohol and falling off stools. But, haven’t we all…

Bod · September 2023

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.

stratman3142 · September 2023

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 · September 2023

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 · September 2023

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 · September 2023

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 · September 2023

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 · September 2023

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 · September 2023

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 · September 2023

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 · September 2023

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 · September 2023

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 · September 2023

My favourite youtube fail:

https://youtu.be/3O72lItS4OA?t=68

Paul_C · September 2023

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 · October 2023

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 · October 2023

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 · October 2023

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 · October 2023

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 · October 2023

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 · October 2023

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 · October 2023

my wizard hat fell off

CountryDave · October 2023

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.

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

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