Guitar Tricks - bad performance experiences

iiholly

06-04-2004, 09:37 PM

Hmm... well this is a thread I'd like to be dedicated to mistakes and such in your guys' performances. I had one tonight... sort of.

My band was playing for this sort of festival thing. The person who set up the order decided it'd be cool to have me perform my Jethro Tull "Wondering Alloud" solo.. thing afterwards. Our band did awesome, but it was a very rockin' song. So when I went up to perform my little acoustic piece, even though I did awesome and made not one mistake, not that many paid attention
It was hard going to a whole bunch of people clapping after one performance, to just a handful of people knowing you're finished and clapping. And to top it off some creepy guy asked for my phone number
:( .

Tele Master

06-06-2004, 04:33 PM

My band had 3 people at our second show and about 70 at the first. Talk about dissapointment.

iamthe_eggman

06-07-2004, 09:49 AM

And to top it off some creepy guy asked for my phone number.

Hey! I did ask nicely.

Dr_simon

06-07-2004, 09:53 AM

My wannabe HM high-school band once played as a support to a jumble sale.

90% of the audience were over 60.

It was not a success !

Jolly McJollyson

06-07-2004, 10:12 AM

Hey! I did ask nicely.

Yes, but it was the fact that you weren't wearing any pants that tipped her off, not your voice.

Jolly McJollyson

06-07-2004, 10:16 AM

Anyhow, My rhythm guitarist and I have our first gig with a new drummer soon, so some stories will be coming soon! Although we have written some (IMO) kickass songs.

iamthe_eggman

06-07-2004, 11:52 AM

Yes, but it was the fact that you weren't wearing any pants that tipped her off, not your voice.

Crap! I knew Mother was right about not wearing pants creeping girls out!

iiholly

06-07-2004, 03:24 PM

Anyhow, My rhythm guitarist and I have our first gig with a new drummer soon, so some stories will be coming soon! Although we have written some (IMO) kickass songs.
Hopefull they won't be bad stories.

Eggman... I think this guy may have had even you beat, and he had pants. So it was some other kick as guitarrist/singer you asked her phone number.

joe scalene

06-08-2004, 07:55 PM

My first performance was very devastating..

because our vocalist sucks most people were shouting "what the f*ck is that?!"

"go home!!!"

I never performed ever again..

iiholly

06-08-2004, 09:01 PM

Well that really is horrible...

Lordathestrings

06-08-2004, 09:26 PM

Crap! I knew Mother was right about not wearing pants creeping girls out!Well, that and tucking your tallywhacker into your sock.

Dr_simon

06-08-2004, 10:02 PM

or your sock into your tallywhacker !!!! Yeah !

I saw Spinal Tap go through airport security !

Jamiephofe

06-09-2004, 12:25 AM

I haven't had any really bad experiences... the most recent gig I did had a few funny ones though. For a start I managed to drop my plectrum while just playing some easy powerchord riff. I just look down on the floor at the plectrum in shock thinking "how the f**k did I drop that?". A drummer at the same gig also fell off the stage when he was coming off. To top it all off a bassist plugged into my flextone 3...... luckily it still works fine, I was pretty pissed off though, suprised he didn't blow it.

Oh, and if anyone has heard "Dazed and confused" by Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page does a guitar solo with a violin bow.... another guy at the gig who was playing that song managed to keep the solo going for 30 minutes. :eek:

It was good until it got past about 6 minutes, then the audience just wanted him to get the hell off. The band were supposed to wait for a signal to come back on stage and play the rest of the song, in the end they just came back on and forced him to finish the solo. :D

- J

iamthe_eggman

06-09-2004, 08:38 AM

Oh, and if anyone has heard "Dazed and confused" by Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page does a guitar solo with a violin bow.... another guy at the gig who was playing that song managed to keep the solo going for 30 minutes. :eek:

Lead-who???

HDJ

06-09-2004, 11:50 AM

Our worst performance was around 1994. In the middle of a song, our vocalist decided to hang upside down from the rafters in the club we were playing. He got his foot stuck and could not get down. It took about 15 minutes of prying to get his foot loose from the rafters.....Needless to say, we never played that club again.

iiholly

06-09-2004, 05:37 PM

You guys can't ever let anything go... but the sarcasm is pretty amusing most of the time. Unless it involves me, then I won't to go cry in a corner. :(

Andrew Sa

06-11-2004, 08:28 AM

yes I think we can safely assume that no pants, tallywackers and socks do not mix well at gigs.
The absolute worst gigging experience has to be forgetting to tune your axe between songs (thats why its nice to have two guitars on stage, with dif tuning) or having a pedal mess up on stage...always sucks

guitarfreak141

07-01-2004, 01:57 AM

im 12 years old and my band had my first gig at the end of they year talent show. we had fog machines a strobe,laser light show, and stage lights. i had a slow solo in the beginning and i froze on stage and forgot it but every1 cheered like crazy,hey its middle skool, but it wasnt a scared stage freeze it was more like i felt incredibly good and i luvd the feeling of being up there with every1 cheering. then we kept going and did awsum it felt soooooooo good to be up on stage i cant even explain. im glad i got into music. then the basists amp went out for a sec but it turnd out ok. ill definetely be performing agen.

hairbndrckr

07-22-2004, 09:05 PM

My worst (and funniest) was my high school band. I got suspended from school after a talent show that had went horribly wrong for me... I don't know why they had a problem with the performance....something about kneeling on the judge's table in front of the pretty teacher with my guitar between my legs giving the strings the "stroke"... maybe it could have been my facial expression that got me in trouble for that one, but hey! I saw Steve Vai do it on MTV, so I blamed MTV for it....

I didn't care though, I got one hell of a standing ovation for having the "testicular fortitude" to do it in the first place....

nsx_swami

07-23-2004, 11:05 AM

My worst and best experience happened at the same time. I was playing a small gig and our singer used to keep a glass of water with cough drops melting in it on the stage at his feet. It's supposed to really help loosen the vocal cords but it also makes for a literal pain in the butt when you trip over it. I was goofing around making my way around the stage and stepped backwards onto the glass. Next thing i know i was on my back mid song. Rather then make it worst, I just finished the song laying on the floor but the crowd loved it. A few people thought that I was showing off and did it on purpose, little did they know I was limping around for the next few days.

Lordathestrings

07-23-2004, 12:13 PM

There have been times when I strode out of the venue feeling like the King Of The World... other times... like the fall of 1970...

The second gig I ever played was the Fall Fair at the small town I grew up in. At night, of course... Outdoors, don'cha know... in the *&#%'n rain!!! :rolleyes:

This wasn't some high-dollar extravaganza. We were on a bare wooden platform without any sort of a canopy. The stage got seriously slippery in the wet, and the only one who didn't flirt with death by electrocution was the drummer.

The climax of the evening was when I did a big 'Pete Townsend' windmill, lost my footing, and did the splits into a puddle. :eek:

Other tales of woe can be found here (http://www.guitartricks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6855).

spanky10940

07-23-2004, 02:43 PM

we did an acoustic set about 5 weeks ago of my buddys original songs. well, we handn't rehearsed them and I kept going to G instead of F#....

after the 6th time of trying to figure out what was wrong we realized that even if we could do it right now, the audience was NOT interested in listening to us...

one worse, we were the first act up and we stayed the whole night with whispers of "those are the guys that sucked" going on as we walked by.. quite the humbling feeling.. (disappeared after the 5th beer tho! :D )

Lordathestrings

07-23-2004, 03:06 PM

... and we stayed the whole night with whispers of "those are the guys that sucked" going on as we walked by.. quite the humbling feeling...Hey, at least you could walk! :o

It's all good. Or at least it seems that way, if it's far enough in the past. :)

spanky10940

07-23-2004, 03:10 PM

eh - what are you really gonna do, ya know? It happened, Keith and I laughed it off. We're not professionals, we don't pretend to be... I just love to play and have a good time.
Besides, things like that are bound to happen, it's how you handle yourself afterwords that makes ALL the difference...

(seeing as how we sucked so badly, if I wasn't married, I'd have been "handling" myself that night! LOL!!!)

kingdavid

07-24-2004, 06:22 AM

...(seeing as how we sucked so badly, if I wasn't married, I'd have been "handling" myself that night! LOL!!!)
It figures. :D
Seriously though, in as much as you simply want to play and have a good time, you should take yourselves seriously enough to want to make your performances presentable, and the only way to do that is have a reasonable amount of practice.
Whether you'll be playing at a 3000+ capacity gig, or playing for your mom's best friend, it oughta be good.

wuuuaaaah

07-25-2004, 05:07 PM

Oh, dear, let me tell you about mine...hehe.
I was in my schools talent show this past year and it was just me, I didn't even know what I was gonna play. I just played. Well, the school auditorium was packed and it wasn't packed with the right kinbd of audience...no offense but they were all black and didn't care to hear me on guitar, but i figured thats ok. I went out and stated playing some solo and they were actually cheering, I just went up there and jammed as if I was at home, i started loosening up and decided to play behind my head, hehe, and playing behind my back, since it wasn't nothing new to me pulled my guitar back around unstrapped it and dropped it(purposely) face down and walked off stage. It was pretty fun, i didn't worry and just went up there and had fun and the impossible audience(i thought it was gonna be) liked it. I won 6th place, outta 30 something things, the first place to not got a prize, lol. Thats mine.

iiholly

07-25-2004, 09:17 PM

I'm proud.

wuuuaaaah

07-30-2004, 12:03 PM