Most Embarrassing Stage Moments

@Nikki Sunrise 5848 wrote:

Some years ago when I was on stage with my band, we played a soft acoustic song with a piano/vocals intro. Everything sounded fine, but when the rest of the band joined, suddenly everything was out of tune and we had to stop! The keyboard-player had accidently detuned his piano with the pitch-wheel… so he (and thus the singer too) was a quarter tone to high…

Hey NikkiSunrise, 🙂

You reminded me of a good one related to a keyboard’s “pitch-wheel!”

Several years ago (maybe 6 years ago) one of my cover-bands was doing a gig at this “biker-bar” up at Hampton Beach, (Hampton, New Hampshire) and we were doing the Linkin Park song “In The End.” So it’s a really easy song on guitar (ya know, drop-tuned & 1-finger power chord progressions, loaded with challenging “WHOLE-NOTES!” – lol!) Anyways, I used to play any simple keyboard parts as well, because our lead singer played some rhythm guitar as well. So for those who don’t know the song, there’s a simple little piano melody.motif that is stated in the Intro, and then it’s re-stated during the Outro. So they get in and out of the song the same way. (There are slight differences like a ritard in the Outro, but it’s about the same!) So all went well with my big “piano” Intro, and then the meat of the song went fine on guitar (very easy!) However, when I went to play the Outro piano figure, somehow I had “hit” the jog/pitch-wheel! Only instead of the pitch-wheel being assigned to pitch (which in retrospect, would’ve been worse!) the pitch-wheel wass assigned to VIBRATO! So here go, ready for my big, dramatic, tender “piano” Outro, and instead of my nice smooth grand piano sample, I get the Zakk Wylde-Approved-CRAZY-VIBRATO! instead!!! It was pretty funny! (albeit embarassing as hell!!!) 😮

One more embarassing stage moment (by another band-member!)

The singer (in that same cover band from above!) use to use a Floor-FX Processor for a few spots in our sets where he wanted to bring in a vocal effect (usually like a distorted “Trent Reznor-Approved” vocal effect, or some exaggerated “echo/delay” effect that was appropriate for the cover song that we were playing.) This was used at small gigs where we mixed ourselves from the stage, as opposed to having a FOH (front-of-house) sound-engineer. Anyways, one night, we’re groovin’ on Rage Against The Machine’s cover of “Renegades of Funk,” when our singer (Nelson was his name) goes to step on his Zach De La Roche-Type of vocal effect (probably a notch-filter with a bit of distortion.) Anyways, he steps on a preset and lays into his “screaming” chorus vocal: “We’re The Renegades of Funk, The Renegades of Funk!” Only instead of getting his desired notch-filter effect, Nelson stepped on some weird preset that created a “fast-vibrato with octave-up pitch transpose!!!” So he’s supposed to sound all “pissed-off” and “rebel-like,” and instead it came out sounding like “Alvin & The Chipmunks singing through a window-fan!!!” When I tell you EVERY guy in the band was hysterical, I mean it! We couldn’t even play! We were screwing up from laughing so hard! That was without a doubt the hardest I’ve ever laughed with a guitar in my hands! CLASSIC! You can’t plan moments THAT funny! (I’m chuckling just thinking about it!!!) 😀

~Bill Meehan~

@Sealer 5875 wrote:

I remember at some point when I was in a school like cover band project, we had a gig in our school with some other schools music classes as well. So they all came and played, and we were ending the concert. Everything went really good, so we´ve got overconfident. At some point I was singing the classic Symphony of Destruction by Megadeth. In the middle of the verse I tried to do the “I´m so tough” trick with putting your foot on the loudspeaker for the stage… and it almost fell down off stage, on the public! I was SO embarassed! 😉

lol man that sure was embarrasing xD 😛

@Sean Conklin 5847 wrote:

We’ve all had them! Share your stories.

I have 3 moments that come to my mind right off the bat…

1. When I was first starting out on guitar I played in my church’s worship band. One night I was playing and all was well, then TWANG, a string brakes in the middle of a song. Sounded horrible, and made the rest of the strings go out of tune. So I kneel down while everyone keeps playing and try to tune the rest of the strings with a multi-fx pedal. Unfortunately I couldn’t tune without having the volume up on my guitar. (Didn’t know anything about the pedal they hooked me up with so I didn’t know how to mute the output.) So I wasn’t about to tune the guitar for all to hear during a song haha.

Then I remember I had a backup guitar in the room on the side of the stage, so while everyone was still playing, I walked across the stage into the room, grabbed my backup then came back out. Little did I know, someone had messed around with that guitar before the service started, and it was completely out of tune! But I was oblivious to that, so I plugged it and started playing, and it sounded like total crap. After that I just gave up and decided not to embarass myself further so I just sat there.

2. Not long after the above incident, another thing happened at church. I was playing acoustic, and me and an electric guitarist had a capo on the 3rd fret for one song. The song after that I was supposed to play a lengthy acoustic intro, but I was supposed to take the capo off. But I totally forgot to take it off! So next thing I know I’m playing this really pretty intro, and it sounded great. But then the band starts in at a completely different key than me. It was so bad sounding we all just stopped mid song. I then realized I forgot to take the capo off, so I took it off and all went fine. The funny thing was, after the service everyone thought it was the electric guitarist’s fault instead of me haha.

3. This last one was definitely the most embarrassing. I played the National Anthem at one of my high school rallies, and it didn’t go too hot. I remember I made a really cool rendition for it with lots of van halen-ish stuff going on with sampler pedal harmonies. There were at least a thousand people there.

Anyway, so the r.o.t.c. guys walk to the middle of the gym with the flag, and everyone stands for the anthem. I begin playing it and all is well. But after I play the first part, I looked up at the crowd during a slight pause in the piece. Unfortunately, when I looked up the r.o.t.c. guys interpreted that to mean that I was done, but I wasn’t even close to being done! Yet they began walking off the court and people started sitting down, but I just kept playing because I wasn’t finished lol. But then chaos insued. People were walking around all over the place, some were trying to listen to me play, others were just busting up laughing, and others were moving around preparing for the next bit in the rally. So yeah, that was quite embarrassing!

Good times. 😀

Anyone else have any stories?

Oh man, hilarious 😛 , but can someone tell me what r.o.t.c is….? 😮

@Sean Conklin 5932 wrote:

As far as I know, ROTC is kind of a pre-army program. Not sure exactly what it entails but I know a lot of people who were in the rotc went to be in the military. But yeah, at that rally they were the ones who held up the flags.

oh i see, thanks 😀

😀 @Sean Conklin 5932 wrote:

As far as I know, ROTC is kind of a pre-army program. Not sure exactly what it entails but I know a lot of people who were in the rotc went to be in the military. But yeah, at that rally they were the ones who held up the flags.

Hey Guys, 🙂

I think (not sure though? :confused: that R.O.T.C. stands for “Reserve Officer Training Corps.”

~Bill Meehan~ 😀