On stage Blunders!

getuhgrip

Bring Back Transfat!
I've been playing guitar off and on for about thirty years, but still commit flubs an fubaughs regularly. Has anyone ever seen someone "spaz out" on stage; hit a bad note, pluck an extra string, or just loose track of where they were? Ever seen a drummer launch a stick or miss time? :eek:
 
Keith Emerson! :eek:

I went to see ELP at the Garden State Arts Center, July 26th 1992, 8PM show. From the tenth row left/center I got to witness it:eek:

I always make a habit of sitting as close to Keith's right sholder as possible and train my binoculars on his hands untill my arms get tired and I have to rest.

During Lucky Man (a song I know how to play anyway) I was wathing the performance in toto. Keith had one hand on a modern Korg synth for the comps and was soloing on a vintage (couldn't tell you what it was, might have been a custom Oberheim) behind him with his right. He was facing center stage during perhaps one of the simplest solos in the ELP songbook.

Well, he misplaced his right hand right off, (this is during the portemento heavy start of the solo). So, his thumb and pinky were glissando-ing from C to C instead of D to D. His head whipped around so fast, I thought he'd given himself whiplash.

Anyway, he corrected as best he could, but there was no doubt that he had made a mistake in another otherwise flawless concert.
 
Ah yes, the curse! Happens to everybody. The real key seems to be giving no visual clue that it was a mistake, unless it's so obvious you can do nothing but shrug or make a face or laugh...

Last night I saw John Scofield. He was pushing himself a lot and there were a few moments of being on the edge and nearly losing control of his current idea, and he sure did hit a few honest-to-god clams where the note was obviously supposed to be accented and instead came out as a >tick<. He was grimacing and making faces at all these moments, but in a very fun way that was part of his personality and part of the performance.

I've seen/heard quite a few. Usually a momentary slip of the hand, a half-step off; usually the pros recover very gracefully. Every so often somebody hits a bad note that just hangs out there for all to see like somebody caught in flagrante delectico with the Vicar's wife...

Sometimes inebriation or other substance abuse is the cause. I once saw a fairly well-known guitarist who was so smashed he could not successfully tune his guitar, and actually asked the audience to help him with it. Even more out-of-tune than before, his band looking thoroughly embarrassed, even incensed, he proceeded to play the whole show. ANd you know what? The audience didn't seem to realize it! He got a big hand. When he came back for an encore, though, the band wouldn't come back with him, and he played an excruciating solo thing including singing and playing (out of tune in voice as well) the song "Bo Diddley."
 
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Just remembered another

The Rolling Stones

It was at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, November 27.

The song was Time Is On My Side

Mick was at the chorus and was sharing the vocals with the audience by alternating the microphone between us and him.

Mick: Time
Audience: Time
Mick: Time, is on my side

Get the idea;)

Anyway, Mick miscounted and said "Time" one too many times:p

He stops the band and says the following:
"The whole bloody world is going to hear me f--k that up, because tonight's show is being recorded for a live album"

To this the crowd goes absolutely bonkers. Well, needless to say there was lots of extra finger in the mouth whistleing and name shouting for the rest of the show.

I'm still waiting for this album Mick promised us:D
 
My Hero!

I remember my hero, David Lee Roth at the US festival oozing onto stage with a big smile and a bottle of Jose Quervo! ....Van Halen didn't play. :(
I don't know his name, but the singer for the "new" Bad Company
started the verse early.."Well, ya took my heart..." on "How about That". He looked confused for second but recovered. That made it onto the "What you hear is what you get" album.
 
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What about personal mistakes? (Yeah, I know they're rare) ;)

Since I used to improvise a lot of my solos, little blunders would happen. One thing I learned was to rythmically repeat the sour notes (if they were somewhat in key). It was like saying, "Listen to this eerie phrase I just made up.. Yeah, I meant to do that..."

Then there was another time that I leapt off the stage using a monitor as a catapult. I landed in a pool of beer. Legs kicked out and I landed right on my ass. All I could do was sit there and finish the song.

Funny thing was, some guys in the crowd came up after the show and commented on how cool it was that I sat there in the beer instead of scrambling up and acting like nothing happened. And I'm sitting there thinking, "I didn't have any choice..."



Me
 
Hmmm... I gottsta think. I used to be the king of playing a quiet clean channel passage that lead to a really bombastic crushing heavy part, and not stomping on the foot-pedal hard enough (or missing it completely) and going into this crushing heavy part on the clean channel.
My first bassist was the king of having his bass strap come unhooked and having to sit down on the floor to finish the song.
In my third band, the drummer had glaucoma and couldnt see very well in the dark... we had a well lighted practice space and everything was cool untill we hit the stage and the lighting guy let it get too dark... Then he would drop his sticks and not be able to find another one... Me and the bassist would just keep chugging along... sometimes for several seconds, while the drummer crawled around looking for a stick.
One show with Mofo Cult, I was having loogie trouble... so it was either spit the loogie into the crowd, on the stage (where I might slip on it), or get creative.... So I spit this loogie up over my back and it stuck to the ceiling... IT then dripped down onto Todds floor tom, and when he hit it.. SPLAT! It went all over him... He was very angry.
There was this show my first band played at UCA in Conway, AR... My singer accidentally knocked the bassist through a window on the side of the stage.
We were playing a showcase in Memphis (Crossroads) and the club we were playing had two stages... one upstairs and one downstairs... While we were doing soundcheck, there was a band playing upstairs... My bassist was playing a wireless and was just getting hooked up and turned on. When he cranked up his amp, another bassist was coming through his rig. (The guy upstairs happened to be using the same wireless) so Pat starts playing all of this goofy shit and the bassist upstairs fucks up and just stops... I'd like to think we might have cost them a record deal.
Im sure more wiill come to me...
 
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