Embarrassing Moments

[Olly]

I have heard a few stories from people where they had been playing live and something had gone wrong.

I went to this very small gig/guitar clinic with Paul Gilbert. He told of a story where he was opening up for, I believe, Aerosmith. He had a drill with picks attached that he could do some spectacularly fast picking.

As he came out he raised the drill and pressed the trigger. It immediately got caught and tangled with his (at the time) long hair. He said he had to dive behind the amps while frantically trying to untangle himself. Luckily someone was there that put the drill in reverse and freed him. Then it was back to the gig!

Has anything like this ever happened to you? Tell us the story

[mikeyBoab]

Not quite as bad as that . . .

I was in a bar at New Years, many moons ago. There was a live band playing and being rather shit-faced, I asked the guitarist if I could have a shot of his guitar. For some reason he handed it to me. For some other reason, which will never be known to the universe, I started playing the intro to "Smoke on the Water". Then the rest of the band joined in and the crowd starting cheering and dancing.

Only problem is, I only know the intro to "Smoke on the Water". So as the intro ended, I had no choice but to stop and hand the guitar back and just walk away like a complete t**t. Everyone was staring at me.

To this day I can't listen to the song without cringing.

[Olly]

That is a truly brilliant tale and I am very glad I opened this thread!

Well done you! That is a true guitarist - only learning the intros!

[Solarflares]

True stories.

I had a bad cold for a while. Over the worst, but still bunged up.
We had a duo gig in Southend Social Club on a Sunday night.
Loads of grannies and oldies, all very polite.
Tiny stage with a pelmet running around the front.
3 songs in, and I looked up, only to see about 15 balloons which had deflated almost fully, but now looked like pendulous tits with comical teats!
I looked at the guitar player then looked up again. He started giggling, and that was it.
I snorted cause I was trying not to laugh, and a cupful of green slime shot out of my nose, and lodged itself all over my bass pickups and my right hand. Lifting the hand to shake it off, just stretched a foot long slime thread over the rest of the scratchplate. People were looking on in horror, and we soldiered on through the next 9 songs, during which I found that I’d actually pissed myself a bit as well.
As if the green/white scratchplate wasn’t bad enough, I now had a rather obvious dark stain running down the left leg of my faded jeans.

[Olly]

Now that is a tale and a half

Did you get asked back for future gigs??

[Solarflares]

Now that is a tale and a half

Did you get asked back for future gigs??

Well, I’d like to say we did a lucrative world tour of social clubs - sponsored by Vicks Sinex, Kleenex, and Tena for Men.
But sadly not. Tena hadn’t been invented yet, and I’m not going on-stage with bulky pee-pants - even if Pampers did offer all that money.