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what has been your worst live performance?

Alan Celis

Free Bird Player
Nov 11, 2019
112
0
ill start, i was playing cliffs of dover and when i started i had my wah accidentally activated and didnt realize i was on a high gain preset so yeah( high gain+wah activated at max+cliffs of dover dont mix at all) so i realized and i turned off the wah midsong but the damage had already been done hahaha and i totally screwed up the last part of the song, but in a positive note i nailed that months later live
And another time i forgot about the half of the last chorus on nightmare and just stood still awkwarldly while the drummer continued (he was the only one that didnt forget)
 

Lauren Morales

New Student
Nov 11, 2019
84
0
There was one time when I was playing and I lost sound completely. In between songs I checked my connections and everything was connected. The tech people and I could not figure out what was wrong. luckily I had another guitarist to back me up, but it was a bad show altogether.
 
J

Jak Angelescu

Guest
HAHA!! Oh Alan that’s gotta suck! The only thing bad I’ve ever had happen to me at any type of performance was when I was playing a Fourth of July festival and because it was soooo damn humid, any amount of pressure to my strings made my fingers refuse to slide. You think it would be the opposite. But I played so many bad chords and notes I can’t even recall!
 

Ed Seith

Supreme Galactic Overlord
Staff member
Legend+
  • Nov 11, 2019
    3,882
    15
    6,603
    54
    Marana, AZ USA
    soundcloud.com
    35
    Had a gig on like a Wednesday night in northern New Jersey in the mid 90s. At the time, I was an industrial glazier (glass work), so I got cut a lot. This day, I’d gotten what didn’t seem like all that bad a cut on my right thumb. I bought “liquid skin” and Crazy Glue to keep it together for the 30 minute set.
    Halfway through the first song, the liquid skin and crazy glue were GONE and I was bleeding. A lot. It didn’t hurt because I was hopped up on adrenaline, but strings ruined. Shirt ruined. Pants ruined. Guitar… Disgusting. Floor puddled in blood. Blood flying into the audience non-stop as I picked.
    Everyone thought it was fake blood and I was doing a KISS thing or something. After the show, I almost passed out packing up my gear.
    Other than that, there was one show where the stage was a sound vacuum. I couldn’t hear ANYTHING. Not me, not the singer or bass player. Not the other guitar player. I could hear some of the drums, and I just went along with it as best I could. The show may have gone fine, but I hated it because I couldn’t hear or enjoy any of it.
     

    Sayonil Mitra

    Free Bird Player
    Nov 11, 2019
    676
    280
    Once I was supposed to perform with a singer in my locality. During the rehearsals, the lower E string broke and no one had extra strings, not even me. This is a day before the show. Somehow no one found guitar strings, shop were closed etc. So I took a string from a Tanpura (instrument with 4 strings, almost twice as long as guitar strings). And Next day, on the stage, That string broke while performance. Nothing major, but ya, first and last time I borrowed a string from another instrument.
     

    brandon savage

    One Stringer
    Nov 11, 2019
    3
    0
    Haha when i was 18 i played bass for a band i had in high school and managed to have our first gig at a local bar even though we had no drummer so we had someone fill in and told them the time signature and bpm for manson’s beautiful people (needless to say the guy had no idea how to play the song) and half way into the song my amp got cut off to where i was being over powered by my guitar player
     
    Synner Endless Summer Collection

    Filip Tomiša

    Campfire Attention Holder
    Nov 11, 2019
    917
    431
    26
    Croatia
    www.youtube.com
    6
    I had guitar lessons for 3 years and each year we would have concerts and play songs that we learned throughout the year, So we had 10 songs to perform and the sound guy wasn’t infront of the stage, instead he was standing RIGHT BESIDE IT!! I still have no idea why he was standing there with his mix pult, the sound didn’t go to him cause the speakers were faced to the public (obviously) but for some reason the sound guy decided to stand right next to our stage. Needless to say we couldn’t hear ourselves, each time I started playing a solo there was no sound, it was a complete shitshow. But I wasn’t mad, I was actually glad to experience a bad show cause sometimes you can learn the most from that, and also I was laughing my ass off cause it was so bad but oh well!
     

    Daniel Bernard

    Garage band Groupie
    Nov 11, 2019
    53
    13
    My worst live performance was my first one… I was so nervous before the gig I went outside before the show to throw the football so I could think about other stuff… it was a Canadian winter so it was around -25 Celsius and we were playing Bat Country… We came back in about 10 mins before the show but needless to say my hands were fucking freezing and I messed up all the solo.
     

    Dan Shipway

    Slim Shady
  • Nov 11, 2019
    726
    158
    9
    I believe it was November 2016 and I had to do a performance but I didn’t have my amp and had to use DI
    I was playing the rock am ring 2006 solo and when I had to do the Floyd tricks the sound just died. The tremolo picking didn’t go to well either xD
     

    Noah Berends

    Campfire Attention Holder
  • Nov 11, 2019
    408
    86
    Fort Wayne, IN
    13
    I’ve had my strap break in the middle of playing. Played the rest of the set with a foot kicked up on my amp way back on the stage. Bought straplocks the next day. Broke a string once, amp malfunctioned once, basically all the little things for some reason happened to me occasionally. I used to play on a weekly basis for my church back in high school so I had a lot of stage time for things to happen. Most embarrassing thing though was in front of a small group of guitar players, I was maybe 4 years into my playing at the time so pretty decent but still had some things to learn, and I was playing a pretty well put together improv solo at the time and I kicked my guitar up with my leg as an accent and it yanked my cord right out of the input jack. Had to plug my guitar in red-faced as the room was silent and try to resume. Ever since then I’ve been very careful to loop my cord through my strap to prevent this.