Worst mistake you've ever made during a gig ;)

(Future)DWdrummer

Senior Member
What's that the worst mistake any of you have ever made during a gig? My number of errors during a gig is fairly low (due to the relatively short amount of time I've been playing) buuuut I've definitely made a few notable ones x)

I played a song in 4/4 once... It was supposed to be played in 12/8 -____-

I've started a set with the snare off... Multiple times haha

We've all dropped sticks before.

I ended a song with a crash on beat 1.... Everyone else cut out on beat 4 of the previous measure.

These are just a few buuuut I'm sure the amount will increase over time :D

I'm really curious to know some of your worst mistakes during a gig ;)
 
Getting a mic and telling the band "I'll introduce a song on this set" just as i was supposed to introduce the song my mind went blank and i forgot what the song was called (it was a rolling stones cover not an original). to be fair i was only 10/11 years old... but i must have looked like a right idiot :p
 
Trying to sing back-up....worst mistake ever!

+1 my vocal track from one of my bands songs (all 3 of us sang on it) was terrible, i think it was so bad we just deleted it
edit just realised the thread is about gigs so this post a lil off topic :p
 
showing up, the music was horrible and we didn't get payed I wasn't told until the gig was over
NEVER AGAIN
 
We drove to the wrong city in Luxembourg while touring Europe but thankfully Luxembourg is quite small so we still made it, does that count
 
I've probably screwed up more singing than playing drums, like coming in at the wrong time, or singing the wrong verse out of order, or singing one verse twice because I blanked on the words in the other verse. Or continuing to sing when everyone else was breaking for the middle eight. I like to think of myself as a multi-tasker, and I do have a pretty good voice, but sometimes it's like chewing gum and walking. LOL
 
I think my worst mistake was not a mistake as such, it was a bad choice...

I was a young teen, playing a gig and I did a drum solo (which was crap) and I'd seen Dennis Chambers take a drink while playing double kicks so, naturally I wanted to do that too.
But, I got over excited and decided to just pour the whole bottle of water over my head then carry on soloing.
Water splashed everywhere, my feet were squeaking and slipping off the pedals and best of all, someone recorded the whole thing and when I watched it back you can hear some bemused girl say 'ahhh my God, what's he doing'?!

I hate my life.
 
I sometimes have a tendency to play poorly when I go to open mics and play songs I've never heard before. Sometimes I have to play along with guitarists who play rather obscure songs, and my mind locks up and I really can't think of what would go with what I'm supposed to play. I've never dropped my sticks before, though.
 
Not my worst mistake...can't really think of a horrible one. But my most recent one was this past Sunday at church.

The MD signaled to me to start the first song, I looked at the set list and knew that I don't start that particular song so I tried to whisper, "What song?" thinking he has them mixed up.

Well, he starts the song anyway...oops...it was me that had messed up. Despite looking at the list twice, I had swapped song 3 for song 1. Luckily, no one on the congregation could tell anything had happened. We just started the song maybe 5 seconds later than we should have.

Okay, maybe the worst one was another one at my church. In fact, I think it was my first Sunday there a few years ago. As I got behind the kit to start the service, I almost tripped on a cable or something. I just remember trying to put my hand on the floor tom to balance myself, forgetting briefly that is was part of a suspended floor tom/cymbal stand set up. The whole contraption falls into the rest of the kit making a horrible racket...that one I'm pretty sure the congregation did notice.
 
The band I used to play with pretty regularly was simply never done with songs. We'd play a song one way for a year, then the guitar players would decide they needed to change this or that, or add a section here or take away one there.

My fault I guess, as I never seemed to be included in the changes themselves and would simply be interrupted as we practiced with "oh, yea, so this part we're playing 4 times now instead of 2"... Which is okay, until I get things mixed up at a show, or my muscle memory decides to play it the old way and cause a catastrophe on stage. Hell, I've even been pretty sure a time or two that I was the one who had it right and they played the wrong change.

Frankly my memory isn't that great, and I have a tendency to miss parts or mess them up if a bunch of songs just get dumped on me at once. Going through this now as I join another band and some of the songs have glaring similarities, so I tend to get them mixed up. It's tough for a rhythmic-slave when the overall rhythms of the songs, and even tempos are similar enough that I get confused as to what goes where.
 
I think my worst mistake was not a mistake as such, it was a bad choice...

I was a young teen, playing a gig and I did a drum solo (which was crap) and I'd seen Dennis Chambers take a drink while playing double kicks so, naturally I wanted to do that too.
But, I got over excited and decided to just pour the whole bottle of water over my head then carry on soloing.
Water splashed everywhere, my feet were squeaking and slipping off the pedals and best of all, someone recorded the whole thing and when I watched it back you can hear some bemused girl say 'ahhh my God, what's he doing'?!

I hate my life.

Thanks - that made me LOL!
 
One of my worst mistakes was forgetting my snare stand and having to try and rig two cymbal stands to hold the snare from the rims. That looked utterly ridiculous and it fell over a bunch of times! lol

I also once forgot my kick pedal and had to use my floor tom as kick sound by using a stick until one of my fends could bring me a kick pedal! It was pretty funny when my friends walked onto the stage in the middle of a song and handed me the pedal while we were playing. I had to stop playing while the band did a breakdown with just the bassist and the singer, and then I kicked it back ni with the full drums... coincidentally, as soon as I had a kick drum to work with, the crowd immediately got into us and the show was killer from then on! lol
 
Coming in at the wrong place, not ending at the right place and on and on.....learning on the
bandstand...the best teacher!
 
I was in Mexico and I had Montezuma's Revenge during a drum solo. I was wearing swim trunks.

I also was wearing a cape, let a stick fly and my mom had to go back to the bar and get my kit for me.
 
HS jazz band I had been listening to a bunch of odd-time stuff. I was supposed to count off the tune (in 4/4) and play a couple bars of time before the band came in. Well, I kicked us off alright, but in 5/4. The band director gave me quite the glare and I quickly dropped a beat over into 4/4.
 
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