Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

E

Eric Cagle

Senior
Jan 20, 2011
678
1
0
Atlanta, GA
So I was running monitor world for a very famous national southern rock band one evening and, being the attentive tech I am, I noticed the lead guitar player's cord was a tangled up mess on stage. I proceeded to go in front the stage and untangle it for him and it just happened to be time for a guitar solo just as I started doing this. As I was unraveling the cord it happened to unplug from the amp head. Compete silence except for drums and bass...................I quickly saw the error of my ways and proceeded get on stage and run back to the amp and plug the cord back in. He never missed a beat with the solo and when the sound came back on he was right where he was supposed to be with the solo. Very professional. When I apologized for doing that after the show he just laughed and said, "$hit happens." I actually got to do a few more shows with them and the "Hey man, you unplugged me during my guitar solo" event was never mentioned.
 
Last edited:
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

The problem with touching other peoples gear is touching it.

Lets say that the cable was just about ready to break (only 1 strand or so left connected). If you touch it and it stops working-it was YOU that broke it and will be blamed. "Hey it was working fine BEFORE you touched it".

Like in the install world-as soon as you do ANYTHING to somebody elses installed system-you own it. Every problem will be blamed on you-since you were the last person to do anything to the system-no matter what it was.

It is a nice thing to help people-but sometimes that "help" can come back to bite you.

Just sayin-------
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

After a very long day the opening act started playing, their sound man had a decent mix going, and I fell asleep in a chair along side him at FOH.

Shortly after nodding off, I awoke as something had changed in the sound- the band engineer was looking at me and pointing at the console, which was dead, though the monitors and stage volume were still quite loud.

I then realized that I had managed to turn the Soundcraft power supply off with my toe while sleeping, turned it back on with a big "clunk", didn't fall asleep again until after load out..
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

At one of my big festivals last year The Hoopee Jam, a really good jazz trio was on stage going full tilt into Teen Town. I had just gotten the mix I wanted on them and settled into watching them play.. I took my cell phone out of my pocket and laid it on the edge of the console. Right on the mutes. It was only 3-4 seconds, but pretty embarassing..
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Art Welter said:
After a very long day the opening act started playing, their sound man had a decent mix going, and I fell asleep in a chair along side him at FOH.

Shortly after nodding off, I awoke as something had changed in the sound- the band engineer was looking at me and pointing at the console, which was dead, though the monitors and stage volume were still quite loud.

I then realized that I had managed to turn the Soundcraft power supply off with my toe while sleeping, turned it back on with a big "clunk", didn't fall asleep again until after load out..
Click to expand...
I've done the same sort of thing-OOPS!
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Kemper Watson said:
At one of my big festivals last year The Hoopee Jam, a really good jazz trio was on stage going full tilt into Teen Town. I had just gotten the mix I wanted on them and settled into watching them play.. I took my cell phone out of my pocket and laid it on the edge of the console. Right on the mutes. It was only 3-4 seconds, but pretty embarassing..
Click to expand...
Not something I've done myself but I've seen a cell phone placed near a console or guitar amp bleed RF noise into them.
 
My first time on a profile I double clicked a channel and selected all of them during the national anthem of a rather large festival. Every mic came open as I cranked the channel to try to get the quiet singer heard and a huge squeal came over the system.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

I have had some mistakes getting used to digital boards.
I am used to riding faders, constantly, and have had to learn to take my hands/fingers off of them while switching pages, or going to sends on faders.
It is so ingrained in me to constantly have a finger on the lead vocal, and to go to another page, and have the slider stay with my finger to the new page.
I have also had some problems on the boards I use, setting up one scene, and then another scene, and then having the two groups tell me, we are going to join the other *scene* for a couple of songs.
And not know enough to copy and paste one part of one scene to the other group, and join them.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

I had some semi-famous R&B diva who was slightly past her sell-by date, doing a set with tracks. Just her and a CD. There were no cues, just start the CD and stay the hell out of the way until the end of the set. I got her started, then put on some cans and prepared to cue up some walk-out music. Except I ejected the CD from the wrong player, and since I had cans on didn't notice that the show had gone silent, until the singer's little personal assistant girl ran from the stage to the booth to scream at me.

The tracks CD didn't have track numbers, it was just one continuous 35 minute track. I had no idea where we were in the show when I had brought it to an abrupt halt, so when I re-started I had to guess how far to fast-forward it. Assistant girl babysat me for the rest of the set, hovering uncomfortably close.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Dave Barnett said:
I had some semi-famous R&B diva who was slightly past her sell-by date, doing a set with tracks. Just her and a CD. There were no cues, just start the CD and stay the hell out of the way until the end of the set. I got her started, then put on some cans and prepared to cue up some walk-out music. Except I ejected the CD from the wrong player, and since I had cans on didn't notice that the show had gone silent, until the singer's little personal assistant girl ran from the stage to the booth to scream at me.

The tracks CD didn't have track numbers, it was just one continuous 35 minute track. I had no idea where we were in the show when I had brought it to an abrupt halt, so when I re-started I had to guess how far to fast-forward it. Assistant girl babysat me for the rest of the set, hovering uncomfortably close.
Click to expand...

WOW I Have done EXACTLY THAT (with a different performer). It is QUITE the "wanna crawl under the console and hide" moment.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Back in the good old days of cassette tapes, I had a performer who sung to tracks recorded on cassette tape that was notorious for not rehearsing before her performance. I had a Nakamichi tape deck for playback, and on it had a pitch control that was on a fader than a typical rotary knob. Somehow the pitch control had been accidentally slid all the way to the slowest speed. I didn't notice until I started up the track, a full 2 or 3 keys below what it should have been! I noticed right away. She's normally a soprano, but was singing alto with some rather long notes for a while, until I could slowly increase the pitch to the "normal" speed so no one in the audience would notice. She was a good sport about it, and showed up for rehearsal from that point on! LOL! I gotta say I had a new respect for her vocal range!!
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

IMO this is probably not the kind of information working sound engineers should post about on a public forum. Unless already securely settled into doing a different job.. :)

JR
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Dave Barnett said:
I had some semi-famous R&B diva who was slightly past her sell-by date, doing a set with tracks. Just her and a CD. There were no cues, just start the CD and stay the hell out of the way until the end of the set. I got her started, then put on some cans and prepared to cue up some walk-out music. Except I ejected the CD from the wrong player, and since I had cans on didn't notice that the show had gone silent, until the singer's little personal assistant girl ran from the stage to the booth to scream at me.

The tracks CD didn't have track numbers, it was just one continuous 35 minute track. I had no idea where we were in the show when I had brought it to an abrupt halt, so when I re-started I had to guess how far to fast-forward it. Assistant girl babysat me for the rest of the set, hovering uncomfortably close.
Click to expand...

That's why I finally moved to a "DJ" dual CD player. It cues right to the actual start of a track and bypasses any long silences from "home-burned" discs...AND it won't let you eject a CD which is being played. Close to idiot proof...
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

John Roberts said:
IMO this is probably not the kind of information working sound engineers should post about on a public forum. Unless already securely settled into doing a different job.. :)

JR
Click to expand...

I would not post anything that the statute of limitations has not ran out on or that could get you in trouble currently but most of us that have done this for a while are not worried about things that happened many years ago and became part of the "learning experience". I usually post the "mute the microphones during the fireworks display" warning a few days before every 4th of July and I am sure one can guess how I know now that one should do that. I have not blown up any subs in well over 25 years due to that one.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Dick Rees said:
That's why I finally moved to a "DJ" dual CD player. It cues right to the actual start of a track and bypasses any long silences from "home-burned" discs...AND it won't let you eject a CD which is being played. Close to idiot proof...
Click to expand...

Agree that a DJ style CD player with good cuing, big buttons, and a sunlight-readable countdown timer is a big help.

A couple years ago at the annual Ecumenical Hunger Program Block Fest I do we had an older example of such a player and it refused to play the (likely MP3 encoded) track we needed for Suli, a traditional Tongan dancer. Given the informal and friendly nature of this event, I put out a call for CD players on the VOG mic and very soon an improbable assortment of CD players showed up at FOH. (I liked the one that had a sticker that read "Do not remove from food closet".) But none would play the subject CD.

At this point the dancer's daughter remembered that she had the desired track on a cassette tape in her car. In due course she produced the tape which we put into the tape player that conveniently was included in one of the volunteer CD players, which I had hastily connected to the desk. The next problem was to find the track on the tape. Not having any idea what the track sounded like I handed her my headphones and asked her please to find it.

She found the track, Suli danced, the cassette sounded horrible, and no one cared but me, so all was good. And then I got my headphones back, glistening, and dripping with baby oil. Prior to cuing the track the daughter had oiled up her mom so that the dollar (and larger) bills applied to her by the audience during the dance would stick.

The headphones cleaned up surprisingly well (I use them to this day), and all the money that could stick to Suli's rather large surface went to the charity. In retrospect, I actually love stuff like this, probably why I keep doing it.

--Frank
 
Last edited:
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

John Roberts said:
IMO this is probably not the kind of information working sound engineers should post about on a public forum. Unless already securely settled into doing a different job.. :)

JR
Click to expand...

The counter point to this is that pretty much without exception, we've all screwed up relatively majorly at some point- learning experience, tell the tales of the old days, move on.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Max Warasila said:
The counter point to this is that pretty much without exception, we've all screwed up relatively majorly at some point- learning experience, tell the tales of the old days, move on.
Click to expand...

Infamous words: "I've fucked up bigger gigs than YOURS...." ;)
 
Top Bottom