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

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

I can think of a few:

My most "famous" oops at a gig would be toasting 4 Carvin mid range drivers. :)

My most "face palm" oops at a gig would be a few years ago... PM5D at FOH. My iPod was sitting above the store/recall buttons. It had managed to walk down the console during the show from the low end, and hit the "recall" button twice during a guitar solo. It recalled my file with everything flat and muted... (No soundcheck that day- just throw and go at showtime). PA went silent. Woohoo. Lesson learned- recall confirmation!

Oh, and look I found a youtube video from it: Shameless- All Time Low - YouTube

My most "annoying" oops at a gig would be Warped Tour a few years ago... Day 1 for the band, everyone's looking at me like "Who is this kid?" Console was a H3k. I show up, line check in headphones, throw all the VCA's at 0(they were assigned to various things, but I didn't have time to change it to how I wanted) and get ready to go. First song starts off with an iPod intro- tracks are rolling along, vocals kick in and nothing is there. Vocals weren't assigned to the L/R, my bad, no worries. Band hits, nothing. I about lose my shit- the tech for the stage put all the vca's all the way down since I wasn't using them, but forgot to un-assign them! I quickly throw the VCA's back up and get to damage control. Band joked around with me about it on stage and it's always been a running joke.

Oh, and look, youtube has it again: All Time Low - Weightless (Live at Warped Tour '09) - YouTube


...And I think that's it!



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

Setting up a very large show/demo, realized after nearly rewinding the genset motors and adding a second kitchen sink to the whole affair that the ground-neutral was bonded at a floating distro. Woops, never make that mistake in the order of checking things again. That 90 dBSPL buzz had been ruining the whole sound check.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

gordon mcgregor said:
Hitting the solo in place on a silent channel in front of 20000 people is one error I won't forget G
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Yup. Only it was a spontaneous unintentional bass solo I gifted to the patrons at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. And I of course had on my headphones so I didn't catch it for easily ten seconds. You're welcome folks.
 
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.
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And if you have never screwed up-you are either lying or haven't done it long enough :)
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Little for many but big for me. Back in the 80's I provided sound for a top regional cover band. They booked a 2 night gig at a new venue that was far and above anything else around our area. Huge ballroom with blue velvet and chandeliers, 400 seats, raised 40x30 theater stage. Real fancy. We had so much room to set up I thought it would be cool to have the amp racks visible from FOH and easy to access so I put them next to the side fill monitors stage right near the stage stairs. First night went great.

Second night, show up just before showtime to a packed house. Get everything ready to go and a 1 and 2 and 3 and .......nothing. Look at the band and they all have WTF faces playing on stage volume with no monitors. Look at the board and it's flashing, processing rack is flashing, look at amp rack and ........it's not flashing. I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to turn on the amp racks.

I then had to walk the longest 60 yards of my life up to the stage in front of god and everyone and turn on the amps, then back to FOH and bring up the mix. No hiding from that one. Somehow I don't remember the rest of the night. I can laugh about it now though.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Lol. We have all done a few oops things now and then but my hat comes off to Evan, He can prove it!
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Evan Kirkendall said:
Oh, and look, youtube has it again:
Evan
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Not quite youtube, but it was on the TV.
Over 20 years ago I worked at the local NBA arena.
It was very boring for long stretches. I would make lots of phone calls from the sound booth in the time between the afternoon meetings, and the pre-game.

Once on the post game show, I caused some feedback. That phone line really lit up from friends at home watching the game, calling to heckle me.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

john lutz said:
I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to turn on the amp racks.
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This reminds me of a bar gig in 1980. Thursday night of a who knows how many week run. The band starts off with "Two Tickets to Paradise".
And as the guitar player steps up to his mic to sing, "someone" forgot to put the mics out.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Performer gives you a cd and tells you to play track xx.

Song starts and singer does not start singing and everyone wonders why. The performer gave me the wrong cd!

Another time and place. Guest engineer on a ls9. One udk was pre-programmed to jump to scene #100, a silent scene. Those udk's are placed in the wrong spot!

Once I was recording for a tv-show. After three takes of singback with a very pitchy performance the manager told the singer that something in the controlroom was broken so that she needed to do a playback instead. Yeah, I got the blame!
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Forgot to assign subgroups to L/R on a large outdoor festival somewhere in central Europe - Check!
Not a single item except the intro was assigned to L/R.

Blew up the PA on the bass solo on the last song somewhere in southern Europe - Check!
Dual 18" subs and a 1.4" hfs sounds pretty strange without some 12" mids in-between.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Eric Cagle said:
Lol. We have all done a few oops things now and then but my hat comes off to Evan, He can prove it!
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And while it may seem like the end of the world at the moment it happens-in the grand scheme of things-who cares?

Of course the whinny "rockstar" artists-but screw them-----------------who think they are better than everybody else-NOT!

We all make mistakes-and you LEARN from your mistakes (hopefully).

And Evan is not afraid to tell people how he screwed up. But the IMPORTANT thing is that the issues got resolved quickly and the show went on.

The problems start when the issue does not get resolved and there is not show-NOW it is hurting somebody in the pocketbook-and that can be painful.

My longest "down time" was for about 30 min during an outdoor festival. Everything went fine until the headliner (isn't it always that way-----). During the first song the PA and band gear died-as in NOTHING was on. We were running on a rented generator.

My distro at the time was an industrial Hubble system-for construction sites. I bought it used and it had worked fine for a couple of years. There was some sort of "potted" blob that the main feeder cables went into the distro box, and the neutral had simply opened up.

It took me a little while to realize exactly where the problem was and then a little longer to rewire the distro around it.

The rest of the show went fine.

FUNNY-The promoter never called me again.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

I remembered another one. My front of house rig runs on battery backup UPS..........until the battery dies. I fired up everything but the UPS AC cable had come unplugged. Because the UPS is at the bottom of the rack I never noticed the flashing light and the power out alarm was drowned out by the PA. Somewhere during the third act FOH just shut down. 60 seconds seems like eternity when FOH is down. I always run a work light off of house power at the UPS now so I know if I am running on battery.
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Eric Cagle said:
I remembered another one. My front of house rig runs on battery backup UPS..........until the battery dies. I fired up everything but the UPS AC cable had come unplugged. Because the UPS is at the bottom of the rack I never noticed the flashing light and the power out alarm was drowned out by the PA. Somewhere during the third act FOH just shut down. 60 seconds seems like eternity when FOH is down. I always run a work light off of house power at the UPS now so I know if I am running on battery.
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For out digital mixers with external video monitor, I put the monitor on the line power. Console on but no VDO? We're on UPS...
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

Got roped into op'ing lights, and at the time, had only a rudimentary knowledge of how the console worked. No problem; light tech had set it up, no reason to do anything but hit presets.
Get a complaint about a moving head that was aimed, full open, directly at a section of audience, during the presentation. No big deal. Crack open the manual, read the important pages, click here, click there, move that, and...nothing happens. Hmm. Look down at the manual again...and all the lights go out. Everything. Dead Black Out. From the stage, comes an unseen voice...
"Umm...I can't see."
Doh.
 
Back when I first got my LS9, we had sound checked and all was good. I am looking through settings on studio manager while waiting for the show to start and I see a bunch of channels with phantom power on but there are dynamic mics on them so I click it off - easy in SM. First song and no vocal mic on keys. I forgot we added a mic for the keyboard player who didn't usually sing and was on a channel not near the other vocal mics. Of course it was a condenser.

Moral of the storey... After sound check, leave it alone!


Sent from my iPad
 
Re: Spill the beans, what is the worst oops you have done during a show?

A long time ago in a land far, far away we killed a 110KW generator that was trying to power just the sound system.

It turns out that those Crest Audio Pro 9001's can REALLY pull some power when they are being fed sine waves from an "808 drop" on the input.

It also turns out that one of the other guys that was there on this day put together a video of the event, which is a good thing because other than that generator issue, it was a pretty good day. As usual, you can find it on YouTube, thanks Mark!

Duct Tape Bikini Contest, Jacksonville, FL 2006
 
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