Your Worst Musical Experience?

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 01 Oct 12 - 08:13 PM

Let me count the ways.......

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 01 Oct 12 - 07:53 PM

Well so far I haven't read about anything that involved a mechanical bull...

Linn

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: GUEST,Joi
Date: 01 Oct 12 - 07:19 PM

Don Firth: Wow! You kept your wits about you and continued. What strength of character. AND the experiences did not stop you, as you knew you had the talent and ability to perform again. What character-building experiences! Good for you!

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: GUEST,Joi
Date: 01 Oct 12 - 07:14 PM

Wilfred: you are a great story teller. I am not saying that I do not believe you, but am stating that you do have a talent for telling a story while keeping a captive audience. Have you given thought to recording or telling your stories in performance?

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: GUEST,Calum
Date: 01 Oct 12 - 11:04 AM

About nine months ago, a pipe band in which I have the honour to play received a phone call. Would we be interested in performing at a major summer sporting spectacle, involving secrecy clauses, tedious rehearsals, no pay, television, the works? By jiminy we would, said everyone apart from me.

Auditions followed. First musical, then costume. Hmm, said the organisers, don't you have feather bonnets? Well, no, we said. This is Britain. It rains a lot and they look stupid when they get wet.

We'll call you back.

Another band received a similar phone call and also jumped at the chance to get on telly. Happily, they did indeed have feather bonnets and were offered the job. For twelve weeks, they trundled up and down to a newly regenerated area of London's East End, rehearsing a special piece for this special, one-in-a-lifetime sporting event. Secrecy was paramount: not even friends and family knew what this piece was to be. Traditional? we asked. Newly written? Eyebrows merely waggled.

Four bars from "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life".

Ironic, really.

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 01 Oct 12 - 10:43 AM

Some years ago Ross Campbell & myself were booked as part of "National Music Week" to play in the streets of Blackpool. It was an absolute dreadfull day with half a gale blowing & driving rain. Nevertheless as our timetable stated at 2:30 westarted to play. As Ross played his first chord on his anglo our audience, one pigeon, turned and walked away.

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 01 Oct 12 - 08:49 AM

A Moment with Justin

^His Musical Moment^

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 30 Sep 12 - 06:05 PM

I was on the telly with my guitar. Biggest station in the southeast USA. No big deal.
Henry Krinkle and His Flashy Guitar

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 29 Sep 12 - 01:09 PM

mine would probably be ... almost being on telly.

A singer-songwriter friend of mine had a record deal. I became a sort of session musician for him: his record company paid for me and a couple of other friends to be his backing band.
Anyway, he was asked to be on Later with Jools Holland. He asked me to play fiddle, deciding he'd do a sort of countried-up acoustic version of one of his songs (which, on his album, sounded a bit like The Strokes). We turn up at the BBC studio and soundcheck the song. Sounds good. John Cale wanders over afterwards and says how nice it is to hear "younger people" playing old-time American music. I'm feeling quite excited. I'm no huge fan of Jools Holland, or his programme, but it'd be nice to be able to tell my parents to tune in and see me on TV.

Then the producer comes over and insists that my singer-songwriter buddy performs said song in the manner in which it is played on his album. Which does not require a violin player. So I go home.

I still paid though, which is alright.

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Sep 12 - 12:28 AM

Except for the ones who vanished with Judge Crater.

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 28 Sep 12 - 10:13 PM

Nah. Lynched by Judge Roy Bean.
(:-( O)=

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Sep 12 - 09:38 PM

. . . and the rest of the cast was cut down by John Brown on his way to Harpers Ferry.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 28 Sep 12 - 09:02 PM

It was 1946. I was opening the show for Jack Benny. Bob Hope had warmed up the crowd with a little tap dancing. I was backstage practicing my slide guitar licks. Rochester heard me and looked white as a ghost. He came over and asked if I intended to play that monkey junk in front of the audience. I said yes, I've played it in front of many audiences and got standing ovations. He went away, shaking his head and muttering something about mojos and black cat bones.
I played for two hours without a break. Jack was on the side of the stage, livid. He smashed his violin and told his manager he never wanted to see me on the bill again.
I stole the show.
Playing monkey junk.
Rochester was right.
(:-( 0)=

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Bobert
Date: 28 Sep 12 - 08:43 PM

Couple three years ago I was opening for the Clarence Turner Blues Band and on the elevator from the basement to the performing area a clip came loose on my Washburn ES10 resonator and the geetar fell and hit the floor hard... I looked it over and didn't seem to have anything wrong but inside it bent the cone and messed up the Fishmann pickup...

This was discovered during sound check...

Well, Clarence being the the gentleman he is offered to let me play his electric geetar... I made it through most of the set but couldn't hear the geetar at all (monitor was off) so I thought I'd play it with a little more force... First, busted his G string, then his A string...

Worst performance of my life...

B~

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 28 Sep 12 - 08:38 PM

Pretty dull. I bet Jimi would have some tales to tell.
(:-( ))=

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Sep 12 - 08:21 PM

"No obsessed groupies?"

All the time. But one learns to live with it.

"No debilitating LSD trips on stage?"

Never use the stuff. Not into drugs.

There was a time, however, when I was singing at "The Place Next Door" where I sang regularly (coffee house, kind of "up-scale;" clean, you're elbows didn't stick to the tables, and it was frequented not just by college students and folk music enthusiasts, but by the "after-show crowd" as well). This particular evening, the owner, Bob Clark, was experimenting with different fruit drinks to serve, as well as the usual exotic coffees and teas. I had a small table on the riser where I sang, and one evening he brought me one of his experimental fruit drinks and said, "See how you like this."

I took a sip and discovered that he had spiked it with something highly alcoholic. He' mixed this up especially for me. The Place didn't serve booze to the public. No liquor license. This was just for me.

I sipped away at it and sang my usual sets. I was most mellow. The crowd seemed to thoroughly enjoy my singing and my comments.

Afterward, Bob Clark said, "This was a great evening! You were really on! I think that from here on, I'll keep you a little plastered all the time!"

Not really a bad musical experience. Quite good, in fact.

"Being electrocuted by your amp?"

Never use an amp or any electronics, except maybe whatever sound system the house provides. Just bare voice and guitar.

"Or your prized instrument being stolen or damaged?"

Nope. Harry, my pet tarantula, sees to that!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 02:21 PM

There was the night in a festival (no names to spare the organiser) when a VERY drunk traveller (part of a set for traveller music during the day) insisted on playing the "musical" saw while extemporising a "poem" about the plight of slaves traded from Africa to the USA including the immortal line "They're just niggers not like us".

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 11:19 AM

I got up to sing a song at the FSGW Getaway (music camp) a few years ago. I had sung the song with the recording dozens of time, but never for an audience. I opened my mouth and sang the first couple of measures, and it didn't sound anything like the song I thought I knew. After three failed starts, I gave up and sat down.
Certainly was embarrassing.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 10:55 AM

We need to get Mick Jagger's and "Kief's" thoughts on that...

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 08:12 AM

No obsessed groupies? No debilitating LSD trips on stage? Being electrocuted by your amp? Or your prized instrument being stolen or damaged?
(:-( ))=

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Sep 12 - 10:56 PM

Going blank is something we all fear. And that's why I usually take my songsheets and a music stand with me when I perform onstage.

It's bizarre that one can know several hundred songs...and yet sometimes be unable to think of a single one that one wants to play at a given moment. This is why set lists are a pretty good idea.

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Shimbo Darktree
Date: 25 Sep 12 - 07:37 PM

Wilfred, what can I say? A less trusting soul than myself might wonder whether you have embellished the tale a tad. Not me, though; being a folkie, I'll believe anything.

Like Don, my worst is "blanking". I sang at the opening of an academic institution in my home town many years ago. Until then, I had only sung in smokey folk clubs in front of up to 50 of my peers. Suddenly, I was in front of 200 (or thereabouts) of snappily-dressed upper crust ... and I got stage fright, and froze. I had picked songs (three) which I knew back the front and sideways, and I suddenly couldn't remember the words to any of them. Fortunately, a good (performer) friend jumped up on stage, and bailed me out by telling everyone that I'd had a hard night on the cider, and was not at my best. There was a kernel of truth in this, but the real cause was, of course, a huge feeling of inadequacy.

If not for that experience, I may have been a superstar by now ... or not ...

Shimbo

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: GUEST,roderick warner
Date: 25 Sep 12 - 06:16 PM

So many bad musical moments - and usually in 'folk clubs,' it has to be said ( about fifty fifty with the more sublime moments by people who knew what they were doing)... although any Pete Seeger album would have me leaving the room...

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: musicmick
Date: 25 Sep 12 - 05:07 PM

Wow, I just thought of a worse one. It didn't happen to me but I worked a lot for the poor soul who experienced it
Before he became an agent, Jerry Samuels was a performer in nursing homes. He was playing a date at a facility he had played before. One of the patients asked him to play "Tennessee Waltz" because, when Jerry had been there, her 90 year old boyfriend had missed the show and she wanted to dance with him. Of course, Jerry agreed and, as he started the song, the happy couple glided around the room. As Jerry went into the bridge, the boyfriend keeled over, dead.
To this day, when I hear that song, I leave the room.

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: kendall
Date: 25 Sep 12 - 04:29 PM

Wilfred, that is just too funny to be true!

Musicmick, I've been there. My brothers talked me into doing a gig with their bluegrass band. Back country Maine, Saturday night in North Jockstrap, we did a couple of tunes and it became quite obvious that Bluegrass was not what they wanted! They wanted to dance so we had to adjust as best we could. Hecklers front and back, it was painful.

One of my brothers reminded me just recently of that blowsy old slattern who complained and I said to her "Hey lady, I wouldn't pull the plug on your red light while you are working."

We barely got out alive.

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Sep 12 - 04:07 PM

I have a pretty tenacious memory that holds several hundred songs (and I can remember the address where I lived when I was 5 years old), but—

1959, February. I am asked by the recently formed University of Washington educational television station, KCTS Channel 9 (now, our local PBS affiliate), to do a series of half-hour television shows on folk music. I'd done some performing up to this point, but not a heck of a lot. So to inject a little variety into the series (not to mention a considerably prettier face than my own mug), I asked Patti McLaughlin to do the shows with me. This way, rather than me sitting there lecturing between songs, we could discuss the songs between us and sing examples of what we were talking about. The Powers That Be at KCTS agreed.

The shows had to be live, because in 1959 videotape machines were about the size of a desk, used tapes that looked more like reels of 35 mm. movie film, and the machine cost about $50,000. KCTS couldn't afford one, and the only one in town was owned by KING-TV.

In one of the early shows, Patti and I were demonstrating British Island songs and ballads that had migrated to the United States and how they had "folk processed." I sang "Binnorie," followed by Patti singing "Bow Down." Patti then sang "The Wraggle-Taggle Gypsies," which I knew, but she had already learned a new song for the show, so for an American version, I learned "The Gypsy Davy."

When my turn came, I launched into "The Gypsy Davy," got to about the third verse, and blanked out! So while I groped for the words, I played the tune on the guitar (I was accompanying it with a "Carter Family scratch," so that worked okay, and by the time the next verse was due, I had the words again. WHEW!!

But talk about PANIC!

"Ballads and Books" was a great break. On the strength of having done the series, I was getting requests for concerts and such, and I was now singing regularly three nights a week at Seattle's second—but nicest—coffee house, frequented by local folk music enthusiasts, and often by Seattle's "after show crowd."

I had just learned "The Flying Dutchman" off Rafael Boguslav's "Songs of a Village Garret" record. I included it in a set of sea songs one evening.

This was a case of "I knew he was a folk singer when he spent fifteen minutes introducing a three minute song!"

I did a long, gabby riff on the legend of the Flying Dutchman, rattling on for several minutes, and included a mention of Wagner's opera version of the legend, Der Fliegende Holländer. Then played my guitar intro for the song. And blanked out!

The words just weren't there. Not even written on the ceiling, which I suddenly found myself staring at. Nope! Zip! Nothing! Nada! Blank slate!

So I just had to confess to the audience that I'd blanked out.

Fortunately, they thought it was pretty funny, so I just went on to my next song, and escaped without being lynched!

Don—um—lemme see, now. What's my last name?

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 25 Sep 12 - 02:56 PM

It sounds like Hank Williams songs would have saved a couple of gigs.
(:-( ))=

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: GUEST,mando-player-91
Date: 25 Sep 12 - 12:14 PM

I played at a old folks home a couple weeks ago and they kept shouting at me " Play something we know!" and kept on interrupting me every time I started a new song. Of course it was not embarrassing. They wanted country songs and I didn't know many

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Sep 12 - 11:57 AM

LOL!!! I am picturing a room full of grouchy old Legionaires, glowering at the band and muttering amongst themselves. It must have been dreadful.

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: musicmick
Date: 25 Sep 12 - 11:19 AM

Some yearsago, I played with a jug band, The Uncalled For, and we accepted a booking from a Runyonesque theatrical agent The job was for an American Legion post in the suburbs. We brought our comedy props, our costumes and our washboards. When we arrived, we found that they expected a dance band so we did our best to please but Broadway tunes don't sound their best, played on tenor banjo, washtub bass, washboard and kazoos.
Talk about your hostile audiences.

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 25 Sep 12 - 06:37 AM

every time I open my mouth is the worst experience for those around me! I'm in no position to judge any one else.

Rts

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 25 Sep 12 - 04:51 AM

It scarred me for life. It was so bad I still can't talk about it.
(:-( o)=

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Hamish
Date: 25 Sep 12 - 04:00 AM

Playing cowbell - really - during the Time Warp. The rest of the band do the dramatic pause before The Narrator does the "It's just a step to the left" bit. Cowbell solo, anybody? Yeah, I know it doesn't sound catatonic, but to me at the time...

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Don Firth
Date: 24 Sep 12 - 11:01 PM

Wilfred, I feel your pain. . . .

(Bloody BRILLIANT!!!)

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: gnu
Date: 24 Sep 12 - 10:00 PM

Oh... "What about me?" is what ye got in yer gob? Really?

That's okay. Good thread. Brings back memories.

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: gnu
Date: 24 Sep 12 - 09:52 PM

I was playing at a wake with my cousins. I looked all round in an asking way about the end of "McGrath". They ALL nodded, including Chris, not my cousin. So, it would be sung as if we were in the kitchen to ourselves, NO? When it was the last, I sang "THE FUCKIN CHAIR!" at the top of my lungs, and I could belt it out back then.

The SOBs! were silent! ALL OF THEM! I was the ONLY one to sing the last line... VERY LOUDLY! Now, that might have been appreciated by some but the majority of the mourners were perplexed and taken aback. Especially me elderly Mum. I couldn't explain it was tradition for our performances. I could only suffer shame as the foul mouth.

No matter. I could outsing and outplay them all back then and did so. Of course, later on, Mum asked me why I did it... beer? I said, "Yeah, I guess."

BTW... the fuckers now sing it proper because I can't.

Soooo.... Hank... got an answer for T? What ye got in yer gob eh?

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: GUEST,Wilfred Pennifere
Date: 24 Sep 12 - 09:38 PM

It happened in college. I was a member of the chorus...a tenor...and we were performing Handel's Messiah before the entire student body and visiting dignitaries, including Prince Charles and Lady Diana. We were just beginning the Hallelujah Chorus when I was overcome by an overwhelming urge to sneeze! I tried desperately to suppress it, but this only worsened the problem, and I suddenly erupted in a gigantic, moisture-laden sneeze, a sneeze so enormous that it frightened the cellist sitting in front of me, and she fell off the risers. She unfortunately fell against the trombone and horn section, and they fell off the risers. One of the horn players tumbled into the percussionist and caused the drum set to overturn, releasing the bass drum, which rolled forward like a juggernaut and crashed into the conductor, Mr Eustace Rockingham, knocking him off the stage. The music screeched to a catastrophic halt as musical instruments and players tumbled in all directions.

I was mortified.

Not only that, I began sneezing again, each sneeze louder than its predecessor. I fear it was an allergic reaction brought on by nerves. I grow nervous quite easily, particularly when in the presence of Royals and other important personages.

I realized that everyone was looking at me. The audience began to titter nervously and some people burst into open laughter.

I saw the conductor, his long hair disheveled and out of place as he attempted to regain the stage. As a matter of fact, it was falling off his head! I realized for the first time that our conductor was wearing a hairpiece!

He remounted the stage with difficulty, breathing heavily, and red in the face. I fear my own face had gone quite red too. I felt as if every eye in England were upon me at that moment. I stretched out a trembling hand to assist him, and he slapped it aside.

"Pennifere," he raged at me, "you are....an idiot! A moron! The plague embodied! A harbinger of doom! You destroy everthing you touch! Next to you, Judas Iscariot was a saint! You are The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse!!! What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Sir..." I stammered. "Your...your hair is out of place..." I waved feebly in the direction of his errant hairpiece which was at that moment making its way down the side of his head and onto his left shoulder, rather like a enormous hairy spider crawling down a wall.

His eyes widened, and he made a grab for the hairpiece, jamming it back on top of his head in a somewhat off-center fashion. Gales of laughter rose up from both the audience and some of the less sensitive members of the choral group, some of whom had spent the last 4 years delighting in making my life a misery! There was the time, for example, when Albert Jones put live frogs in my boots, the time when the rugby team suspended me by my heels from the top of the Great Chandelier in the campus rotunda wearing only my briefs, and the time when Kevin Robertson-Davies gave me a "chocolate bar" which turned out to be some kind of powerful laxative, just 1 hour prior to my annual keynote address to the Tiddlywinks Club...but I digress.

I felt that I had to make amends to the entire gathering for my faux pas, but I wasn't sure how to do it. I advanced gingerly to the microphone, blew into it (one always does that to ensure that it is ON...if it is, it makes a LOUD noise), and coughed a couple of times to clear my throat.

A relative silence descended on the assemblage.

"May I say, ladies and gentlemen, that I am very...(sniff!)...I am very (hep!)...I am very....(ngggghPPHHT!)" And horror of horrors! I burst out in one final and utterly titanic and irresistible sneeze, a sneeze amplified by the overloaded microphone into an ear-splitting burst of white noise that is said to have caused pigeons to spontaneously take to the air all over Slough and at least one small lapdog to rupture itself.

I saw Lady Diana's hand fly to her mouth while Prince Charles grimaced in shock and flinched back in his chair.

And then I realized that my pants had fallen down around my Oxfords...exposing the pink underwear with the little dancing bears knitted onto it.

I shall say no more, but draw a discreet curtain across the remainder of this unfortunate incident. Some things are simply beyond the capacity of the English language to communicate the full depths of the harsh reality experienced.

- Wilfred

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 24 Sep 12 - 09:31 PM

What about me?
(:-( ))=

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 24 Sep 12 - 09:22 PM

What about YOU Mr Krink ????

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 24 Sep 12 - 08:44 PM

Oh, come on. Tell me. It will be our little secret. Trust me.
(:-( D)=

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: srothman
Date: 24 Sep 12 - 08:30 PM

Logging on to see if there's anything of musical interest here and finding an yet another asinine thread like yours.

Subject: RE: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: framus
Date: 24 Sep 12 - 07:18 PM

Starting to clap before the end of an Organ piece by Messaien. Ulster Hall. Me. Inadequate bluff merchant.

Subject: Your Worst Musical Experience?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 24 Sep 12 - 07:00 PM

What happened? Where? To whom? Why?
(:-( ))=