[niangelo]

I need to tell this here...

So a few Sundays ago, I'm playing lead guitar on stage. I'm wearing a semi-casual outfit, jeans and a dress shirt.

We start off the first song, and within about a minute, I notice something black peeking out of my right sleeve (my strumming hand, as I play lefty). I'm fairly puzzled by this, and since it's a fairly upbeat song, my movement is slowly dislodging the object. Within about another minute, it's sticking out another inch or so. I'm totally confused. I can now tell it's some sort of fabric, but I'm not sure what. Perhaps my t-shirt was torn? I'm wearing a black t-shirt under my dress shirt, but surely it wouldn't unravel enough to stick out my sleeve.

My confusion is growing, the object is creeping out, but the song is continuing, so I don't want to stop playing and reach down to my sleeve.

Eventually, the piece of black fabric falls out, right onto my pedal board. I stare in confusion for a few seconds. Then the terrible realization dawned on me: When I wear a dress-shirt on Sunday morning, I usually (being profoundly lazy) opt to run it through the dryer for a few minutes as opposed to doing a proper ironing job. I done that this particular morning, and there had already been clothing in the drying. Something had found it's way into my shirt sleeve, and was not discovered until the vigorous movement of guitar-playing disloged it:

I was looking at a pair of my wife's underwear. Right on my effects board.

I managed to muffle my laughter, bent down, crumpled them up in my hand, and stealthily stashed them in my pocket. No one noticed, and no one knew until I told them after.

[Jenacen]

LOL!

All that's really happened to me is that I couldn't get any volume out of my guitar at one moment, and I didn't realize my effects processor was still in tuning mode. That's about it, though.

[Tony]

I told my story in my jounal last year.

[nix]

Mines similiar to the above,

I start playing the first song of the service and I'm strumming profusly at my guitar wondering why the heck it's not coming out the sound properly... the next thing I know, my lead guitarists comes up behind me and sticks my lead in properly resulting in huge feedback because the sound man had turned the gain up ALOT which then resulted in a silence then a burst of laughter from the congregation.. and a bright red face from me.

I always check it's plugged in now

[nix]

Originally Posted by Tony

I told my story in my jounal last year.

Heehee... anyone notice?

[Cadence]

I was leading worship for youth group with my guitar. On the end of the headstock I put my capo like everyone else does. When one of the songs was ending I went to turn to the drummer to signal that we were ending and as I turned the capo caught the mic stand and sent it toppling on top of me...

quite embarassing

[Tony]

Originally Posted by nix

Heehee... anyone notice?

If they did, they didn't say anything.

[RipVanWinkle]

My whole family used to make up my churchs praise team before we had a permenant music minister. Sister on bass, me leading (at time of first story) wife sings, my cousin plays drums, his sister (also my cousin) sings and my his wife sings.

This first one was really my sister, but we start a song during sunday morning worship. Im in the wrong key anyway. My sister goes for a big slide to bring in the song (we are in different keys)...starts going down the fretboard, and her bass comes unhooked, but she (in confusion) wasnt holding the guitar right, and it slammed on the floor. Everybody stopped as the congregation gasped. it was ok.

The other...now that Im not singing/playing acoustic, I play lead electric. I forgot to plug in one of my pedals at the beginning of a song. no biggie. I reach down and drop my pick. I play in the choir loft, and it has a few levels. I have to step down a level to get the pick, and with my back turned to the congregation, not paying attention, have the chord for my hot-spot type monitor wrapped around my foot. It thwacks on the ground making all sorts of bad sounds.

shock and awe is the theme of our band.

[Jumpinjoegraham]

1)
we had a serious ground problem at a church I was playing at. If my lips touched the mic I fried, if I was too far away I would get shocked through my guitar. It was a no win situation. I had numb lips by time I was done.
It was a powerful service

2)
We had a youth service in this great big barn. A sparrow egg fell from the loft and splatted all over my effects board.

3)
We were playing a concert and the guy incharge of the Fog machine went way over board we couldn't see. Of course me and the other guitar player cross stage at the same time. WHAP!!! need I say more.

4)
I dove off a big speaker but my guitar hit the ground first, busted the head stock. (We had pretty wild youth services)

5)
Someone changed the master tunning of the keyboard, I was supposed to come in with a loud blazing guitar solo in the key of G which we reherssed 30 times or so. Of coarse I was loud and yes it was blazing but the keyboard was in F. Just awfull, I was so embarrassed because I told my friends to wait for this awesome solo we've been working on.

[Jumpinjoegraham]

I noticed Mr barndoor

[Matt4JC]

Wow, some of those are hilarious.

Here's mine:

This is at our youth service a few years back.

So you all know those songs that have absolutely crazy ranges right? Like Shout to the Lord, Majesty (Here I Am), etc, that go from a low G to a high E or something like that? Well, Give Us Clean Hands is one of them. Our singers at the time could sing much easier lower than higher, so we put the song in the key of D, which actually takes the verse into the pits with a low F#, but the chorus is MUCH easier to sing, only going up to a high B or so. (you know the usually screeching "O God let us be a generation that seeks..." anyway...

So me (piano) and my best friend (guitar) start the intro for the song. The singers come in at the right time, but the opening line "we bow our hearts" is sooo low, that the singers can't find the right key. And they didn't seem to notice. It sounded awful, and we just stopped playing halfway through the verse. We were like "let's try that again" and we did, got it right, the rest of the song went fine, and we finished it. That's just an ordinary big mess-up, not really that embarrasing of a moment. But what happened next was very funny.

We had set it up so that at that time, one of our friends would come up and read a Scripture passage. You know, it's supposed to be a reverent, thoughtful time of worship. We had recovered from our flop at the beginning of our last song, but it was still on this guy's mind, and he couldn't resist throwing in a joke. He just started by saying "Now let's see if I can read on key." Our singers died in a roar of laughter. Maybe you just had to be there, but the entire place was in stiches and tears.

[Chris]

I haven't had anything as embarrassing as a brown courduroy suit an open barn door happen to me. But I had one time where I broke a string right in the middle of one of our more powerful songs (I think it was Glory, Honour, Power if anyone knows that one). Of course, my guitar was the one that was the driving force for the song and half way through the first chorus... *snap* So of course, the sudden tension change throws EVERYTHING out of tune and either I play out of tune and screw it all up or I stop playing and the whole song loses drive. Luckily we did have our other guitarist at the time so he picked up on it for me (after I had played a couple of lines out of tune before clueing into what was going on).

[Tony]

y'all know how to hurt a guy.

[psalm63adam]

The biggest ones for me are:

1) I'm ending the worship part of the service on a real serious note. We're about to play We Fall Down, I ask everyone to fall on their knees and bow their heads. So far so good. I grab my capo and put it on the second fret. So far so good. I start playing, and it sounds like crap. But I continue on, because I don't know what's going on. All of a sudden, a few at a time, everyone's head eventually becomes unbowed as they are trying to figure out this horrid cacophony of chords that's coming from my guitar. I still don't know what's going on, all I know is the song sounds horrible. I glance over at my guitar neck. I realize that instead of grabbing my regular capo. I grabbed my cut capo. I continued the song playing really quietly.

2) When I was "auditioning" to be the worship minister in Arizona, I broke a string both services. The second service, I go back into the high school dressing room and start tuning. This is the first time I've ever had a wireless guitar mic. I did not know that it was still on. However, the sound person has turned me off in the mains and it's only going through the monitor where the senior minister is preaching. He keeps thinking that he's hearing things, and keeps mentioning as he's preaching. One of the worship team members who is out in the congregation realizes what's happening and runs into the dressing room and says to me, "Your guitar is still on!"

But I was still hired - unfortunately if you know the situation.

3) At my new church in Ohio, we always sing a last song - usually a verse and chorus of something we did earlier. Almost every week something goes wrong during this time of the service - the wireless mic goes out, my monitor battery runs out, my acoustic pedal stops working, or my favorite - when I realize that the wireless mic is running out of juice so during the sermon I go and change out the batteries, go out to the cafe to talk to my wife and daughter, and then when it's time to do the last song, come back in to the auditorium and walk up stage, only then remembering I left the wireless mic in the cafe. Well, that used to be my favorite, until the time when I started singing, and the boom on my mic stand was loose and slowly started falling down. By the time the song ended, I was practically kneeling.

[jjvacc]

the only really embarresting thing that happened with me was when i was softly finger picking [or finger picking with a pick which i call 'pick picking'] and i accidentally stepped on my effects pedel two a heavy distortion.

-chester