Most insane thing you've ever done in music

[annode]

Ok, here's one: I scolded (the great) Keith Jarrett for being inconsiderate to his audience by playing avant-gard and physically tearing up the piano because he didn't like how the house piano was tuned. I demanded he give me my money back. He did.

John McLaughlin kicked me out of his dressing room for lighting a cigarette.

[Aloysius]

I stood in for Elvis in '73 because he was sick of touring. Nobody noticed. They just thought he had put on a little weight.

[incubus]

John McLaughlin kicked me out of his dressing room for lighting a cigarette.

Good for him

[JJBiener]

This isn't a good insane. This is bad insane. I was playing keys in a Blues/R&B band in St Louis. We had an outdoor gig in late August at a festival in one of the suburbs. It incredibly hot, humid and the sun was brutal.

As we are setting up, I feel a migraine starting. Not wanting to be in the sun with a migraine, I set up in the back in the shade by the drummer. That was my first mistake. Since I wasn't feeling well, I let the other guys set up the PA instead of doing it myself. That was my second mistake. I did my sound check and everything seemed fine. Instead of staying for the band sound check, I went back to my car to sit in the air conditioning until it was time to start. That was my third mistake.

Showtime comes and I go up on the stage and get ready to play. My migraine is in full bloom and I can barely see. We kick off the first song, and I can't hear the keyboards at all. I motion out to our people to see if they can hear the keyboards. I get a thumbs up, so the audience can hear me, but I hear nothing. After the first song, I tell the guys I can't hear myself. I get a shrug and "It's too late now."

I played the whole show watching my hands to make sure I was hitting the right keys with my head throbbing while trying to drink enough water to keep from dehydrating without throwing up. Worst gig ever.

I eventually figured out that when the guys set up the PA, they put the mains up front instead of in the back the way we usually did. During my soundcheck, I was close enough to hear myself, but when everyone was playing, I was completely drowned out.

We finally make through the gig and we are breaking things down. Several people from audience come up to me and tell me how much they enjoyed my playing. They had no clue anything was wrong. To this day, I don't know how I made it through that show.

[morelia]

Give up. I had a burning desire to be a musician but gave up at 7 years old. I wanted to play rock guitar but in a small town the support and gear was non existent. Started again at 20 but know I've missed the golden years of musicianship. Better late than never though.

[donkey tugger]

Hey ! Donkey Tugger. Your on a track with RW? What's that story!?
I'm terribly sorry I missed all the fun with you are your mates!! haaaa
I'd ask a few questions but I expect you don't remember much more.

Welll...Dave From GMedia and I had done a few bits together before so I thought nothing of him asking if I had any acoustic guitar parts he could use and promptly sent him over a few strummed chord progressions. He was (and still is... ) working on an album of songs in various styles to reflect the music when he was growing up. I'd sent him some electric for a glam-rock one before, but foolishly never asked what he wanted the acoustic for...

A few weeks later he only sends me a link to this prog-rock piece, and it's got Wakeman playing keyboard solos and the guitarist from It Bites doing some widdling. In my defence my acoustic bit is just at the beginning before all the real proggery starts

http://www.bennyleeds7.myfreeola.uk/EpicProgTest01.mp3

He still hasn't finished it...still trying to arrange for the chap who used to play bass from Amy Winehouse to do a solo at the end.

[donkey tugger]

This isn't a good insane. This is bad insane. I was playing keys in a Blues/R&B band in St Louis. We had an outdoor gig in late August at a festival in one of the suburbs. It incredibly hot, humid and the sun was brutal.

As we are setting up, I feel a migraine starting. Not wanting to be in the sun with a migraine, I set up in the back in the shade by the drummer. That was my first mistake. Since I wasn't feeling well, I let the other guys set up the PA instead of doing it myself. That was my second mistake. I did my sound check and everything seemed fine. Instead of staying for the band sound check, I went back to my car to sit in the air conditioning until it was time to start. That was my third mistake.

Showtime comes and I go up on the stage and get ready to play. My migraine is in full bloom and I can barely see. We kick off the first song, and I can't hear the keyboards at all. I motion out to our people to see if they can hear the keyboards. I get a thumbs up, so the audience can hear me, but I hear nothing. After the first song, I tell the guys I can't hear myself. I get a shrug and "It's too late now."

I played the whole show watching my hands to make sure I was hitting the right keys with my head throbbing while trying to drink enough water to keep from dehydrating without throwing up. Worst gig ever.

I eventually figured out that when the guys set up the PA, they put the mains up front instead of in the back the way we usually did. During my soundcheck, I was close enough to hear myself, but when everyone was playing, I was completely drowned out.

We finally make through the gig and we are breaking things down. Several people from audience come up to me and tell me how much they enjoyed my playing. They had no clue anything was wrong. To this day, I don't know how I made it through that show.

Bastard sound engineers. I once played a gig where the monitor mix was so bad I didn't realise I'd played our supposedly heavily distorted metal number with the distortion pedal off..

[woggle]

I released tracks of the sounds of rooms just after people had had sex in them - the strangest part was asking people if they would record their room after having sex - with the major criterion being that there could be no sounds to identify that any people were there at all. The sound was to be a completely empty room, but with just knowing that someone had been having sex in it a few moments before.

Way way back (early 80s) I used to take cassettes of people like Percy Faith and transfer to my reel to reel then gradually manipulate the tape so that maybe a phone was ringing off in the background at the end of the first track, to doing a xylophone solo along with the band ,to taking segments and looping them while leaving the rest of the song going to the end etc etc. Then I would put that all back on the original cassette and smuggle it back to the store

The most diffictult part was smuggling the cassette back into the store without being caught

[incubus]

This isn't a good insane. This is bad insane. I was playing keys in a Blues/R&B band in St Louis. We had an outdoor gig in late August at a festival in one of the suburbs. It incredibly hot, humid and the sun was brutal.

As we are setting up, I feel a migraine starting. Not wanting to be in the sun with a migraine, I set up in the back in the shade by the drummer. That was my first mistake. Since I wasn't feeling well, I let the other guys set up the PA instead of doing it myself. That was my second mistake. I did my sound check and everything seemed fine. Instead of staying for the band sound check, I went back to my car to sit in the air conditioning until it was time to start. That was my third mistake.

Showtime comes and I go up on the stage and get ready to play. My migraine is in full bloom and I can barely see. We kick off the first song, and I can't hear the keyboards at all. I motion out to our people to see if they can hear the keyboards. I get a thumbs up, so the audience can hear me, but I hear nothing. After the first song, I tell the guys I can't hear myself. I get a shrug and "It's too late now." Seems playing sick (as miserable as it is) seems to have you dig deep to pull a turd out that isn't quite as bad as what you are feeling.

I played the whole show watching my hands to make sure I was hitting the right keys with my head throbbing while trying to drink enough water to keep from dehydrating without throwing up. Worst gig ever.

I eventually figured out that when the guys set up the PA, they put the mains up front instead of in the back the way we usually did. During my soundcheck, I was close enough to hear myself, but when everyone was playing, I was completely drowned out.

We finally make through the gig and we are breaking things down. Several people from audience come up to me and tell me how much they enjoyed my playing. They had no clue anything was wrong. To this day, I don't know how I made it through that show.

Isn't that weird? I'm not going to say "I've been through that" but I've been through similar things where I was just horrified, and everyone else was fine.

GRRR, edit: I don't know what went wrong.

Also, sometimes you dig deep to pull it out when you are feeling your worse.

[jancivil]

I and a friend imbibed a fifth, and then a quart of Mescal including eating the worms during one show.
By the end I was puking profusely on stage, guitar feeding back while my head would hit the neck, so reports went.
This was just some random underground appearance, I was there to fill up some time and I had to be one act's drummer for one number because their drummer could not do 6/8 and they decided to do that number. Dykes on Bikes followed us at like 3AM. Someone had to clean up after me. Now, my friend actually went to work that morning at like 8. He was a real athlete. But I doubt he ever got near Mescal or even Tequila after that shit.

[BertKoor]

So I had this Arp Axxe synth. Opened it up and probed with a multimeter to find the PCB trails responsible for the envelope generator. Found it and switched the meter to Amps, curious to see the actual current flow. The short-cirquit I made by probing blew up the EG: end of the AXXE.

So I went to this jam session, and I was the only one to bring an amp. Stupid me allowed the whole posse to plug in to my London City valve top, never thought that a few hours of the amp running four inputs simultaneous set at level 11 could send the final transformer to heaven: end of the London City amp head.

In both cases I might have smoked certain substances which influenced my judgemental capacities.

[jancivil]

Man, mosta y'all is

[chaosWyrM]

this one time, at band camp...

[ghettosynth]

this one time, at band camp...

Flute available, cheap, one end smells a bit funny.

[aciddose]

I've heard lots of stories about stuff that goes down at band camp. It just made me wonder... Do you guys ever play any music at band camp?

"***k no! Are you nuts? Who would play music at band camp? That's so lame. "