I played guitar in my high school's jazz band and we would have end of the semester concerts. In my final year/concert we were going to play Chameleon (Herbie Hancock) as our closer. Given the nature or the song, the jazz band conductor gave me permission to use both an overdrive and wah pedal. That was big news for your boy, suhrshredelot, I was going to tear my solo section up with my zakk wylde overdrive and wah pedals. I was going to end my HS jazz career with a 'banger.' The concert went well until it was my turn to play a solo on Chameleon. I'm excited and really feeling it. I switch on my overdrive, initiate the wah pedal and boom my guitar/amp is picking up the local baseball game. For the entire duration of my solo my novice ass was trying to play over a baseball game and fix my pedals. I could of just turned off the pedals and would have been fine but panicked which resulted in a plethora of rookie mistakes.
I had a very similar situation the first year of university. Some friends decided to take me to a jam session cause they heard I liked jazz. I went and we started with some pop songs and I was doi g well even by ear. Then some dudes in their mid 40s came in with tube combos and worn out instruments. They started with an improv over a typical 12 bar and after a min of warning up stopped and asked if any of us wanna play some jazz and of course my friends pushed me to the stage. Now the problem part. At age 18-19 to me jazz meant Frank Gambale, Allan Holdsworth and Chick Coreas electric band. And of course they wanted to play standards and started the call out with either Cantilope Island or Donna Lee which big shock I didn't know. To make matters even worse I had down tuned my guitar during the pop segment because the singer was struggling to sing the original keys and I didn't feel like transposing on the spot. So even when I started figuring out the chords I would get messed up cause of the tuning. I played maybe 3 very out of place chords in the beginning and then stood there for the remaining 3 min. After it ended I unplugged my guitar and went to my friends the most embarrassed I've ever been. What hurt the most was when one of them tried to tell me it sounded OK.
The (now former) drummer of the band I play in had got a girlfriend about 6 months ago. This drummer was also one of those people who would complain about not having enough money but would also go out on a night out the night before gig day and get very drunk and by hungover for most of the gig day. We kept on telling him he shouldn't do this, but ignored us. He then had an epiphanous moment where he made a decision a few weeks before this gig that after this gig, he would leave the band. Night before this gig we were playing at Scruffy Murphy's supporting this Russian band (who were awful, but we were good friends with the promoter). The drummer goes out on a night out with his girlfriend, in a drunken stupor falls over onto his girlfriend and sprains her ankle. They did not go to the hospital until 2pm on the day of the gig, and we were supposed to be at the venue for 5pm to set up. At which point he said, "Guys I'm not going to be able to make it." We had no replacement available 3 hours before a gig, and we had no drum backing tracks (which is a different story all together). The only thing we could do is play a 7 song set with no drummer!!!!!
Pub gig upstairs in venue in Surrey. First song almost over, so decided to do a Sting-like leap to signal the end of the tune (most unlike me). Timed my leap perfectly, song ended, lights go down. Lights up for the next song sees me with the head-stock of my bass through the tile of the low ceiling, trying to get it free. Second song commences, bass is freed, but snowing ceiling tile for the next couple of songs, Not surprisingly, never got another gig there.
Many years ago I played 'lead' for a guy in our acoustic duo and we were reasonably successful for a couple of years but, as many acts do, it ran its course and we decided to give a final show for a home crowd. It was well advertised and sold out and we got some local bands to come support us and make a kind of party of it. I may have made more of a.prty of it than intended as I was aware during the support acts I was getting kind of tipsy as more and more drinks were being bought for us...I did realise that my partner was taking soft drinks but I just thought sod it I can cope and it was time for our hour and a half set to round off the evening. Now we did kind of acousticy chilled Dave Matthews style stuff and the pair of us worked really well off each other so we were often able to go into impromptu jams during a set which I loved and about half way through the set my favourite tune to play was next. It was kind of a dark country tune that I did this really nice minor solo over and was really proud of and always got a great reaction from the crowd so I was feeling quite hyped about our last performance of it...... I was aware that the sound was a bit off in the monitors but I found the groove and did my thing and when my solo came up I went for it and afterwards my singer announced that I was going to now go and sit down and sober the fuck up.......😳 I did as I was told and he finished the gig himself and kind of glowered at me on several occasions but he finished on a high and came up and shook my hand and gave me a hug afterwards and whispered in my ear to watch the video of the gig that our mate had been doing and specifically that song as it took him all his patience and will to not physically punch me on stage apparently. I was a bit shocked and felt terrible and left him to enjoy his final gig with the crowd. A few days later I clicked up the courage to watch the filming and almost died in horror...... While I felt a bit 'tipsy' it was obvious in the video I was bladdered but in all fairness my noodling and chords were near enough right and in time for the most part with the odd mistake that I don't think the crowd would have noticed until that one song..... I realised before it started and watched in horror as I placed my capo on fret three instead of two.......and played in a completely different key to him. Bad enough throughout the verses and stuff and I could see he's turning his volume up and the looks he's firing at me, trying to catch my attention while I'm.obliviously banging out of key and then he tries to get the sound guy to turn me down with just looks of pleading desperation but then comes the solo.......😖 I was aware that he was making some random ooohs and aaahs while I was playing and rocking out my completely out of pitch and behind the beat solo but just thought he gotten caught up in the moment but oh my god it sounded awful......I could see he tried to do a Westlife key change sort of thing to get somewhere close to what I was playing but he had a particular way of playing guitar and hated bar chords so would play all these open chords that he could 'flutter' with and he didn't actually know what chords he was playing so the whole song descended into farce with him singing the last verse and chorus with just me playing (I didn't even notice he'd stopped playing) but fingers weren't even finding normal chords so this mid set anthem sounded utter utter pish. I've never been so embarrassed......at the gig I was completely unaware of how bad I was playing but on watching it back I almost gave up there and then. The camera caught the looks of pain and confusion and disgust in the audience while.im there on stage thinking I'm some acoustic guitar god 😖 Needless to say, I don't drink at gigs anymore.......🙄
AIr conditioning in the club went out in the height of a Minnesota summer when it was sweltering out and I was under hot stage lighting wearing my trademark "all black" stage outfit: black jeans, black sweatshirt, black trench coat and white basketball shoes. I nearly DIED onstage and apparently during my extended solo the rest of the guys thought I was so on fire they kept up the rhythm and wouldn't stop the tune so I could get a break. At some point I removed the trench and rolled up my sleeves and the entire time this was going on my middle and bridge pickups opted to die on me and I was stuck on the neck pickup the entire gig. I think I still have a recording of this gig somewhere. At some other gig (I believe there's a recording) where a big mean tough guy had one of those vuvuzela horn deals that they blow at soccer games and the bouncers were too afraid to throw him out. I believe nearly every song had a bad Miles Davis impersonation in it somewhere. Oy. Those are the two that come to mind.
Was playing in a classic rock band and we took a booking through an agent to play a 50th birthday party. Great, we thought. Our perfect demographic. Got to the gig and it turned out it was a 50th wedding anniversary. And they clearly didn’t marry young. That was a long night for everybody. We left the stage to the sound of our own footsteps that night...
Played a gig solo with backing tracks, backing tracks became corrupted, couldn't hear through the monitors (wasn't any!), so thought I was having tuning and timing issues, wouldn't be so bad except I was singing too. People were wincing, I was wondering what was going on. By the 5th song I gave up and just ripped a solo then called it quits. Never again, and certainly not worth the £30 fee!
It’s not a gig, but I had a very embarrassing situation when I tried to jam with some guys for the first time. I started playing guitar in 1990. I had a bunch of very heavy rack effects and a rack mounted amp with a couple of half stack cabinets that equaled a 4X12 in size. I had that gear for a long time. Fast forward to 2001. I had been taking a lot of lessons and practicing diligently, and I thought I was ready to jam. I put up a profile on a website looking for people to jam with. I got a call from a drummer who said he had a rehearsal space in his basement and that he had a bass player lined up to jam with. I showed up at his house with my massive rig, which he and the bass player helped me to haul downstairs while shaking their heads and exchanging looks. I pulled out my guitar and hooked it up to my tuner, which was a battery powered Boss tuner about the size of a brick (there were no headstock tuners at the time, at least not that I was aware of). I plugged my guitar into it and began to tune. My guitar had a Floyd Rose system on it. As I tuned it, the guitar kept getting more and more out of tune, and the tremolo bridge started lifting off of the body. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. After an embarrassing call to my guitar teacher to try to figure out what was happening, I realized that the tuner had been switched into some alternate tuning mode. I didn’t even realize that it had selectable modes. I finally got it switched back to standard tuning and got the guitar tuned. All the while the drummer and bass player were exchanging more glances and sighing. In my profile on the jam website I had written that I was looking to play classic and prog rock. I listed bands like Rush and Kansas as influences. The guys told me to start playing something and they would join in. I started playing “Tom Sawyer” and we got through the first half. They stopped playing and asked me if I had any original riffs and asked for something heavier. I played an 80s metal style riff that I had come up with and then the bass player started talking about Slipknot and other really heavy bands. We slogged through some stuff and called the jam session quits pretty quickly. Both of those musicians were way out of my league, and looking to play a completely different style of music from what I was playing. They never called me back to jam again, lol. I still remember that day in horror.
I played for 2000 people at a concert hall a couple of nights ago. Solo classical guitar number, completely fell off the first 8 bars. Piano had to come and save me 😂 NIGHTMARE
My very first gig. Playing for a group of close friends so it was a little more of a comfortable setting. The was back in the heyday of the folk bands and soloists (James Taylor, etc.) Premiered my singing... that;s what convinced me to become strictly an instrumentalist.
I've had my fair share of playing to empty bars with the only audience being the people you brought, so not counting those times, nor the times I've just completely blanked on a part, because usually I can laugh those times off. No, I personally haven't had a show quite like that, but in my time, I've had a few interesting shows. I've had people get glassed (broken bottle stab in the face), I've had the venue turn into a salsa dancing class as soon as we loaded off stage, I've had the singer walk out as soon as he could which was half way through the last song because his ex was in the crowd, I had the unfortunate event of someone passing away at one of my shows years ago.
I’ve enjoyed all my gigs but... there was one, I was playing in a metal band. One of those smaller gigs when everyone was in a band. Crowd standing back arms crossed instead of moshing etc. some guy picks up a chair and sits right down the front. Clapping sarcastically and being an ass. My blood boiled. Then he puts his sloppy beer on my pedal board. I came so close to kicking his head off from my vantage point of the stage. So. Close. Willed myself to ignore him. After the show no one else in the band seemed to notice. Wow. Just glad I didn’t tee off, lol.
someone who can help me decide wich amp to get as my first one? considering getting a vox ac10 or katana mk2, im a fan of mac demarco, daughter, ben howard etc. so indie/alternative/math rock/ post rock/ ish
Hey, really enjoy your channel. You should maybe think about starting a second channel, either a Guitarsehole Podcast or Levi Clay 2 account where you upload specific clips from episodes of the podcast. I like watching the show, but clips tend to get a fair amount of views and are, in my opinion at least, totally respectable. Might get your word out to more people, attract more people to the main show/channel. Keep up the good work.
I stood in , many years ago, for a Gig, All Covers and Blues, I knew the Set List pretty much ... After 1st song, I queried to Singer, 'What 'Key' is it in' ? .. he said 'B' .... I thought he said 'C' ... bass player shouted, what Key, i said 'C' ( bassist thought i said 'G' ) The Keyboard player, said 'What Key' so i said 'C' ... he thought i said 'E' ... so like you, Drummer counts in, a 1, 2, a 1,2,3,4 .... **Clang** ! We were all looking at each other, ....Was a Classic !
I played guitar in my high school's jazz band and we would have end of the semester concerts. In my final year/concert we were going to play Chameleon (Herbie Hancock) as our closer. Given the nature or the song, the jazz band conductor gave me permission to use both an overdrive and wah pedal. That was big news for your boy, suhrshredelot, I was going to tear my solo section up with my zakk wylde overdrive and wah pedals. I was going to end my HS jazz career with a 'banger.' The concert went well until it was my turn to play a solo on Chameleon. I'm excited and really feeling it. I switch on my overdrive, initiate the wah pedal and boom my guitar/amp is picking up the local baseball game. For the entire duration of my solo my novice ass was trying to play over a baseball game and fix my pedals. I could of just turned off the pedals and would have been fine but panicked which resulted in a plethora of rookie mistakes.
hahaha what did your band conductor say?
@@LeviClay He didn't say anything, he just shot me a look of confusion/disappointment.
I had a very similar situation the first year of university. Some friends decided to take me to a jam session cause they heard I liked jazz. I went and we started with some pop songs and I was doi g well even by ear. Then some dudes in their mid 40s came in with tube combos and worn out instruments. They started with an improv over a typical 12 bar and after a min of warning up stopped and asked if any of us wanna play some jazz and of course my friends pushed me to the stage. Now the problem part. At age 18-19 to me jazz meant Frank Gambale, Allan Holdsworth and Chick Coreas electric band. And of course they wanted to play standards and started the call out with either Cantilope Island or Donna Lee which big shock I didn't know. To make matters even worse I had down tuned my guitar during the pop segment because the singer was struggling to sing the original keys and I didn't feel like transposing on the spot. So even when I started figuring out the chords I would get messed up cause of the tuning. I played maybe 3 very out of place chords in the beginning and then stood there for the remaining 3 min. After it ended I unplugged my guitar and went to my friends the most embarrassed I've ever been. What hurt the most was when one of them tried to tell me it sounded OK.
The (now former) drummer of the band I play in had got a girlfriend about 6 months ago. This drummer was also one of those people who would complain about not having enough money but would also go out on a night out the night before gig day and get very drunk and by hungover for most of the gig day. We kept on telling him he shouldn't do this, but ignored us. He then had an epiphanous moment where he made a decision a few weeks before this gig that after this gig, he would leave the band.
Night before this gig we were playing at Scruffy Murphy's supporting this Russian band (who were awful, but we were good friends with the promoter). The drummer goes out on a night out with his girlfriend, in a drunken stupor falls over onto his girlfriend and sprains her ankle. They did not go to the hospital until 2pm on the day of the gig, and we were supposed to be at the venue for 5pm to set up. At which point he said, "Guys I'm not going to be able to make it." We had no replacement available 3 hours before a gig, and we had no drum backing tracks (which is a different story all together). The only thing we could do is play a 7 song set with no drummer!!!!!
Pub gig upstairs in venue in Surrey. First song almost over, so decided to do a Sting-like leap to signal the end of the tune (most unlike me). Timed my leap perfectly, song ended, lights go down. Lights up for the next song sees me with the head-stock of my bass through the tile of the low ceiling, trying to get it free. Second song commences, bass is freed, but snowing ceiling tile for the next couple of songs, Not surprisingly, never got another gig there.
hahahaha
Many years ago I played 'lead' for a guy in our acoustic duo and we were reasonably successful for a couple of years but, as many acts do, it ran its course and we decided to give a final show for a home crowd. It was well advertised and sold out and we got some local bands to come support us and make a kind of party of it.
I may have made more of a.prty of it than intended as I was aware during the support acts I was getting kind of tipsy as more and more drinks were being bought for us...I did realise that my partner was taking soft drinks but I just thought sod it I can cope and it was time for our hour and a half set to round off the evening.
Now we did kind of acousticy chilled Dave Matthews style stuff and the pair of us worked really well off each other so we were often able to go into impromptu jams during a set which I loved and about half way through the set my favourite tune to play was next. It was kind of a dark country tune that I did this really nice minor solo over and was really proud of and always got a great reaction from the crowd so I was feeling quite hyped about our last performance of it......
I was aware that the sound was a bit off in the monitors but I found the groove and did my thing and when my solo came up I went for it and afterwards my singer announced that I was going to now go and sit down and sober the fuck up.......😳
I did as I was told and he finished the gig himself and kind of glowered at me on several occasions but he finished on a high and came up and shook my hand and gave me a hug afterwards and whispered in my ear to watch the video of the gig that our mate had been doing and specifically that song as it took him all his patience and will to not physically punch me on stage apparently.
I was a bit shocked and felt terrible and left him to enjoy his final gig with the crowd.
A few days later I clicked up the courage to watch the filming and almost died in horror......
While I felt a bit 'tipsy' it was obvious in the video I was bladdered but in all fairness my noodling and chords were near enough right and in time for the most part with the odd mistake that I don't think the crowd would have noticed until that one song.....
I realised before it started and watched in horror as I placed my capo on fret three instead of two.......and played in a completely different key to him.
Bad enough throughout the verses and stuff and I could see he's turning his volume up and the looks he's firing at me, trying to catch my attention while I'm.obliviously banging out of key and then he tries to get the sound guy to turn me down with just looks of pleading desperation but then comes the solo.......😖
I was aware that he was making some random ooohs and aaahs while I was playing and rocking out my completely out of pitch and behind the beat solo but just thought he gotten caught up in the moment but oh my god it sounded awful......I could see he tried to do a Westlife key change sort of thing to get somewhere close to what I was playing but he had a particular way of playing guitar and hated bar chords so would play all these open chords that he could 'flutter' with and he didn't actually know what chords he was playing so the whole song descended into farce with him singing the last verse and chorus with just me playing (I didn't even notice he'd stopped playing) but fingers weren't even finding normal chords so this mid set anthem sounded utter utter pish.
I've never been so embarrassed......at the gig I was completely unaware of how bad I was playing but on watching it back I almost gave up there and then. The camera caught the looks of pain and confusion and disgust in the audience while.im there on stage thinking I'm some acoustic guitar god 😖
Needless to say, I don't drink at gigs anymore.......🙄
AIr conditioning in the club went out in the height of a Minnesota summer when it was sweltering out and I was under hot stage lighting wearing my trademark "all black" stage outfit: black jeans, black sweatshirt, black trench coat and white basketball shoes. I nearly DIED onstage and apparently during my extended solo the rest of the guys thought I was so on fire they kept up the rhythm and wouldn't stop the tune so I could get a break. At some point I removed the trench and rolled up my sleeves and the entire time this was going on my middle and bridge pickups opted to die on me and I was stuck on the neck pickup the entire gig. I think I still have a recording of this gig somewhere. At some other gig (I believe there's a recording) where a big mean tough guy had one of those vuvuzela horn deals that they blow at soccer games and the bouncers were too afraid to throw him out. I believe nearly every song had a bad Miles Davis impersonation in it somewhere. Oy. Those are the two that come to mind.
Was playing in a classic rock band and we took a booking through an agent to play a 50th birthday party. Great, we thought. Our perfect demographic. Got to the gig and it turned out it was a 50th wedding anniversary. And they clearly didn’t marry young. That was a long night for everybody. We left the stage to the sound of our own footsteps that night...
Played a gig solo with backing tracks, backing tracks became corrupted, couldn't hear through the monitors (wasn't any!), so thought I was having tuning and timing issues, wouldn't be so bad except I was singing too. People were wincing, I was wondering what was going on. By the 5th song I gave up and just ripped a solo then called it quits. Never again, and certainly not worth the £30 fee!
It’s not a gig, but I had a very embarrassing situation when I tried to jam with some guys for the first time. I started playing guitar in 1990. I had a bunch of very heavy rack effects and a rack mounted amp with a couple of half stack cabinets that equaled a 4X12 in size. I had that gear for a long time. Fast forward to 2001. I had been taking a lot of lessons and practicing diligently, and I thought I was ready to jam. I put up a profile on a website looking for people to jam with. I got a call from a drummer who said he had a rehearsal space in his basement and that he had a bass player lined up to jam with. I showed up at his house with my massive rig, which he and the bass player helped me to haul downstairs while shaking their heads and exchanging looks. I pulled out my guitar and hooked it up to my tuner, which was a battery powered Boss tuner about the size of a brick (there were no headstock tuners at the time, at least not that I was aware of). I plugged my guitar into it and began to tune. My guitar had a Floyd Rose system on it. As I tuned it, the guitar kept getting more and more out of tune, and the tremolo bridge started lifting off of the body. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. After an embarrassing call to my guitar teacher to try to figure out what was happening, I realized that the tuner had been switched into some alternate tuning mode. I didn’t even realize that it had selectable modes. I finally got it switched back to standard tuning and got the guitar tuned. All the while the drummer and bass player were exchanging more glances and sighing. In my profile on the jam website I had written that I was looking to play classic and prog rock. I listed bands like Rush and Kansas as influences. The guys told me to start playing something and they would join in. I started playing “Tom Sawyer” and we got through the first half. They stopped playing and asked me if I had any original riffs and asked for something heavier. I played an 80s metal style riff that I had come up with and then the bass player started talking about Slipknot and other really heavy bands. We slogged through some stuff and called the jam session quits pretty quickly. Both of those musicians were way out of my league, and looking to play a completely different style of music from what I was playing. They never called me back to jam again, lol. I still remember that day in horror.
I played for 2000 people at a concert hall a couple of nights ago. Solo classical guitar number, completely fell off the first 8 bars. Piano had to come and save me 😂 NIGHTMARE
My very first gig. Playing for a group of close friends so it was a little more of a comfortable setting. The was back in the heyday of the folk bands and soloists (James Taylor, etc.) Premiered my singing... that;s what convinced me to become strictly an instrumentalist.
I was obsessed with the idea of doing harmony vocals with my band... a LONG time before I was actually capable of doing them... 😂
I've had my fair share of playing to empty bars with the only audience being the people you brought, so not counting those times, nor the times I've just completely blanked on a part, because usually I can laugh those times off. No, I personally haven't had a show quite like that, but in my time, I've had a few interesting shows. I've had people get glassed (broken bottle stab in the face), I've had the venue turn into a salsa dancing class as soon as we loaded off stage, I've had the singer walk out as soon as he could which was half way through the last song because his ex was in the crowd, I had the unfortunate event of someone passing away at one of my shows years ago.
I’ve enjoyed all my gigs but... there was one, I was playing in a metal band. One of those smaller gigs when everyone was in a band. Crowd standing back arms crossed instead of moshing etc. some guy picks up a chair and sits right down the front. Clapping sarcastically and being an ass. My blood boiled. Then he puts his sloppy beer on my pedal board. I came so close to kicking his head off from my vantage point of the stage. So. Close. Willed myself to ignore him. After the show no one else in the band seemed to notice. Wow. Just glad I didn’t tee off, lol.
my worst experience was my entire "career" as a "musician"
someone who can help me decide wich amp to get as my first one? considering getting a vox ac10 or katana mk2, im a fan of mac demarco, daughter, ben howard etc. so indie/alternative/math rock/ post rock/ ish
Hey, really enjoy your channel. You should maybe think about starting a second channel, either a Guitarsehole Podcast or Levi Clay 2 account where you upload specific clips from episodes of the podcast. I like watching the show, but clips tend to get a fair amount of views and are, in my opinion at least, totally respectable. Might get your word out to more people, attract more people to the main show/channel. Keep up the good work.
I stood in , many years ago, for a Gig, All Covers and Blues, I knew the Set List pretty much ... After 1st song, I queried to Singer, 'What 'Key' is it in' ? .. he said 'B' .... I thought he said 'C' ... bass player shouted, what Key, i said 'C' ( bassist thought i said 'G' ) The Keyboard player, said 'What Key' so i said 'C' ... he thought i said 'E' ... so like you, Drummer counts in, a 1, 2, a 1,2,3,4 .... **Clang** ! We were all looking at each other, ....Was a Classic !
from blues to jazz at the drop of a hat
@@LeviClay For a minute i sounded like 'Levi Clay'
Nice shirt! :)