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I took a band course at school where they basically throw a bunch of people together to write, play and perform songs. At the end of every trimester there is a show. At the beginning of our set, halfway through a song, at a point which is mostly just guitar and a little high-hat with me on bass holding everything down, my amp just died. It had been acting up recently, but it never just stopped working. I fiddled with my cords, turned it on and off, unplugged and plugged it back in the power strip. Nothing was working. I slapped the top of it, and bam its on again. I continued cautiously through the rest of the song. sweatdrop

My worst moment on stage was back when I was in a screamo band and my guitarist kept restarting the song every time he messed up. We kicked him out the next day.

get some straplocks or ducttape, that's why it falls off.

yes indeed...duct tape, one of the most useful things on earth

I'll have to get right on that. sweatdrop

I've never really been onstage, but when i was at camp I was playing bass for program called "Eurovision". Ne ways, I was in the middle of a bass solo when i started jumping around, i guess the bouncing or something loosend a screw or something, but the strap came right off and my bass went crashing to the floor gonk The neck broke and I had to get a squire as a back up T.T;;

It's actually a practice story, but I too have had a strap break on me. I was using an old guitar strap with fake leather ends that had worn down quite a bit due to the difference in weight between a guitar and a bass. Well, it broke outright when the guys and I were in the middle of a song, and my hand was at the 12th fret. My hand didn't move, and so the body swung on a downward arc, affected by where my hand was gripping the bass. Therefore, the head was swinging towards my own head. Fast. The tuning peg for the E hit me right on the brow of my left eye, and would have put it out if it had hit my head any lower...

As for worst experiences onstage, there are two to choose from. One would be the time I loaned my bass to someone who was ahead of me in a talent show and he didn't warn me that he has a habit of turning the tone and volume knobs to 0 when he's finished playing, something which was exacerbated by the fact that none of the sound equipment was turned on when we got up there either (never mind we were about the 20th act or so).

The other one was when my best friend (and only permanent band member) scored us our only paying gig ever. He told me that the proprietor of the restaurant wanted us to only play acoustic instruments, and so I got switched from 4-string electric bass to 11-string acoustic guitar (actually 12-string, but one of the pegs is missing). I can play guitar, but fingering an acoustic guitar is hell for me, never mind when it's a fully-strung 12-string. I'd been bugging him about getting a playlist for a couple weeks in advance as well, but he insisted on flying by the seat of his pants, even in spite of the fact that we had an entire week together as part of a church retreat during which to plot all of this. We got back home at around 11am the day of our 5pm gig, and ended up with 2 hours to change, find 12 songs to fill an hour with, and try to memorize the tabs for them. No easy task when 75% of the songs you haven't even seen the music to before.

When we got there, I was a bit annoyed to learn from the owner that it would have been just fine if I'd brought my bass, but let it slide. Frank gave a speech before the first song about how the two of us were glad to be there and such, and an introduction to the first song. Then we played through the first song. Then he makes some final comments about that song, and then comments on the second song before we start it. Repeat this process for a complete set of 12 songs. Factor in that one of those songs was done so badly (due to the aforementioned memorization problems) that Frank mercifully decided to just say screw it as opposed to finishing butchering it. Some of them went well, but there were definitely bad ones in there. Unfortunately, since he won't let me sing within 10 miles of another human being, he had the only mic, and so I couldn't even try to guide him towards just continuing the set, in spite of having to sit and watch the annoyed faces in the crowd as he continued talking...