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Yeah, it could be "that gal", but that question was addressed to me last night. Of course, it was after I already was that guy for the evening.

St Louis Low Brass Collective Gala Concert. Commissioned piece by Matt Harris, world premiere. I'm walking out with my Martin, dead center stage the bell comes off. I had the horn in my left hand, BBC rest and music in the right. Managed to hand onto the bell somehow, then the guy next to me grabbed it, and went on fine.

Next tune, a funk/hiphop adaptation of St Louis Blues. About a minute in, my lower first valve slide falls out. I didn't realize it until I heard a fart come out of my first valve. It took me a bit to grab the slide, put it back in, and then find my place again. In that time, I missed a little solo lick. Meanwhile, the guy next to me (different guy) glanced to see what happened, and lost HIS place.

So, what happened when YOU were that guy? Or gal?...

The mysterious "self-adjusting tuning slide" has happened to me twice.

Once it was during a solo recital (movement 3 of the Cheetham, specifically). My main tuning slide fell out of my horn, onto the stage. I simply sang my part while replacing the slide, then jumped back in playing the tuba when practicable. The choir director asked me to join choir after that performance.

Last weekend my lower third valve slide came out during a quintet concert. It didn't come out all the way, and while I was trying to find which slide was danglin', the rest of the group stopped. It was only 8 bars into the piece, so we just started over. Still embarrassing.

I was playing a 56J as part of a brass quintet for a deploying Army company and the 4th upper slide I was using to clean up 2-4 combos came out.
I tried to stuff it back in for a few seconds, didn't get it, and used 1-3 and 5-2-3 for the rest of the piece.

Years ago when I got my first bass trombone I was playing tuba parts in the community band and I dropped my handslide on the ground in the middle of a song. I started swearing and the only tuba player started laughing and couldn't finish playing. Still swearing I picked it up and put it back on. We missed the last half of the song, my slide was fine, and the director (the other guy's father!) didn't even notice. While the only tuba player for another concert my mouthpiece fell out during a song. Whoops.

I had one of those days; we were playing on the beach for the carol ships event (a parade of ships covered with Christmas lights, that cruise around the harbour, with passengers theoretically singing carols between drinks) and a shower of sparks from the bonfire ignited my down-filled jacket. Fortunately the other tuba player's wife was nearby, and beat out the fire before it really got going. My own wife was with the flutes round the other side of the fire; she saw the action, and wanted to know what I'd done/said to cause offence.

Better than the percussionist in England: when the spotlight hit him he was absent-mindedly counting a rest and picking his nose, and then a few minutes later he stood up to play a bass-drum roll, and fell headfirst through his kit.

The main slide on my Holton is a bit too loose on hot days, and it's dropped a couple of times (and there are little dents on it to prove it ). I discover it when it's too late, of course. But both of those were in larger ensembles where I had some cover to do what needed to be done.

Once, the TubaMeisters were performing Jingle-Bell Rock as a feature at a concert of the San Antonio Municipal Band back when I lived there. Halfway down the first page, I realized that I had not pulled up the second page. That's when you hope that automatic pilot will work. I managed to rummage for the second page and get it on the stand, skipping only a measure here and there, and once operating the valves with my left hand. Had the music demanded my full concentration (or more dexterity than my left hand offers), I'd have been screwed.

Wind-induced incidents don't count. Too numerous.

Rick "also not counting those 'stay between the lines' incidents where theme-park audience distractions required superhuman concentration" Denney

Funny tuba story (in my opinion) .... picture the "sousaphone chair" - the seat with the arms that hold the horn for you...While being filmed at the school concert, on the top riser, the player (not me, fortunately) and the chair (with sousaphone) fell off the back of the riser, disrupting the rear stage curtains and all. Would have been a hit on AFV, if had existed back then. 30+ years and I still chuckle...sorry Danny..

Not me, but a younger student at our school dropped his tuba down an entire set of bleachers at our school concert (about 20 rows of stairs). He's also broken every tuba he's come into contact with A LEAST once.
This was also the same concert where a percussionist dropped a snare drum on the ground right after our director said "...and this piece will feature the percussion section."

Maybe you guys need to get together and form a clown band!

Does watching two trombone players getting into a fight and hitting each other count?

My son (who is in eighth grade) got to play with the high school pep band one evening (it's a way to introduce the soon-to-be-freshman to the high school band). Nice experience for him, hanging out with a sizable tuba section (5 players), and play during a football game. Towards the end of it, two trombone players started arguing. One of them wanted their section to show off the "trombone suicide", the other didn't. It came to blows, but nothing serious (no injuries, no bent slides). The band director, being smart, decided to not intervene himself, but instead sent the drum major over to break it up, which worked good.

Half the spectators in the stands were watching this, instead of watching the football game. The band director must have been terribly embarrassed. I'm sure the principal afterwards had a meaningful discussion with the two young gentlemen in question, and I hope that they have been transferred to ceramics class.

According to another band member we know, the real cause is that the two fellows are always at each other's throat, and the core of their disagreement is over a young lady. But that's the world as seen through the hormones of a high school boy.

When I was younger, I was on a riverboat somewhere in Germany and a small jazz band played on the the upper deck. Between two songs, the tubaplayer managed to drop his mouthpiece in the river. No more tuba on that small cruise.....

I had music fly into the water before, but no mouthpieces, thankfully!

I guess whenever a group of folks get together to do a concert, there is a likelihood something will go wrong. For those that have been the center of this misfortune, we all feel your pain. The only thing that has happened to me has been during our winter concert, when playing the William Byrd Suite, our high school band got terribly confused and mixed up, the director just directed a stop and said, "letter C", and started directing again. Everything went perfect from there. The audience was never the wiser.

Exploding things reminds me of doing "1812" i a park with some rather basic scenography

I didn't know all the music or scene by heart, so I had this cheat Sheet attached to my bell.

Back to explosions....Yes.....we had that too, and one charge went off just beside me completely blinding me

So much for a cheat sheet

StlTubist wrote:I sat next to "that guy" the other evening.

I'd already seen his bell come flying off and I swear that first valve slide didn't just fall out but SHOT outa there and out the corner of my eye it looked to be coming towards ME! I was SCARED! I wasn't just distracted, I was looking to get AWAY from the exploding (500 lb.) Martin next to me!

I was happy to be able to play ANYTHING at that point and it turned out to be a nice little foreshadow of what the REST of the group played 2 bars later...

But nobody was paying any attention to ME. They were all watchin' ole Eupher rasslin' with that big ole Martin monster!

It may have been the highlight of the evening!!

They simply weren't interested in you. Serves you right.

opus37 wrote:I guess whenever a group of folks get together to do a concert, there is a likelihood something will go wrong. For those that have been the center of this misfortune, we all feel your pain. The only thing that has happened to me has been during our winter concert, when playing the William Byrd Suite, our high school band got terribly confused and mixed up, the director just directed a stop and said, "letter C", and started directing again. Everything went perfect from there. The audience was never the wiser.

That sort of thing can also happen in professional groups. In 1963, my wife and I were attending a San Francisco Symphony concert in which Josef Krips was conducting a Mozart symphony. The piece apparently had not been rehearsed, leaving limited rehearsal time to a big-scale work by a modern composer. For some reason (roadmap?), the Mozart symphony broke down and players were lost. In the blink of an eye, Krips stopped the orchestra, called a letter, and resumed conducting the piece to a successful conclusion.

Ace

I was playing a gig in a hot, steamy artists' loft in Brooklyn about five years ago - old, beat up horn, hot day, aggressive playing, and the valve paddles and linkage came completely unsoldered from the horn. It was a conducted improvisation, and the conductor cued me for a solo right then and there. Twice, since I didn't come in the first time (of course).

Luckily, the hosts were sculptors. They rigged up my tuba with some sculptor's wire, rubber bands and duct tape and it felt like it had never come loose for the rest of the show.

My turn at being that guy was a number of years ago, I was playing with a Brass quartet in a concert setting, and during a fast passage on Trombone I had to go from 4th to 7th position and in my exuberance overshot. outer slide came off, I still had a hold of it but had to put in back on and find my place again.

Concert in the park, long ago. We were playing a couple of marches for warm up. Must have played the first eight, maybe more - got to wondering why it was so monotonous. Bass part, so it must be ok. Actually, bass drum part (never seen another one, before or since).

Hot day at the pool, shirt pulled loose at the waist to let some air in, also let in a yellow-jacket wasp. No way I'm pulling the tuba up to playing position with one of those crawling around in my navel. Missed an entry or two, and attracted a certain notoriety trying to discreetly dislodge the wasp.

I have been that guy several times but the one that sticks in my mind is the following.
I was 16 and in a community youth band that had been asked to participate in a production of the Music Man.
We were the town kids that learn to play and then in the finale Mach through the theatre playing 76 Trombones ending up on the stage.
I missed the final dress rehearsal and on openIng night all went well until the finale marched through got to the stage but missed my mark and the curtain closed behind me, leaving me stage left playing by myself for about 3 bars until I noticed and then had to play hunt the opening to escape.
To make it worse there were classmates in the audience that night so my moment followed me to school the next day