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Do the big name acts make cock-ups like us mortals?


leschirons
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One of the reasons that Iron Maiden's Live After Death is a favourite is that a couple of minor fluffs and missed vocal notes are left in. It just emphasises how tight they were in the glory days.

I heard a Chris Wolstenholme interview last year where he said that he allowed himself three mistakes per gig and if he made more, even if they were so minor that no one would notice he knew that he needed to put more hours in.

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[quote name='UglyDog' timestamp='1412604694' post='2570275']
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFdas-kMF74[/media]

The classic Alan Perry/William Gardner Orchestra recording of "Sailing By", as used by BBC radio for their late night shipping forecast, contains a fairly formidable bassfail -- a very [i]very[/i] bum note at 1:54, followed by a bar of "oh god, where am I?" chart-searching silence, and then back on the money.
Once you know it's there, you're listening for it every time.
[/quote]

Now I am worried, how many times have I listened to this (since the early 80s in my case) and enjoyed it, but never noticed the bum note. How bad is my bass playing if I have not noticed this :) No answers please!

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Noddy Holder tries to come in early on the second verse of this song from their film at 1:28 and strangely it's been kept on all of the releases when it could easily be fixed these days.
The knickers routine at the start was lifted straight off Slade's stage act.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ocrw6Mue14

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I saw The Stones this past summer and the key board threw Keith off on the cow bell intro to Honkey Tonk Women.

Mick managed to lead and corrected the error and they got through it.

I thought cool, The Stones make mistakes too.

Blue

Edited by blue
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i bloody well hope so - guess the issue is as the musos get more and more proficient the clangers get less and less noticeable by mere mortals

apparently according to written reports out there (sleeve notes and other iirc), zappa's band never managed to play Ship Arriving Too Late in it's entirety all of them together with no mistakes it was too tricky even for them, the recording on the album is pieced together from multiple performances

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Guest bassman7755

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1412601717' post='2570248']
Used to do this in a covers band and insisted on playing it with the mistake. That's how tragic I am.
You've got to admit that Duck recovers pretty bloody quickly, though. Class.
[/quote]

He was lucky that the chord doesn't change over that transition otherwise it would have crashed and burned.

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[quote name='colgraff' timestamp='1455959919' post='2983900']
I remember seeing a Bowie interview around Serious Moonlight time. In it he mentioned the importance of having everything perfectly scripted for the live show. For EVERY song, there was a contingency plan for fluffs such as his forgetting a line or singing the wrong verse.
[/quote]

That seems a bit of an odd thing to spend time doing. I'd rather concentrate on rehearsing the tunes that are likely to go wrong so that they don't.

Effective rehearsing is an art to itself. I've spent too long in bands who will only play the songs from start to finish. A complete waste of rehearsal time. You should be able to pick up a song just before it crashed and rehearse that same few bars several times so that everyone gets it into their muscle memory.

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[quote name='casapete' timestamp='1412526024' post='2569583']
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg8-2mWfExI[/media]

And this is another beaut- around 2mins 2secs. Tuning issues with bass as well as guitar too.
[/quote]

'tis a great live album, though, isn't it? (I think my mother still has an original copy on vinyl!) There's a few live performances from the late '60s/'70s that are great in spite of the bum notes or forgotten lyrics - The Who at Leeds and the IoW I can almost listen out for the mistakes these days, and Deep Purple's [i]Made in Japan [/i]is a great "warts and all" recording. Nice to hear bands jamming a bit rather than just repeating all the songs verbatim.

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Primal Scream doing "Country Girl" at the 6 Music Festival.

Starts off OK at 58mins in, then all goes horribly wrong at about 58:30 when the bass and keys come in. Cue lots of confused / amused looks back and forth across the stage, but they plough on regardless and eventually sort things out (drop capo one fret by the looks of it) during the clap-along bit. Afterwards Bobby G describes it as the "the Sonic Youth tuning...... avant-rock"...

[url="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p03hj15l/the-6-music-festival-2016-primal-scream#group=p03j19ln"]http://www.bbc.co.uk...#group=p03j19ln[/url]

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[quote name='UglyDog' timestamp='1412604694' post='2570275']
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFdas-kMF74[/media]

The classic Alan Perry/William Gardner Orchestra recording of "Sailing By", as used by BBC radio for their late night shipping forecast, contains a fairly formidable bassfail -- a very [i]very[/i] bum note at 1:54, followed by a bar of "oh god, where am I?" chart-searching silence, and then back on the money.
Once you know it's there, you're listening for it every time.
[/quote]

I've never heard that before in all the hundreds of times I have listened to it!

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[quote name='tony_m' timestamp='1455988342' post='2984352']
Primal Scream doing "Country Girl" at the 6 Music Festival.

Starts off OK at 58mins in, then all goes horribly wrong at about 58:30 when the bass and keys come in. Cue lots of confused / amused looks back and forth across the stage, but they plough on regardless and eventually sort things out (drop capo one fret by the looks of it) during the clap-along bit. Afterwards Bobby G describes it as the "the Sonic Youth tuning...... avant-rock"...

[url="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p03hj15l/the-6-music-festival-2016-primal-scream#group=p03j19ln"]http://www.bbc.co.uk...#group=p03j19ln[/url]
[/quote]

Bloody guitarists eh? 😉

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[quote name='EliasMooseblaster' timestamp='1455988249' post='2984350']


'tis a great live album, though, isn't it? (I think my mother still has an original copy on vinyl!) There's a few live performances from the late '60s/'70s that are great in spite of the bum notes or forgotten lyrics - The Who at Leeds and the IoW I can almost listen out for the mistakes these days, and Deep Purple's [i]Made in Japan [/i]is a great "warts and all" recording. Nice to hear bands jamming a bit rather than just repeating all the songs verbatim.
[/quote]

Any standout mistakes in particular from leeds or IoW?

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There's a clip (can't find on Youtube) of David Bowie live on Pebble Mill, where he stops the band in the first verse and asks if they can do that again.

They're miming and he thinks he's recording.

It's a toe curling moment while they stand around scratching their arses with the track still playing and the floor manager is telling them they're actually live!

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[quote name='The-Ox' timestamp='1456104089' post='2985485']
Any standout mistakes in particular from leeds or IoW?
[/quote]

There aren't a great many, to be fair - though listen out for Daltrey fluffing the lyrics in one of the later verses of [i]Go to the Mirror [/i]on the IoW performance! (And I seem to remember Townshend misses the high notes at the end of [i]I'm Free [/i]on both versions.)

Edited by EliasMooseblaster
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I had a classical guitar teacher once advise me to practice my mistakes, expanding this by saying that it's all well and good being perfect in practice, but in performance you are more isolated. It is a far better piece of musicianship to drop a howler, but be able to come back in, in time, and on point. It was almost a case of mid way through a piece, deliberately going out of place and then, bringing it back. It sounds a little bizarre, but really works.

I depped in a ceilidh band once where the fiddle player dropped a howler and ended up improvising a new tune on the spot.

I've seen a few "names" completely screw up

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I saw the chills headline V one year and they got completely lost during parallel universe, there was lots of looking around trying to work out where they were going to come back in again etc whilst going round and round with the same riff..
Also, I saw them the first night at Hyde park and Anthony came in too early after the solo in my lovely man, the next night I listened to radio one broadcasted the next night's Hyde park show "live", which was strange as he made the same mistake, again, in the same place the next night! How weird!!
I did a very small corporate show once, for a company which was founded in the 60's. To celebrate an anniversary of their founding, the got lulu in to do a short set, with a full band (only to about 50 or so people).
The band were very good, made up of session musicians including a couple I recognise from other backing bands. However, they had to restart "shout", twice, because lulu got it wrong both times.

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