Musical Cock-Ups

[El_Mayonnaise]

While watching Spock's Beard at High voltage, I noticed something.

Cocking up on stage is great fun.

Seriously, even though the Beard were hitting some real bum notes, dropping sticks, and mis-fingering licks I still had a brilliant time and the cheeky winks and smiles to each other are so much more memorable for it.

I guess it just reminds us that even really talented musicians are still human.

Anyone else have some great experiences of onstage blunders (not him) either of your own band or others?

[Gman]

I'm with you...I actually like bum notes and mistakes at gigs! It gives the musicians a proper chance to smile and have a laugh. All too often bands are taking themselves so seriously they forget to smile or laugh and mistakes give them an excuse to do that.

In my time as a musician I've made more than my fair share of cock ups but two memorable ones:

When playing (and me singing) an Abba track, I forgot to do the second verse so it only lasted about 1.5 minutes.

Me playing and singing Mary's Prayer...went to the middle 8 in the wrong place. Completely threw the rest of the band, no one knew what to do, I looked like a rabbit caught in headlights...eventually after what seemed like an eternity the keyboard player started singing the right bit and everyone got back on track. I was a bag of nerves for the rest of the gig...horrible but oh, how I laugh about it now (not).  

[El_Mayonnaise]

During one of my bands song we have a pause just after the bridge. Normally a hit of the snare would signal the 4 before the next 1 however our guitarist took the snare as the one and everything went to pot.

Instead of carrying on though both bass and guitar decided to try it again which left me playing along to nothing and the crowd bewildered.

Great times though and smiles all round

[D S]

Best one I've heard was at the Edinburgh Playhouse back in 1990 when I went to see Swedish neoclassical widdle-merchant, Yngwie J Malmsteen.  After the first 10 minutes of watching him sweep-picking and finger-tapping up and down scales, I ceased being impressed and began to get rather bored (yes, less really is more  8-) ).  However, the biggest cheer he got all night was when during a solo spot on a classical guitar (playing a Bach piece I think) he played the most horrible bum-note imaginable.  :lol:   I think us Scots have a secret liking for seeing big egos being deflated!

[E.S.]

I had a nice trainwreck a couple of weeks ago. Did a new song for that show, and for some reason, that keyboard patch was transposed a semitone up. Drummer starts playing the beat, then I start my riff, and the rest of the band comes in. And being a keyboard player, I thought the bass was out of tune, I never have that problem. Took a while to figure out I was the idiot there.

[MTBDude]

I saw Spock's Beard at their one stop North American tour last September.  During the set, Alan walked into his standing acoustic guitar an knocked it over.  It was all good, and the guys joked about it.  Nick said "It adds character marks!"

I too have had my share of cock ups.  I play drum kit at my school's pep band, and being the only person in the rhythm section, anything I do definitely gets noticed.  I played an entire song with a standard eighth-note hi hat rhythm, only to find out the song has a 16th note hi hat rhythm.  I've ended one beat before everyone else and have had other mess ups.

But it's all in good fun.

[gav]

I'll probably be stoned to death for posting this here, but here goes...

I play drums in a pop/rock band and we often do a Prodigy esque version of Bad Romance as our last song in a set.
Basically, one time i had an utter lapse of concentration and decided to go into full on phsycho-end-of-gig-mad-breakdown-destroy-drum-kit-mode after the second chorus!

Everyone was laughing their tits off!! xD

[The Cosmic Lawnmower]

In my previous band we were doing a cover of BOC's 'Don't Fear the Reaper' and got to the part in the middle where there's an instrumental (album version!)... usually everything stops on the big minor chord and the guitar arpeggio heralds the start of the instrumental... however on this one occasion there was the big minor chord then... silence followed by a clearly audible exclamation of "oh fuck it!" from the guitar player, all eyes burned on him, he'd gone completely blank, I had to quietly say "it goes like this" and surreptitiously play the lick, this was enough to stir his memory after which he took up the cudgel again and we seamlessly finished the rest of the song.
Although the silence seemed an age, it was probably only a few seconds... and it was weird as the audience were either very gracious (unlikely) or didn't notice, anyway we got away with it!

Obviously it's still my duty to remind my guitar playing friend of his bout of amnesia on occasions.

[Villuccikeys]

Saw Stratovarius in San Francisco.  Timo completely forgot the words to the last chorus of Eagleheart - despite them being the same words as the last two choruses...  He threw a raspberry and kept going, but it was definitely humanizing.  T'was a good show overall.  Timo grabbed one of the fan's cameras and took a picture of the audience.  I managed to track the guy down and get the picture from him.  I've got it on my facebook.  I'm the one with with the very "musical theatre" snarl going on.

[Drarok]

A few cock-ups spring to mind. Mostly from the same gig every embarrassing detail was captured on the lead guitarist's girlfriend's camcorder...

Both guitarists stopped at one point in the 2nd song of the set. I think we got away with it as they came back in at the right time. I've still no idea to this day why there was that random gap. [listen live]

The singer came in a couple of bars early so the bassist kicked her arse (literally) so she'd shut up.

The lead guitarist snapped a string on his very shiny floyd-rose trem guitar, throwing the whole thing miles out, so he shrugged at us and walked off. It was the last song, and the other guitarist managed a fantastic simile of the expected solo. We didn't even know he'd learnt it! :lol: (I cut the sample waaay short as it goes on a bit) [listen live]

I'm sure there's many others. We played a gig in front of a couple hundred people I don't even remember, which is doubly-worrying as I apparently drove there! :lol:

The band inevitably died to the the lead guitarists conviction that we were gonna "make it", me getting a job 50 miles from home, and the usual band politics. Shame, it was a real laugh when it was good.