Times you have made an ass out of yourself irl with music

1) At a pizza place that was playing all things must pass and I said to the chef that it was a great album, all things pass

of course he said that it was all things MUST pass snarkily

2) Working in music retail, was asked for a jazz CD by Pete Fountain, to which I responded if they meant Pee Fountain

3) Retail again, Lil Wayne was a newer artist at the time and I was asked for his music, to which I said did you say Lil Wang

(sorry for lack of quotes, im on a govt computer and it is mixed french-english, so i have no idea how to do that atm)

i guess ilm posts could be included but dunno, in the wild stories more interesting to me

2) Working in music retail, was asked for a jazz CD by Pete Fountain

Simpsons writer Mike Scully, when he appeared on the "Everything's Coming Up Simpsons" podcast, noted that he based the episode where Bart gets caught shoplifting on an experience from his own childhood. When he returned to the store later and the store detective asked him his name, he quickly replied "Pete Fountain" because he had just seen it on one of his mom's records.

I said "Kane West" until like 2007

some of his plastic still say Kayne iirc

thought 10cc was a no wave band until like a year or two ago. not sure if I realized the truth talking to someone or on here. definitely some other stories I have to remember though. Great thread idea

literally all the time

I asked I guy I knew at a bar if he was going to the Yo La Tengo show later that evening, not realizing that members of Yo La were standing there with him (I didn't recognize them)

(He was like, "Yes... meet James")

My gf in high school referenced 'Dear Prudence' one time and because I'd seen the video on 120 Minutes I was all 'oh yeah, that Siouxsie and the Banshees song, cool.'

the one that lingers most in memory is... idk why super cat came up in conversation, but i made a joke about sugar ray's "fly" in response, and someone who was way more into dancehall than i was at the time upbraided me for immediately making a sugar ray joke

I've always been really bad with pronunciation and frequently make a fool of myself because of it - my dad still makes fun of me for pronouncing 'Achilles Last Stand' as 'ah-chi-uhlls' when I was around 10.

I once almost hit Tricky with my car

I totally interrupted Marty Wilson-Piper because I didn't recognize him. As in, I just cut him off.

A DON DADA, FI ALL DJ MARK McGRATH A DON DADA
Run go tell it to yuh little stranger an you dance ah

Does drunkenly falling off the stage while singing 'Let's Go Crazy' at karaoke count?

a couple of months ago (I'd blurbed it) I was talking about the sundays' reading writing and arithmetic and distinctly remember thinking "should I pronounce reading like the city, will they get that/expect that?" I didn't; they did

That is one of my all-time favorite albums and it has never once occurred to me before now that it should be read that way.

It's "Reading," like Reading, PA(?)

I've made so many boners myself but i can't remember any off the top of my head. i do remember a particularly brutal one that someone else made. a hip guy was in a record store chatting to my friend and a guy that worked there when seeing Neu!'s debut album on vinyl on a wall he pointed to it and said "oh is that that franz ferdinand side-project album"

I hope the employee said "yes, yes it is" with a straight face and then sold it to him for $100

I remember telling a friend that "Satisfaction" by the Stones was a cover of a Devo song and then being really adamant about it when called out

was only 12 and didn't know who the Rolling Stones were but still

This was entirely a self-own, but in my younger days I would occasionally just blind buy an album if it was playing in a music store and I really dug what I heard, and I did this one time on the basis of the album which was propped in the little 'Now Playing' easel and had the sad slow realization later in the day that the awesome music I'd heard earlier was most definitely not made by Dream Theater.

It's "Reading," like Reading, PA(?)

Is that pronounced like Reading in Berkshire?

It's pronounced "redding"

xxp lmfao old lunch

I imagine Reading PA is named after Reading, Berks.

this isn't band related but I remember a few years after I moved here (I was 12 or 13), I found an ad in the paper for a record store that looked cool. the store was/is by the water, and it was pouring rain that day, and my dad insisted that I call the store to confirm that they were open. I called, asked, guy said yes, then I stammered something like "oh good, well, you know, I was just wondering, because, you know, it's raining and all..." ....long pause.... "We have a roof!"

Mortifying. Later became friends with that guy, and luckily I'm just young enough to have missed out on the High Fidelity cliche of the asshole record/book store clerk.

I hope the employee said "yes, yes it is" with a straight face and then sold it to him for $100

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, August 22, 2018 10:42 AM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the employee sardonically replied something like "no, it's the debut album by the krautrock band neu!, released in 1972"

well at least he was honest

In or around 1998, I walked into a very hip dance/electronic record store in NYC, and asked if they had the new Portishead single. The clerk was actually very cool about it ("I like them too!"), but I felt like a total dork.

Repeated an amusing anecdote I'd heard a conductor relate about 5 minutes earlier, less amusingly, only to realise he was standing right behind me when I stumbled to the punchline.

can you explain why someone would think it's Franz Ferdinand?

no idea whatsoever. dude was at the time a prominent promoter and on the way to becoming a successful artist and electronic musician so it was very much a faux pas

Aged 21, about a year into my first proper job at a recording studio, the previous night had been a work's Christmas outing, on the way there a colleague gave some of us a lift in his jeep and he was playing New Boots & Panties in the car.

The next morning Ian Dury strolls into the reception to record a voiceover for some commercial and before good sense had time to prevail my mouth went into fourth gear and I blurted out "oh we were just listening to you in the car last night', Dury raises an eyebrow as he looks at me tiredly and gives an imperceptible nod, somewhere between disinterest and acknowledgement of my cretinous conversational gambit, after which I crumble with shock at my Homer Simpson moment.

Asked Karlheinz Stockhausen after a concert of his works (he wasn't directly involved) what he thought of the interpretations. He was not pleased with the question.

(I had a not dissimilar experience with Steve Reich, which shows I never learn.)

Went to see a Death In June / Boyd Rice double-header (yeah I know) at the Clapham Grand in London some time in the 1990s. Got there and the venue was closed up with a sign on the door saying it'd been cancelled because of a bomb threat from the Anti-Nazi League. Some bloke came over and asked if I'd come to see Death In June, I said "yeah...well, Boyd Rice really". He sort of grimaced and started telling me about some alternative meet-up in a nearby pub, at which point I realised that he was actually Douglas P from Death In June and I'd insulted him by proxy. Rather than laughing in his face like I should've I squirmed in embarrassment until he'd finished and got out of there as fast as I could.
And that's how I insulted Douglas P from Death In June, rightly so in retrospect.
PS Anti-Nazi League otm.

XP - Steve Reich is super prickly I've heard, I was amazed how avuncular Stockhausen seemed, the couple of times I saw him talk, I thought it would be the reverse.

can you explain why someone would think it's Franz Ferdinand?

― 5th Ward Weeaboo (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, August 22, 2018 11:07 AM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

band name in the center of an otherwise blank background?

I always new Neu ripped that off from somebody.

No, not 'new Neu', 'knew Neu'. You know.

noo noy

Pretty sure I pronounced Neu 'new' for at least a little while. But making an ass out of myself by mispronouncing words I've read but not heard is an activity which spans far more than just the musical world.

oh, for sure. it's always defensible, IMO

I think I said "Slitbreeze" for a while

I definitely said Jeff Magnum until just a year or two ago. A friend said he never corrected me because he assumed I was saying it that way on purpose to signal my disinterest / dislike in that guys' music, but no

Similar to morrisp's Yo La Tengo story, many years ago I was at a show in Louisville and a lot of local scene people were hanging around. I asked my very well-connected Louisville scenester friend, who had just been giving me the gossip-y rundown of who was cool irl and who was a dick, if "that dude Bundy K Brown is cool," at which point he just sorta gestured to the guy right beside us, who was in fact Bundy K Brown. (He turned out to be cool, fwiw).

Probably a thousand more I'll remember later. We all have these. Great thread idea!

the Neu cover and the cover of the first Franz Ferdinand record look somewhat similar tbf

Great story Eliza

4) when meeting Maria Minerva I drew her a cartoon representation of herself and gave it to her. This story is more my friend making a cock of himself when he said “your set was short, 20 minutes” - to which Minerva said she thought it was long and good enough. She’s also 7 feet tall

5) when meeting agf at the lappetites show I knocked over a chair and tripped as I was so nervous. She seemed stunned someone cared about her music

6) when meeting Wayne Coyne I asked if he was a big Neil young fan. He said he wasn’t and seemed somewhat meh

Once, doing a radio show, I pronounced Phil Ochs' name "Ox." In a record review of the La Bamba soundtrack, working from an unmarked cassette, I complained that the Bo Diddley cover "lacked Bo's sense of menace." It was Bo Diddley himself remaking his own song. Also, I used to get drunk in clubs and act stupid.

once indulged in a very long acid-addled nonsensical rant about Nicaragua whilst trying to perform a gig, then span round and fell off the - admittedly low - stage, backwards

haaa

One time, a very kind and indulgent friend in a band had me up on stage to play a quick recording of my own band as a preview of things to come (note: we never actually wound up playing a show), which involved me thrusting a minicassette recorder at the mic and accidentally recording over a few seconds of a practice tape before correcting my mistake and playing thirty seconds of the exact kind of garbled noise you might expect a microcassette recording of a band to sound like when played through a mic. The crowd went bananas.

Like I still have no idea what anyone involved in that interaction was thinking.

I met someone who knew JG Thirlwell and asked him a series of questions based on the premise that JG Thirlwell and Clint Ruin were two different people. (They are the same person.)

Lots of great and funny stories itt

Thanks for sharing so far everyone

Not me but someone I knew was at a urinal and noticed he was stood next to Bernard Butler, so he decided in the moment to turn to him and say "Thank you for The Asphalt World" which caused him to leave abruptly without saying anything

I still love when I met Autechre after the show around 2001 opening for Tortoise and my budding music critic mind just pieced the limited points of reference I had at the time and I was like "You guys are like Beefheart meets electronica!" and one of them was like "ELECTRONICA'S SHIT, MATE"

sometime around 1999, we were staying at a Days Inn, in Chicago - I think it was at the Empty Bottle, we'd gone to see Brokeback and Chicago Underground Trio (Quartet? not sure) ... anyway, I was floored by their performance, with Noel Kupersmith (double bass) and Chad Taylor (drums).. afterward, they were just sort of standing around and I approached them and blurted out "Do you guys like Sun Ra1!?!?" (I was enthusiastic about Sun Ra)--Jeff Parker gave me this sort of side-eye glance/nod, like i was a pesky insect

too many to remember but one that has stuck with me was in 2000 or so and i was in NC and Britt Daniel was doing a solo set and he started playing a cover of "Love Is Real" and this girl I didn't like much asked me who was singing and I said "I think it's the Turtles?" confidently thinking I was so cool for knowing. It's not the Turtles and my smugness has haunted me.

not who was singing actually -- but who originally wrote/performed the song

At a high school dance, I "ironically" dropped my trousers when the Marky Mark song came on (...I'm semi-embarrassed to admit this, even now). The upshot was that my house keys fell out of my pocket, and were lost somewhere on the cafeteria floor -- I had to call my mom and ask her to leave the front door unlocked for me.

me, age 17, scruffy hardcore kid, finding out about my first hardcore show that I'm actually able to attend:

"oh cool, there's a show tonight with some hardcore band called JFA? Awesome, I just missed seeing Jody Foster's Army in Dallas"

"uh... JFA *is* Jody Foster's Army"

a few months later:

"so some guy named Sam Hain is playing? Who's he?"

"uh, the name of the band is Samhain, it's the singer from The Misfits"

me, age 23 or so, going up to Scrawl and their crew after a show and accosting some guy with a Pussy Galore T-shirt

"I LOVE THEM"

guy, pointing at my Tiny Lights band t-shirt: "we hate them, they screwed us over at a show"

A friend and I snuck back into a JSBX show, after getting kicked out for brown-bagging a beer (we were both under age) ... we were upstairs, in the 21 and over area, and Blues Explosion were playing "Fuck Shit Up" - we had gotten separated, both of us familiar with Now I got Worry, I was singing along, after having some whiskey (possibly my first time--I was fired up, feeling invincible) - the bouncer spotted me, and I leapt off of a 2nd floor balcony, landing on a small (old, abandoned) mixing booth/desk (jutting out of the wall) that overlooked the stage--continued cheering on JSBX "make it fucked up, etc." Then (being chased), I dangled over the side of it--dropping to the floor. Then in handcuffs, and off to jail.. put in a drunk tank, standing room only. This was during Fall of '96

dancing to standard wedding party tunes like it's the greatest dance party ever, every time :')

I'm sure I have several of my own, but two I've witnessed personally that immediately come to mind:

1. At the Hillside Music Festival in Guelph, Ontario about 15 years ago, I was introducing myself to Chris Murphy from Sloan when my friend, not realizing/recognizing who I was talking to, heard "Sloan" and said "oh they're playing? I used to really be into them back in the day!" I didn't catch Murphy's reaction, but that was mostly because I was looking away, mortified.

2. Also about 15 or so years back, Alice Cooper came into the store I used to work at. My boss, thinking he'd make himself look cool (?), addressed him with "Hey, Vince!" (his real name). Cooper just gave him a distinctly "are you fucking kidding me" look. This time, I was more amused than embarrassed.

I already told the story in another thread of how I misspelled Tom Waits’s last name in a letter, and my boss was PISSED.

I feel like “Mr Furnier” would have been okay

xpost

like, even “Vince” is not his actual name afaik

Went to a Mudhoney show in 1990 wearing a Mudhoney t-shirt I bought from the local punk rock record store. The guitarist saw me and told me it was a bootleg shirt and started interrogating me about where I got it.

At a club a woman came over and started talking to me because I had a Superchunk shirt on. We were talking about shows we’d seen but then I mispronounced “Polvo” and she corrected me and then there was awkward silence.

I worked at a bookstore and a group of customers were still browsing after we’d made all the closing announcements and locked the doors. The security guard was just standing back so I went over and in a probably annoyed tone told them we were closed. One of the group turned around and said, “Thank you so much!” It was Erykah Badu.

Wait how do u mispronounce polvo

Pronouncing the L. I think the correct way is like Poy-vo

http://seinfeld.wikia.com/wiki/Dolores?file=Mulva.jpg

:( stupid phone

I have listened to Polvo for 20 years, have seen them live twice, have spoken about them with other fans, and I have never once heard any pronunciation other than POLL-VOE

While stumbling around drunk on campus on the Saturday of the spring weekend of my sophomore year of college, I saw a flyer for a free Hans Joachim Roedelius that had literally just started in the music building. I wasn't super familiar with his music at this point in my life, but knew his name from a couple of Cluster albums I had downloaded off soulseek so I quickly made my way to my dorm room to take a gravity bong rip, convince my roommate to come along, and to grab a couple extra beers for the show. When we arrive at the music building, it isn't exactly apparent where the show is taking place (we are maybe 10-15 minutes past the listed start time by now) as there are no signs, noise, or people pointing the way. I notice a door that looks like it goes into the auditorium where I think it would make sense for it to take place and I loudly throw the door open and bellow "Is this the right door?" to my roommate behind me while I bulldoze into a room where it turns out Roedelius is playing super chill and very quiet slow piano music in front of a projected image of the rainforest. I'm greeted by a chorus of sushes and every eye in the room turning around to disapprovingly look at me as I try to sneak into the empty row in the back without making a larger ass of myself. After a couple minutes of uneventful sitting in the back, I get the great idea that I should crack open one of the beers I brought to keep the party going. The can opening creates a deafening echo throughout the whole hall, which gets accompanied by a considerable amount of laughs from some of the audience so I guess the juxtaposition between my party animal antics and the super peaceful and quiet musical performance was at least amusing to some. Either way, it is honestly one of my favorite show memories of all-time and it goes to show what will happen when you book even the most unlikely musical artists during the biggest party weekend of the year on a college campus.

thats outstanding

party + nathan fielder

Noice.

This is basically unrelated to the topic at hand except that it potentially made SOMEONE look like an ass but that story and mentions of Polvo (which I think, frankly, is pronounced just the way you'd think it was pronounced) reminded me of it so here goes: one time in college, I was walking down the main drag and suddenly I started noticing flyers for a Helium show had been plastered everywhere. No way! Super exciting! This would've been like '97 I guess? None of my friends at the time were hip to them so I was talking them up and getting people to listen to tracks, really trying to drum up excitement in the lead-up to the show. So then it's like maybe a day or two before they're supposed to play and I'm walking back down that main drag and suddenly I started noticing that the flyers plastered everywhere now had the band's name hastily scribbled out with 'OXYGEN' scrawled above.

Lol. They should’ve gone with Argon.

I was onstage playing geetar for a one night cover band in 1999 and we were doing "Jump in the Fire" by Metallica, which me and the bass player had learned while the vocalist was in California.

Before we go to play the song,my friend starts panicking and saying he doesn't know the words, and I dismissively told him that he did, just do it.

He walks out on stage and screams "YEA" over and over for the entire song. On the video you see me laughing so hard I start fucking up the riff, and see 4 people (of like 20) get up and leave

Also i met Jon Schaffer from Iced Earth and asked him dumb questions and he clearly thought i was a tool.

I remember one of the Kaiser Chiefs embarrassed me when I requested Suede at their indie club, Pigs in Leeds. This was probably a year before they made it big. He just gave me this disgusted look and said, "Ugh, we don't play them here". It really did make me feel foolish and how I was I supposed to react to that? Of course, now I look back and just feel embarrassed that I was at the Kasier Chiefs indie club called Pigs in the first place.

I started working in a record shop here in Saint Paul last year. I am constantly making a fool of myself when I'm asked about an artist I don't know that well. Just the other day I got a confused look from someone when I suggested Peggy Lee might be in folk. The main issue is that we have a huge metal section and lots of people who come in specially for that. I really don't know anything about metal. We have an old fashioned system where we have to write down the titles of what we sell. Almost daily, someone will come up to the counter with an album that either does not reveal the artist's name or if it does, it's written in some weird text that is impossible to read. I always feel so self conscious when I either have to ask who it is or just pretend to scribble something down that is kind of close to what I can make out. I really should just study all those Der Weg Einer Freiheit album covers closely so I know them off by heart!

I hung out with Destruction Unit a couple of years ago when Don Bolles from the Germs was playing w/ them. he was really cool but several hours in I take it upon myself to say to him HEY DO YOU LIKE THE DESCENDENTS on the basis that he's mentioned in the lyrics to one of their songs. he's like, am I? uh sure they're OK, much later I realise I was thinking of Darby Crash

c. late 90s I was at an indie club night and asked the DJ to play Sonic Youth while he was playing something by Ciccone Youth (which I hadn't heard at that time). tbh I used to hassle that poor DJ all the time round then because I disliked most of the then-popular indie music i.e. tail-end of Britpop they would play so I was always trying to get them to play "old" indie rock/noise rock/punk, which they would occasionally oblige but they must've got so sick of me.

tbh almost any incidence of asking a DJ in a club to play something falls under the "made an ass out of yourself" heading

A little band I was in recorded a single with Bob Weston at Southern Studios, he was over a the behest of Idlewild, with whom he was recording some demos over at Abbey Rd and we managed to persuade him to stay an extra day and record/mix two tracks for us. He was nice, but obviously a bit burned from a weeks recording, he spied a copy of Mojo magazine in my rucksack, and remarked upon it, I said something like 'yeah, there's a really good article on the Grateful Dead' and he just kinda looked at me and said 'why would I give a shit about the Grateful Dead?' it was a little awkward, dunno why I thought he might.

xp perhaps, think that depends on the night really. not done thing if it's a dance club yeah, but that club had indie/60s/70s/80s nights where requests were encouraged (or at least tolerated)

I also have a Stockhausen story, funnily enough. After a concert of his at the Festival Hall I went up to him and told him how much I'd enjoyed his performance of Hymnen at the same venue years earlier. He said he'd never played Hymnen at the RFH and that the concert I was thinking of was actually at the Barbican. I still think I was right and that it was the RFH, but I wasn't going to argue the toss with Stockhausen over it.

Then there was the time I went to a La Monte Young concert (which this time definitely was at the Barbican) at which there was a Q&A session at the end. I stuck up my hand and asked him why he was refusing to release the Theatre of Eternal Music stuff and wouldn't even give copies to Cale and Conrad. He replied that it was "my music". I still think the old bore was in the wrong but there was a certain amount of nervous tittering when I asked the question and a fair amount of applause at his reply.

that second one is more "badass" than embarrassing on your part

The JSBX story upthread just triggered a memory of minor jackassery. I was super late to CDs, very stubbornly sticking it out with cassettes as long as humanly possible, but I finally relented in '96, and Now I Got Worry was one of the first CDs I bought (if not the first). This would've been just after my freshman year of college and I was staying with my grandparents at the time. So I bought the album early in the day and bummed around doing whatever for the rest of the day and then got back to their place sometime after they'd gone to bed and was excited to hear this new album! Because I was new to the format, I didn't have my own CD player yet, so I threw it into the stereo in their living room, which they mostly only used with the TV and (because they were older) usually kept turned way up. Which didn't occur to me. If you're familiar with the first track on the album, you can probably imagine what happened when I hit play.

another dj story. i was quite pissed at the wedding of a colleague and the music was boring mainstream or something like that. so i asked the dy if he would play "panic" by the smiths. of course he didn't. in the end i tried to punch him but as i was too drunk my fist fortunately missed his head. that war really embarrassing and i am still surprised that my colleague never hold my bad behavior against me.

that was really embarrassing

At last year's office Christmas party, I requested Disco Tits by Tove Lo, which completely cleared the dance floor. The DJ mixed it out halfway through.

Great Roedelius story

I was at a house party once for a couple who had just announced their engagement. Someone (not me) had the bright idea of sticking on Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive", which given the occasion wasn't the most appropriate choice of track.

Alex — at least you didn’t try to literally hang him!

I'm fairly certain I've related this one elsewhere on the board: I went out with friends for karaoke this one time and was so utterly dumbfounded and excited to see Liz Phair's 'Fuck and Run' in the book that only in the midst of singing did I begin to realize the particular context in which I was singing those particular lyrics. And lo, a straight dude's ass did indeed get tweaked in the gay bar on that fine night.

Around the time 'Rated R' came out I did a phone interview with Josh Homme and asked him if he ever thought he'd seen enough of Nick Oliveri's penis and he immediately hung up on me without saying a word.

once while doing karaoke I thought "Danger Zone" was going to be the Gwen Stefani song (which rules) and not the Kenny Loggins song from Top Gun (to be fair I don't give a shit about either Kenny Loggins or Top Gun)

standing in line outside the lounge ax, drunk after dead-end work, super furry animals opening for olivia tremor control. two other kids are stoked about SFA and i badger them about how much better OTC are. SFA proceed to blow OTC off the stage

that Roedelius story is the best

reminds me of the Simpsons episode where the kids are chanting "BAR-TON FINK!! BAR-TON FINK!!"

My friend bought a copy of Same As It Ever Was by House of Pain and I said "oh I know that group!" and started singing "Once in a Lifetime"

Aw, for a second there thought the friend had thought he'd bought a Talking Heads record.

lol my favorite Talking Heads album is "Serve Your Ass Like McEnroe"

I thought "Steppin Out" was a Billy Joel song for years

xp nope, that's what I thought it was, I guess

this thread taught me how to pronounce NEU, yikes...

Frood

I wish there was an upvote feature on this thread so that most mortifying ones could float to the top.
(my favorite so far is morrisp's high school dance story)

i thought i didn't have any of these that i actually felt bad about and then i remembered at a middle school dance where my friends and i surreptitiously arranged to have the standard middle school dance music replaced by something "cool" which i'm guessing was a song from the metallica black album and thrashed around on the dance floor and i'm feeling very embarrassed remembering that

when i was in college the band boyracer was coming through my college town on tour and playing the local coffeeshop/music space. boyracer was one of my favorite bands and i really wanted my band at the time to open for them. however, one of my bandmates couldn't do the date. i still really wanted to open so i said i would play a solo set. i had nothing prepared and played a bullshit "experimental" instrumental set with like a casio keyboard and delay pedals that sounded nothing like my band at the time or anything remotely compatible with boyracer's sound. people were nice about it but i am 100% sure it was terrible and pretentious and annoying.

I opted to stretch to infinity the nervous agony of my first ever slow dance by deciding that the 587-minute-long 'November Rain' should be the score to that particular rite of passage.

irl? 587 minutes? you must have a lot of stamina then.

i prefer the 43,200 minute mix. It lasts the whole month of November.

"Based on a series of novels by Del James"

I thought Styx's "Best of Times" was Billy Joel until like 2 years ago

also spent years trying to remember the title of the "ha ha hoo hoo ha ha hoo hoo ha ha hoo hoo ha ha" song only to realize it was just the ending of "Crimson and Clover"

I tried to do Destiny's Child's Say My Name at a karaoke bar once, failed miserably and made an ass of myself. Partly because not all the lyrics were on the screen, but also because the minimalistic beat meant I could hear my own out of tune voice and so I shrivelled up. Aaahhhhhhhh

a lot of these stories are just the musicians being dicks

Otm. Has anyone told any Jonathan Richman stories yet?

standing in line outside the lounge ax, drunk after dead-end work, super furry animals opening for olivia tremor control. two other kids are stoked about SFA and i badger them about how much better OTC are. SFA proceed to blow OTC off the stage

Just remembered another one: I was 14 or so and hanging at my friend's house after school. We used to listen to the radio and eat cheez-its every single day. her older brother was home that day and "let my love open the door" came on the radio. he knew my friend and i were into music and he'd hang out with us sometimes. this day he asked "do you know who this is?" and i was super sure of myself and said "The Kinks" very confidently, as if the answer was self-evident. Whoops.

Most of my ass-making musical moments revolve around me being wrong but sure of myself, not me actually behaving like an ass.

Not me but someone I was seeing at the time ...we were at a friend's house who worked for drag city hanging out with some folks. a seemingly obvious Beatles song like and your bird can sing or you won't see me came on and my gf said "this is great, who is this?" and rian murphy did a triple take before saying "the beatles??" not that everyone should know every beatles song, but in a room of music nerds it seemed like sacrilege.

I’ve never heard of those songs

I met RM at a thing a few years back, and was a little disappointed in his ‘tude. He was “friendly” but a bit supercilious...

Not me, but a friend of mine used to work in a record store, and his coworker was getting heavily into Can, Neu!, Faust, and Cluster. One day the coworker waited on some German tourists and excitedly asked them, "HEY, DO YOU GUYS LIKE KRAUTROCK?" The German tourists were very confused and possibly offended.

And You Bird Can Sing is a pretty deep cut.

xp Oh, I love stuff like that. I was at a dinner recently where a younger Swedish guy was being pompous, so I decided to subtly troll him by asking his opinion of ABBA. (Of course, it turned out he mainly liked “dance music”... he asked me if I like ABBA, and I said, “Everyone likes ABBA!”)

I wouldn’t normally pull that, but it was time to amuse myself in that scenario.

hanging out backstage at an Urg@ 0verkill show, two friends have pot they intend to sell to band. take hit of friend A’s and momentarily blackout, knees buckling.

the band goes with friend A’s stuff.

my knees hurt for weeks and friend B gives me a hard time to this day.

In high school, a friend and I were at a Pizza Hut and some person or persons played “Love Shack”, which I hated at the time, two or three times on the jukebox. On our way out we put five dollars in the jukebox and played “Kokomo” twenty times.

^^There’s a fantastic John Mulaney bit called “The Salt and Pepper Diner” with a similar theme.

did that with Sister Ray at the Plaza in Madison when CD jukeboxes where a new thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnkrL42R7gk

xps I know And Your Bird Can Sing (I do like that song) but I'm drawing a blank on You Won't See Me tbh. I'm not a Beatles fan really. Occasionally I even tell them to fuck off.

I thought "Let My Love Open the Door" was a Kinks song for years! Feel like you should get half-credit, LL

first time i heard beach house i thought it was a dude singing ;-(

I did too. Until just now.

lol

Just remembered the time I went to a Calvin Johnson show circa 2013. There were maybe 50 people there. He told a story about playing in a bar in the deep south. "Very redneck place... a man came up to me. They were playing '1999.' The man told me in a drawl, 'PLAY RASPBERRY BERET!'... to which I said, 'my friend, 'Raspberry Beret' is the whitest Prince song there is.'" Then I BOOOOOOED very loudly.... crickets.... I yelled "'RASPBERRY BERET' RULES!" ..... silence.... no one else booed.... I left 5 minutes later.

That's a time you were OTM about music and Calvin Johnson made an ass of himself.

I know, I know. It was late anyway.

I was at Napalm Death and when I'm drunk sometimes I yell "Hail Satan" at shows, which is annoying. but usually at shows that make sense, like Deicide. so I did it at Napalm Death and Barney's like "Hail Sata....what?", and my friend told me to shut up.

but then someone shouted something pro-Trump a moment later (it was merely two weeks after the election) and he was spared my ire. then my friend alerted Barney that his fly was open, saving little Barney from a cameo.

*I was spared his ire

i think calvin johnson overheard me make fun of him for wearing the big over-ear ear protectors at a show
i think one of the guys from q and not u overheard me make fun of how he was dressed (i guarantee i was dressed like shit while mocking him to my friends)

I did also once interrupt MC Hammer in the middle of a speech in 2009, where he started a chant that went

"I AM" - crowd: "Hammer"!

and on the third time, screamed "broke!", and the crowd around me erupted. the only time I've ever heckled at a show, mostly cos he was putting in a garbage performance, half-assed

Probably daily tbh

An old roommate of mine (ca 2003) was playing a record and it sounded good, after 3 or 4 songs I said "I like this, who is it?"
She says "This is the White Album by the Beatles???????????????"
me: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Lol

Asked a high fidelity clerk (that kind) why he didn’t play John Fahey in the store. He laughed and saiid cuz everyone would buy it

lol that would make pretty good movie dialog

Scene; An 'indie disco' in small town North of England, summer 1992

Me (to local DJ) Alright mate who's this song by *gestures at speakers*, is it Gallon Drunk?
Local DJ: No it's *glances at my Morrissey T.shirt*.. Morrissey
Me *GAAH*

FIN

Me, In Germany, to venue worker at after-show club night: "Is this music schlager?"
Her: "No, it's house."

Thus proving that I don't know the difference.

Once had a heated, stand up, righteous argument that in the air bass episode of Alan Partridge he was miming to a Japan song and not a Gary Numan song, oops.

I bet there's some schlager/house crossovers.

i lost a fiver to my friend in a bet because I said Feist's version of 'Limit To Your Love' was a cover of James Blake. I think I was getting mixed up with that Jose Gonzales cover of 'Heartbeats'

i want to know which morrissey track, piscesx!

During my senior year of college a cute neighbor knocked on my door and told me turn down my music. I was playing ‘Our House’ and ‘Burning Down The House’ on repeat for at least an hour.

Me, In Middle America to DJ at shitty hipster club: "Is this dubstep"
Her: "No, there'sa coffee machine malfunctioning in the kitchen"

Me: i'd like to suck on some of that

During my senior year of college a cute neighbor knocked on my door and told me turn down my music. I was playing ‘Our House’ and ‘Burning Down The House’ on repeat for at least an hour.

lol i was gonna say i had a neighbor like that during the 1 year i lived in a college dorm who listened to songs on repeat and i had to ask him to stop.
songs included:
Sarah McLachlan "Possession"
Corey Hart "Sunglasses at Night"
Depeche Mode "Personal Jesus"

we slept separated only by a cinderblock wall
i thought i was going to lose my mind

listened to songs on repeat and i had to ask him to stop.
songs included:
Sarah McLachlan "Possession"

this is me whoops

In the late ‘90s, I was riding the NYC subway; a large, stony-faced guy was sitting next to me, staring straight ahead, with hip-hop beats leaking out from beneath his headphones. Normally, I would never speak to a stranger on the subway (who would?) — but these beats sounded so cool, so exotic, I had to know what he was listening to!

I timidly tapped the fellow on the shoulder; he lifted one headphone and looked over at me.

“Uh, hey man... what are you listening to?”

He mumbled something in response I couldn’t make out. “Sorry?,” I asked.

He repeated himself, just a bit louder —

“Puff Daddy.”

incredible

Very shortly after I started buying music on vinyl, I went to Gramophone Records in Chicago - an institution in the city and for house music djs - I picked out a stack of pretty good finds, mostly underground things that the (intimidating) guy working there approvingly started chatting with me about for a bit. I brought them over to the listening station and put one of the 12"s on but the dial (knob?) of the turntable had come off and, rookie I was, I didn't know how to switch it on. I had a brief moment of panic before I pretended to fuss around with it, drawing the guy's attention. I then put on the headphones and pretended to listen to it (it wasn't spinning, but I didn't care, kind of nodded my head to a pretend beat) for a few seconds. I then pretended to fuss with it some more, then really nonchalantly took out my phone pretending to check stuff. After another few seconds the guy walked over and really kindly - without making too much of it - leaned in and flicked it on, bringing the turntable to life.

It was very awkward. I ended up buying a couple of extra things out of embarrassment. He was very nice about it though.

I've had so many days of shame and terror, it's hard to pick out one.

Playing live in bands, I do seem to have a knack for completely fxxxing up my instrument on a show, usually right literally at the first note of a set. I had a strap break, which led to me playing half the set on my back and then ending up in some type of duct tape night mare... I have had the top string on my bass snap twice right after starting a tune, at least once on the very first note of a gig. Ran into a stage diver on stage playing a punk show (with Avail and Split Lip) and had my bass tuning key fly back and cut my face nearly taking out an eye. Although that one was pretty cool as this borrowed white Pbass ended up with a bunch of blood on it, which was pretty OG.

Around 2010 Tom Tom Club booked a tour and I bought a ticket to see them a few weeks in advance. On the appointed evening I showed up with my ticket and stood toward the back through a band that was playing uncomfortably familiar music and which seemed to be going on much too long for an opening act. The crowd seemed too young and bore the wrong cultural signifiers (Hot Topic, let's say) for TTC fans. But I just stood there and endured the whole thing anyway, feeling ever more out of place as it went on and increasingly suspecting that Tom Tom Club would not appear. Finally the show ended, and I went to the ticket counter, where it was explained to me that TTC had cancelled a while back and I had seen a Sublime tribute band. I did not feel, to borrow a phrase, like a Genius of Live.

The club should have said something when you handed over your ticket.

Yeah, I thought that too! I made a sort of faltering attempt to ask for my money back and they were considering it, weighing the fact that I'd stayed through the whole show, but I felt so mortified I didn't feel like lingering to pursue it.

Funny story, Federico Boswarlos!

Me: walked down to a local venue one night, around ten years ago, to see the Magic Markers. They were touring the western United States, playing songs from the album Boss. Lee Ranaldo produced the album and played guitar on two or three songs. I was sort of a huge SY fan, beginning around 1996, gradually losing interest after Rather Ripped, but still keeping up on them. I arrived at the venue (Urban Lounge, in Salt Lake City), and I was kind of lit up/ripped. As MM were setting up, primed to begin, I walked up to the stage and yelled "Where's Lee!!??" (asshole) ... The band started playing and the front-woman, Elisa Ambrogio, announced "Hey we're the Magick Markers, we're a Sonic Youth cover band" (pissed off) ... I was standing up front, center stage, and she had sort of singled me out.. uttering a few expletives (can't recall), like "Go fuck yourself", "Suck my dick", etc. and she flipped me off. Their performance was pretty badass--lean songs, no frills, raw, drone-y, w/serious / disinterested demeanor, even sy-like. Afterwards, I approached Elisa, apologised, and we ended up chatting it up / best buds for the remainder of the show.

That was sort of just the beginning / probably 20% of the evening, as I met some kids at the bar, then walked to a house with a practice space in the basement, and spent the rest of the evening out on the porch, drinking and talking about music, listening to some people play this raw (remarkable!), Rhodes-driven funk in the basement. I ended up losing my digital camera and losing control of my bowels on the walk home. I found a large tree that was sort of obscured (from the street light) by an apartment building, dropped my trousers, and leaned my back into the tree, 'sitting' against it .... When I got home I crumpled up my jeans and threw them in the garbage can, before going inside. It was a long, fucked up (and excessive), weird night.

lol i was gonna say i had a neighbor like that during the 1 year i lived in a college dorm who listened to songs on repeat and i had to ask him to stop.
songs included:
Sarah McLachlan "Possession"
Corey Hart "Sunglasses at Night"
Depeche Mode "Personal Jesus"

we slept separated only by a cinderblock wall
i thought i was going to lose my mind

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera)

That’s a solid choice of songs though, I wouldn’t mind hearing them frequently

Funny story, Federico Boswarlos!

Me: walked down to a local venue one night, around ten years ago, to see the Magic Markers. They were touring the western United States, playing songs from the album Boss. Lee Ranaldo produced the album and played guitar on two or three songs. I was sort of a huge SY fan, beginning around 1996, gradually losing interest after Rather Ripped, but still keeping up on them. I arrived at the venue (Urban Lounge, in Salt Lake City), and I was kind of lit up/ripped. As MM were setting up, primed to begin, I walked up to the stage and yelled "Where's Lee!!??" (asshole) ... The band started playing and the front-woman, Elisa Ambrogio, announced "Hey we're the Magick Markers, we're a Sonic Youth cover band" (pissed off) ... I was standing up front, center stage, and she had sort of singled me out.. uttering a few expletives (can't recall), like "Go fuck yourself", "Suck my dick", etc. and she flipped me off. Their performance was pretty badass--lean songs, no frills, raw, drone-y, w/serious / disinterested demeanor, even sy-like. Afterwards, I approached Elisa, apologised, and we ended up chatting it up / best buds for the remainder of the show.

That was sort of just the beginning / probably 20% of the evening, as I met some kids at the bar, then walked to a house with a practice space in the basement, and spent the rest of the evening out on the porch, drinking and talking about music, listening to some people play this raw (remarkable!), Rhodes-driven funk in the basement. I ended up losing my digital camera and losing control of my bowels on the walk home. I found a large tree that was sort of obscured (from the street light) by an apartment building, dropped my trousers, and leaned my back into the tree, 'sitting' against it .... When I got home I crumpled up my jeans and threw them in the garbage can, before going inside. It was a long, fucked up (and excessive), weird night.

― braunld (Lowell N. Behold'n)

This sounds like a fun night. I’m too old to get invited to strangers parties anymore, it sucks.

Here’s a shameful music-related story I do remember though:

Living in Mexico city, a nearby bar/music venue had “botellita de jerez” playing live that night and I had nothing better to do so I went there.

Brief interlude: I assume most of you have no idea who are Botellita de Jerez. They’re a sort of cult band from mexico, popular in the underground scene in the 80’s and 90’s (here’s their wikipedia article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botellita_de_Jerez )

I get there and I see a biker looking man and his biker looking friends smoking outside the club and I need a light so I approach them. Just as I was about to ask for the lighter one of them interrupts me “hey do you have any marihuana cigarettes over there?” I smile awkwardly “No, sorry. Hey do you know when Botellita de Jerez start playing?” One of his friends tells me “sorry you’re late they already finished the show!” Bummer... we start talking and I find out that the bar has a weird schedule... they have bands play early as a pre-drinks thing and then the bar becomes more of a club with djs.
I finish my cigarette and he tells me “ah don’t worry about missing them, if you live in the city you’ll eventually get a chance to see them” I shrug “I don’t know, I don’t really like their music, I just came because I live around the block” one of them laughs “why don’t you like them?” I apologize “sorry, you’re probably fans of the band but I think of them as comedy rock and they’re not particularly good at comedy or at rock for the matter” they all laugh, he says “well you’re right, they are terrible” they finish their cigarettes, wave me goodbye and get in a cab.

A friend that saw the show appeared out of nowhere and greets me overtly excited “hey! Did you like their show!? It was crazy fun”. I explained I had just arrived had no idea the main band started so early. He says “Oh well! At least you got to share a cigarette and talk for a while with them!”

haha, classic

loved frederic boswarlos' story

I did also once interrupt MC Hammer in the middle of a speech in 2009, where he started a chant that went

"I AM" - crowd: "Hammer"!

and on the third time, screamed "broke!", and the crowd around me erupted. the only time I've ever heckled at a show, mostly cos he was putting in a garbage performance, half-assed

― fuck the NRA (Neanderthal), Tuesday, August 28, 2018 12:37 PM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So many questions about this, but expecting an MC Hammer show in 2009 to be anything other than half-assed seems a bit too much to hope for maybe?

They’re a sort of cult band from mexico, popular in the underground scene in the 80’s and 90’s (here’s their wikipedia article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botellita_de_Jerez )

I gotta hear "Abuelita de Batman"...

(...it's not as good as I thought it'd be)

That’s pretty much the Botellita de Jerez experience. Cafe Tacvba did make a great cover of Alarmala de Tos though.

Yeah I asked my wife if she knew the band, she said no, but then she noted the CT cover (she's a fan)

When my boy started pre-school, about 10 years ago, he had two teachers - one called Mrs King and Mrs Tubby. I was so stunned and elated I made a point of talking to them about it when I picked him up and just got a lot of side-eye and rictus smiles.

That's Mesdames King & Tubby making asses of themselves if you ask me. Although I'm guessing they didn't exactly come across as heavyweight dub fans?

They acted as if I was speaking another language. Alas.

Not really for this thread but remembered now the time in '03 when Memphis Bleek hit me in his car on Prince St. in SoHo. I was not hurt and said something like, "No worries, Bleek. I'm fine." He looked freaked out.

Memph Bleek bad at driving that car car car

a long time ago, on another messageboard far, far away, i was talking about how i liked PJ Harvey and someone else kept agreeing and saying how much they liked "him". "he" and "him", a few different times, until i mentioned the obvious. they blamed it on typos but it was kind of a clear case of someone making an ass out of themselves imo

man i hated 54-40 for so many years (like 20) until i heard a song on the radio, enjoyed it, realized it was them and felt like a turd

Did you go get one?