Obvious mistakes on recordings

I'd say, yes, they're mistakes if left in because no one noticed them; if people liked the song better with the mistake, then they're serendipities, I suppose.

on various beach boys songs.

he fluffs one of the drum fills in the intro, but didnt redo it apparently as he wanted to keep the spontaneity of fluffing.

My favorite mistake!

i've never gotten around to *liking* that fuckup in "louie, louie." i mean, wtf, could they have not just taken it from the top once again?

Alex Chilton comes in too early singing the first line of "Boogie Shoes" on his "Like Flies on Sherbert" LP. Which is one big mistake that works, in my opinion.

Last week on Leno, The Dead played "Touch of Grey" and, despite having played the song regularly for close to 20 years, Phil Lesh sang "I will get by" on the last chorus when the rest of the band sang "WE will get by" (the correct lyric)

and I know we already did a 'laughing in songs' thread, but Plush, Beck, and Syd Barrett to thread

I love mistakes in songs

on the leadoff track of dylan's "nashville skyline," his duet with johnny cash, they occasionally sing different versions of the chorus when they're supposed to be harmonizing. it also sounds like someone came in a bit late at the beginning, and the backing musicians spread out a few more bars than they had expected.

And the infamous "Just look over your shoulders, honey!" on the J5's "I'll Be There."

this thread makes me very happy... that people are actually paying attention enough to notice these things.

I always love hearing singers screw up while double-tracking their vocals. In Motorhead's "Limb From Limb", Lemmy sings "Gonna tear ya" and "Gonna rip ya" simultaneously at one point. Weirder than that is Alice Cooper's "Apple Bush", in which one Alice sings "My house doesn't notice" while the other sings "My house doesn't worry" - nice to have meaningless lyrics that you can alter for no reason. And in the Stones' "Street Fighting Man", Mick and Keith sing the title, and then one of them ad-libs a "Yeah!" while the other does "No!" But those two were always disagreeing anyways, so maybe it's not really a mistake.

But I actually really like that song - it's just there's this one point where it seems like the sequencer is manually restarted or something.

I'm kinda thinking 'no,' at least most of the time. They might have been mistakes originally, but once they become part of the "official" recording of the song, they're just part of the song. A lot of the best things I've done musically have come out of mistakes.

Favorite vocal blunder: R.E.M.'s "Shaking Through" -- Stipe starts out horribly flat, adjusts the pitch as he goes along.

I love this thread.

I like that version too.

Lots of interesting things, some "mistakes," some just weird bits that you can hear.

And don't forget Ween. Besides bursting out laughing in a bunch of their songs, you can clearly here the amp mic picking up one of their voices right after the guitar solo in "I Saw Gener Crying in His Sleep." The voice yells "You fucked it up!" and they just keep playing.

C/D mistakes in posts about mistakes in songs

2. U2 - Love Rescue Me, uber bass-donkey Adam Clayton could have a book (okay, well maybe a small pamphlet) written about his incompetence, esp concerning the live side of things. But the poor lad can't even handle a basic 12-bar change, cuh, it's GLARING too!

3. Low - Mimi's timing is all over the place on some tracks, beautiful voice though.

Archie Bell & the Drells, "Tighten Up": the handclaps wander back & forth between the beats and the offbeats, and Archie has to ask his band twice to "make it mellow" the second time through.

But it's probably incorrect to have included a live performance in this thread, though.

But I'd still like to know why everything else is louder than Ray Davies vocal on Ape Man.

I was wondering the same about Hotlegs' "Neanderthal Man" !

Good call.

Also, to me, "Move Your Body" sounds like none of the keyboard tracks were quantized (timing-corrected) - they were likely just played live to the drum machine, as the opening piano solo is VERY bumpy and even has a couple of sour notes. Jefferson himself has admitted that he basically could not play the piano in his Trax Records days and would resort to building up chord changes by overdubbing a note at a time. He would also rope his work buddies into singing backup, which is why the choruses on "Move Your Body" are so loose.

Funny you should bring this record up - I've been listening to a LOT of late 80s house these days, and those tunes are FULL of mistakes that would not make the cut today. To me, that's part of the charm.

Now listening to Otis Redding's Dock of the Bay album and on his "Tramp" duet with Carla Thomas, his vocals are almost inaudible, which bugs me, cuz it's an awesome song.

Also, it sounds like General Johnson was starting to say "fight" instead of "part" in a line of the Chairman of the Board's "Give Me Just a Little More Time," rendering the line, "If we fart / Our hearts won't forget it." Probably the Top 40's only Dutch Oven experience.

xpost: Perhaps they liked the erie sound, or maybe it was just a mistake.

I think it's Happy Jack.

Where at the end, you here Pete Townshend saying "I Saw You"

From what I hear, He said that because Keith Moon was making weird faces at Pete as he was recording his part.

Can't say I noticed anything odd though! I'll have to watch again!

The drummer briefly goes into the 'rattattat' by mistake before the second verse, then quickly drops back into line. It sounds now totally intentional, and the only reason I know this is one time my old band did a cover, and our drummer did the same mistake. I looked round to nod, but he was shaking his head and never did it again...

Placebo - Brick Shithouse, after the wee pause following the "don't you wish you'd never met her" part at about 2:17, when the music comes back in again, it sounds like someone misses the beat slightly, it doesn't exactly hit the timing of the vocal - it confuses the hell out of me. not sure if it's the drums being a tad late or brian a little early, or just me going FUCKING LA-LA. confirm/deny this, and i will sleep a lot easier at night. k thx.

The "When God shines his light", the humming bit at the end, where Van forgets to keep his gob shut and goes "mmmm mmmmm mmmm obmmm mm "

Their mistake: recording it.

Miles Davis - "Right Off" on Jack Johnson; Early on in the piece, John McLaughlin transitions to a new key, while the bassist is still playing in the old key...it seems to take him a while to catch on to the chord change.

Paul Butterfield's harmonica solo on "East West" almost sounds like it's in the wrong key, but redeems itself at some point. It sounds like he was "cross-harping," which is sorta like picking up, say, a D harmonica to play an A song. Butterfield just makes it, but at first his solo sounds really incorrect.

That is one BOGUS sax solo on Dionne Warwick's "Anyone Who Had A Heart." I expect offkey saxophones on low-budget productions like Ron Holden's "Love You So," or "Angel Baby" by Rosie & the Originals, but not in the middle of some lavish Bacharach production.

And Michael Jackson's "just look over your shoulders, honey!" in the Jackson Five's "I'll Be There" was NOT a mistake, just a goofy ad-lib.

In the beginning of "Brown Sugar," the tempo drags when the drums first come in.

Here's another - The Small Faces - 'Get Yourself Together'. There's *something* wrong with the second phrase of the electric piano solo. I used to think that the piano was flat for the whole section, but I wonder if at around 1.26 Ronnie Lane fails to change note on the bass? Or both?

Julian Cope's "Las Vegas Basement" features him half-mumbling lyrics he can't remember -- it was recorded on the first take, as he wrote in the liner notes.

He did say the song was in a different key, though.

Wait: either I'm insane, or Kurt sings "Pennyroyal Tea" solo. He actually asks the band to sit that one out, no?

I'm glad it's not just my copy, then. Yes, that annoys the hell out of me. Also happens on my copy of "Like a Rolling Stone".

this is actually my favourite bit in 'Independent Women'! I don't think it was a mistake.

I miss this! I wish they'd hurry up and put out the rest of the Capitol versions on CD.

Several flawed punch-ins/edits in the guitar of "Dream On," one of the most notable being after the line "Half my life's in books written pages."

A lot of the drum fills in "Time Of The Season" sound like he's trying to do some crazy or creative drumming, but instead it winds up sounding messy and awesome.

I don't have an especially great ear for picking up mistakes - I'm pretty sure my dad informed me of all of these at some point or another.

Oh wait, one that I did pick up myself which is pretty obvious, and possible on purpose and not a mistake, is the beginning of "Roxanne" when the tape is definitely being sped up slowly.

Off the top of my head, "I Don't Know" has The 'Mats messing up the line 'One foot in the door', although Westerberg bounces back with an angry 'The other one in the gutter!'. It doesn't detract from a great song, even.

As he did on 'Dirty Mind', 'Head', 'Sister', 'Horny Pony', 'Gett Off', 'Erotic City', countless others and the sex scenes in Purple Rain.

How the hell does W + L = R?

I don't know, but it probably had to do with layering the tracks in Mono.

In the last verse of the 13th Floor Elevators' "Slip Inside this House" one of the guitars noticeably misses the first chord change.

In Todd Rundgren's "Hello It's Me", also in the last verse, he flubs a lyric.

antony and the johnsons' 'i am a bird now' where he or someone hits the wrong piano note and audibly goes 'uhh..' very briefly.
ace it is too.

This was immediately what came to my mind... best 2 seconds of the record.

Maybe not an obvious mistake, but in Springsteen's "Prove It All Night," after the line "Baby, tie your hair back in a long white bow," the bass drum comes in just a hair late. It feels like when you come to the top of a flight of stairs and you think there's an extra step, but there isn't, and you do a big awkward stomp.

I don't think of anything here really as a 'mistake' - they are in most cases final versions and therefore come off as part of the glorious imperfections of life - perfection is a shit concept. Also most of these 'mistakes' make the songs better I would imagine because they are unexpected and add some kind of minor dissonance to the song. Or something.

There is the strange case of the Rolling Stones' "I'm Free" from December's Children. Drums get off beat in the refrain part after the guitar solo (starts at around 1:29). Strange case because this comes after Jagger had been singing "I'm free to sing my song though it gets out of time" earlier in the song (!).

One of my favorites is "Ain't You" by Kleenex where the drum pattern seems to get mixed up really early and stays that way for the rest of the song.

Dennis Doherty comes in early in "I Saw Her Again" by the Mamas and the Papas. But it sounds great!

"We-bulubber-Wilde is on mine. Sugar."

Which REM song is it on Automatic where Stipe audibly laughs? Man On The Moon?

The "Dr Seuss" line on "CallOnMeTryToWakeItUp" or whatever?

Yeah, I think that's it.

An unbelievably bad bass flub is at the start of the 3rd verse of the Byrds' cover of "Spanish Harlem Incident"

On the 'Guitar Theives' version of '22 Blue' by the Nectarine No. 9, Davey Henderson briefly comes in with the verse vocal over the guitar break, such an audible mistake and a good song to close the album with!

All the odd stuff heard on the late 60s Beach Boys records only serves to improve them..... the "Good!" on 'With you tonight', static on 'Country Air', talking on 'Here Today'... Unsettling and brilliant.

In her song "π", Kate Bush skips digits 79 to 100 of π!

(according to some people on youtube. I haven't investigated it myself, but my faith is seriously shaken)

most of the 50 Words for Snow are not even real words. come on, Kate Bush, sort it out! http://i.imgur.com/9miUKj2.gif

Metallica's "The Four Horsemen" has syncing issues between the left and right channel that I didn't notice until I listened in headphones. One is slightly behind the other.

It's funny how differently I listen to my own music as opposed to how I listen to other people's music. When I listen to my own music I can spot things like this a mile off, but when I listen to other people's music it hardly registers, to the extent that I can barely think of any examples for this thread though I feel many of my favourite records are probably full of this sort of thing. I feel like you could find quite a few mistakes on Hendrix's albums, not to sound like I am disparaging them at all. That's why he was able to record 5 albums plus dozens of unreleased songs by the age of 27 - because he knew when to just leave it be.
I'm not sure I can think of any example where a technical mistake has spoiled a song I otherwise would have enjoyed.

Gram Parsons coughs, then laughs it off, after one of the "telling dirty lies" lines in "Christine's Tune".

Also, what about that muffled guitar note in "Daytripper" (the original Beatles version)? The one that comes after "tried to please her"? That thing's been driving me crazy for years.

There's also a bit after that where Lennon sings "Sunday driver yeah" and McCartney on backing vocs screws up and starts to sing "One (way ticket yeah)".

Not really a mistake in the sense of a flub, but at the end of 'A Day In The Life', in the fade out of that huge chord, someone scrapes a chair and then someone else shushes them. It was really obvious on my old cassette copy of the album, but on more recent CDs it's been reduced.

Dixie Chicks--The Long Way Around

Obvious use of autotune on the word "parents"...unless it's some type of bizarre T-Pain tribute

Cecil Taylor & Mary Lou Williams - Embraced

The whole double record is marred by a weird slap-back tape delay in the left (Cecil's) channel. It's maddening, and likely unintentional, and I can just imagine an engineer saying, "Ah, fuck it, who can even tell what this guy's supposed to be playing anyway?"

On Madness' song 'Uncle Sam', Suggs goes to a line too early the second time around the pre chorus, it's not really his fault because the bar lines are a bit screwy the second time around and he laughs a fake 'ha ha ha', they even put a little bit of delay on it.

Does anybody know what the deal is with the weird double edit in Elvis Costello's 'Chemistry Class', the spliced repeat at 2'04" of the word 'accidents' that adds an extra beat onto the song, weirdly.

ABBA's 'Watch Out' - the track starts with a lead guitar and then the drums come in, but the drummer's playing too fast and has to slow it down before the vocals begin.

Does anybody know what the deal is with the weird double edit in Elvis Costello's 'Chemistry Class'

i always assumed it was just a little musical pun on the word "accidents." i learned in franklin bruno's (fantastic) 33 1/3 book on armed forces that it wasn't elvis's idea, but engineer roger bechirian's. bechirian did it at home via tape splice, brought it to elvis and nick lowe, they loved it, and that was that.

some sheet music falls off a stand at the end of The Late Great Johnny Ace by Paul Simon.

I don't know if it was K-Ci or Jojo singing their cover of "Love Ballad" on their debut album, but when they got to the first chorus, dude clearly was extremely flat when he sang "Looooooooooooooovinnn you", whereas he wasn't on the second chorus. Really weird as it shows they didn't cut and paste the chorus, so wondering why they didn't fix it, as it's very noticeable.

Carl Anderson, on the Jesus Christ Superstar movie soundtrack, on Everything's Alright, when he sings "brand new and expensive", his voice clearly cracks at the end of the phrase. always worth a laugh.

Grand Funk-Im Your Captain. Somebody clearly talking in the background during one of the opening verses.

I know the Beatles have been extensively tackled, but when i think about this kind of thing: the hideous way the whole track slows down around the second middle 8 in "You Won't See Me" nearly ruins it for me. It's otherwise such a top song! Like, they had such an abundance of great material that they treated that one (which is merely excellent) as cavalierly as one of Ringo's shitty Buck Owens covers.

More an instance of being badly or hastily recorded (Sh3l Talmy really must have been useless), but the intro of You Really Got Me has this odd resonance on the drums or bass that once you've noticed it, cannot be unheard.

It happens in the gaps between the riff, na-na-na na-na WHOOOOM na-na-na na-na WHOOOM

Bass player totally fluffs the changes on Leonard Cohen's "So Long, Marianne", around the two minute mark, don't know why as it's not exactly Schoenberg he's been asked to play.

In Bowie's "Somebody Up There Likes Me" it sounds like the first verse started a bar or two early and was (mostly) wiped when the sax overdub takes place. At about 43 seconds in, you can hear him start to sing "Everybody" but you just hear "Ev..."

More an instance of being badly or hastily recorded (Sh3l Talmy really must have been useless), but the intro of You Really Got Me has this odd resonance on the drums or bass that once you've noticed it, cannot be unheard.

It happens in the gaps between the riff, na-na-na na-na WHOOOOM na-na-na na-na WHOOOM

― many machines on ilx (MaresNest), Sunday, September 22, 2013 6:02 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can barely detect it on my copy, but it sounds like it's probably compression boosting the volume of silent passages, resulting in a kind of whoosh. But if you hear it on the radio, where compression is cranked to insane levels, it'll likely be vastly more pronounced.

If anyone wants to hear a really fun example of the singers voice cracking, then find Håkan Hellström's 'Det är så jag säger det' on youtube. Also fun as it is a rip-off of Mercury Rev. Great song, though, and the cracking is definitely part of the charm.

Depeche Mode's 'Master & Servant'... snare drum accidentally left off at the end :)

Ellen Allien's Fabric Mix was (according to the liner notes) done "live" with turntables in her flat... At one point she's about to mix from one tune to another, and you can hear they drums from the new tune coming in, but apparently that was a mistake, or she decided to mix in a different tune after all, because the drums then disappear, and another tune with a different drum sound is mixed in. Since it's not really a live DJ recording (nor is it marketed as such), she could've probably edited that out, but I guess she decided to leave it in to emphasize the spontaneity of the mix.

I know the Beatles have been extensively tackled, but when i think about this kind of thing: the hideous way the whole track slows down around the second middle 8 in "You Won't See Me" nearly ruins it for me. It's otherwise such a top song! Like, they had such an abundance of great material that they treated that one (which is merely excellent) as cavalierly as one of Ringo's shitty Buck Owens covers.

― Has talent, needs to figure out how to improve (staggerlee), Sunday, 22 September 2013 04:57 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I believe the whole "Ringo is a shitty drummer" originates from this track. I can't give this exactly, but often when instruments play off-time, it sounds like the drummer is lousy whereas the opposite is true.

Another Richard Thompson flub: He hits a bum note at the start (2:59) of his third guitar solo on "Hokey Pokey."

I'm better than my competor you mean competitor whatever let's get together

prolly intentional and not a flub but I want to believe

Also, what about that muffled guitar note in "Daytripper" (the original Beatles version)? The one that comes after "tried to please her"? That thing's been driving me crazy for years.

― henry s, Saturday, September 21, 2013 11:02 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's also a bit after that where Lennon sings "Sunday driver yeah" and McCartney on backing vocs screws up and starts to sing "One (way ticket yeah)".

― came the time he flipped his lid came the time he flipped his lid (snoball)

also the part near the very end where the drums cut out for four bars, and then ringo fucks up the timing of the fill before the vocals reemerge one more time ("daytripper, yeah")

I believe the whole "Ringo is a shitty drummer" originates from this track. I can't give this exactly, but often when instruments play off-time, it sounds like the drummer is lousy whereas the opposite is true.

― Mark G, Monday, September 23, 2013 5:07 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, it could've been that George or John started dragging, and Ringo was just trying to keep everyone together, but had to slow down to do it.

It drives me nuts when drummers slow down, but not when they speed up, for some reason. Always hated "Get Off My Cloud" for Charlie slowing down, but I love that the tempo on "Honky Tonk Women" is about 1/3rd faster at the end than at the beginning.

Well, for Ringo to sound too late/draggy, John/George would have to get faster. Sorry if this sounds 'smartarse', but this happened to me once, I mixed one of our tracks, and our drummer sounded like he'd got lost at one point. I lowered the guitar track and the mis-timing went away. Very odd, at the time..

Anyways, yeah the human condition likes a track to get faster, adds to the excitement. Whereas a slowdown, over a time, makes a drag to the human psyche.

or summat.

Ah, yes, good point re: who's faster/who's dragging.

At 0:53 on "Baba O'Riley" it sounds like Moon is rushing for a second, and then has to pull back. Oddly enough, it's the synth track that slows down briefly: there was a voltage drop/brown-out at Townshend's house when he recorded it. All live versions have the same slow-down until 1989, when Simon Philips insisted on fixing it (and when it was technologically possible to do so).

Nowhere Man always sounds like it's constantly getting slower to me as well.

tbf, that was around the time they'd all discovered weed. The rhythm section were basically pot-smoke chimneys (and the bassist still is, afaik).

Blur's 'Bad Day' noticeably slows down during the instrumental part!

The Kingsmen, "Louie Louie" -- singer comes in too early, drummer tries to cover it with a pissed-off sounding fill.
― Colin Meeder (Mert), Friday, July 30, 2004 11:29 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Where in the song does he come in too early?

first verse after the solo.

onm misread that as "drummer comes in too early"

that was the Specials' "Gangster", see upthread.

It drives me nuts when drummers slow down, but not when they speed up, for some reason. Always hated "Get Off My Cloud" for Charlie slowing down, but I love that the tempo on "Honky Tonk Women" is about 1/3rd faster at the end than at the beginning.

― punt cased (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, September 23, 2013 1:40 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Check out how much 'Monkey Man' speeds up! :D

there's a weird syncing problem with the drum machine track on "something in the water (does not compute)" on 1999, near the end of the track — i'm guessing because he wasn't using midi yet?

Don't think MIDI existed yet (but would just a few months later).

Wow, I never really registered that false start in "Louie, Louie." It's just part of the song to me, like it could be in the sheet music. Something about songs you've known since you were a little kid, they just are the way they are and you don't question.

louie louie has to be the most technically incompetent recording to be that popular, right? i love it

Heard someone say it was recorded with two mikes: one over the drums, and one over the rest of the band.

I'm now inspired to check out the Kingsmen's Greatest Hits just see what else they have up their sleeve and whether they get any more polished. This novelty song about the Jolly Green Giant is pretty promising. "Brussels SPROUTS."

this is a good book: http://www.amazon.com/Louie-Mythology-Including-Persecution-Introducing/dp/047203023X

iirc it was also one of those things where they had almost no time to record it. i think they were aware of the mistakes and flaws but couldn't do much about it.

I'm now inspired to check out the Kingsmen's Greatest Hits just see what else they have up their sleeve and whether they get any more polished.

If you look for the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" performances on Youtube, you might get disappointed...

i always think of that single miscued note in Things Behind the Sun when this question comes to mind. but it tends to stand out largely because the rest of the performance is so crisp and fluid.

One non-mistake that I always hear as a mistake is on the Beatles' cover of "Slow Down," where John says "but now you've got a BOY friend down the street," and the backing vocal (Paul? or John in an overdub?) goes "Yeah!" but it mixes with the "boy" in a way that sounds like "bleah!" For years I thought it was someone saying "girl" in a total goof-up, the kind of thing that fans would later insist was an intentional bit of sub rosa gender-bending (a la Ob-La-Di) or something. Now that I'm listening closely, pretty sure George just kind of flubs it halfway through the solo and soldiers on with some random noodling until the vocals come back to cover him up... ironically, that's never bugged me much at all.

On XTC's Earn Enough For Us, there is a horrible duff note on the keyboard melody, like a two keys at once thing. Todd being slapdash.

xpost John 'tracked' all his solo vocals, once he discovered you could do that. You sure he doesn't say 'girl' there?

This novelty song about the Jolly Green Giant is pretty promising. "Brussels SPROUTS."

Heard that on Sounds of the Sixties last week, I like it!

it's called "come on baby let's go downtown" on Tonight's the Night: this is the live recording that the overwhelming majority is familiar with…but on the Crazy Horse record, it's called "downtown": a song wherein Danny Whitten describes the run-up to meeting his dealer.

Maybe he, jack Nitzsche and most likely Billy Talbot had just visited such an individual and this got fucked up before cutting this tune, cuz I think one of Billy's strings are out of tune. the other three are fine, but he clams this one up as if his A string is flat. I would imagine that, after 67 or so, Danny Whitten never recorded straight. and I've never been able to find live footage of Danny playing wif Neil and CH.

"thus"

Dylan's been mentionned already and there are indeed many mistakes in his recordings but listening to "like a rolling stone" reminded me there are some moments when they kinda fuck up during the track (no specific exemple, though, I'll have to listen to it again for that !).

Most obvious Dylan one I can think of is "115th Dream," where he cracks up when the band blows its cue.

"They'll stone you when you try to go ho-home.."

on "she smiled sweetly" (between the buttons) @ around 2:10 there's a passing triad or fourth(or something like that) on piano that doesn't sound quite right. seems like a obvious mistake or rather it has always bothered me a tiny bit and left me wondering if it was unintentional

One time I'd just landed and got off the plane. Walking out of customs, passing through the lounge, "Good Luck Charm" Elvis was playing over the tannoy. But there was a duff chord change, and Elvis remarked "Somebody Goofed" in the middle of the track, then continued to the end of the song.

For a milisecond, I was "wha? are they playing live in the lounge?"

There's a point in "Diamond Jigsaw" by Underworld, like 2/3rds through the song, where the drum machine suddenly switches to a pounding beat before sorta awkwardly reverting back. Really *feels* like a mistake...

love the rhythm section fuckup/resolution in The Fall's Gross Chapel - British Grenadiers so much

Todd Rungren's soul medley on side 2 of "A Wizard a True Star". On "Ooh Baby Baby", at the beginning of the second verse he sings "Mistakes, I know I've made a few", and during singing "mistakes" one of the stereo channels drops out completely for a split second. Pretty sure that is intentional.

there's an awkward cut in patrick cowley's edit of tantra's "hills of katmandu"

D'arcy comes in out of tune on "Shame" by the Smashing Pumpkins. a beautiful mistake

that fuckin whooshing noise toward the end of "Truckers' Atlas" by Modest Mouse

The out-of-tune guitars on Dylan's "Queen Jane Approximately" are pretty glaring.

"Those Lonely, Lonely Nights" by Earl King; it's hard to tell what's more out of tune, the guitar or the piano. But as mentioned upthread, a classic example of "this was the best take we got." I believe Ace Records honcho Johnny Vincent thought it was the take with the most feeling.

in "Be My Baby", Ronnie comes in early after the instrumental break. Oddly, I'd heard that song a million times before I noticed it.

On the Rolling Stones' "Sitting on a Fence", Keith misses a key note on the main riff by misfingering it.

(that's at the very end of the song)

Lennon's "Instant Karma" has a big mistake : after the first "laughing at fools like me", the bass misses a note.
You can hear it better on the "naked" version :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IPi2DKMCgM

Can't believe nobody's mentioned Kim Deal's wrong bass note in the pre-chorus after the guitar solo on "Here Comes Your Man."

Not sure that's a mistake?

It's kind of a mistake in that from a quick listen it sounds like the bass moves up to a 2nd from the root, and the guitars (or possibly Kim's backing vocals) aren't accommodating it, possibly a third is rubbing against the bass note.

in "Be My Baby", Ronnie comes in early after the instrumental break. Oddly, I'd heard that song a million times before I noticed it

Sounds to me like she comes in on time but the drummer doesn't do the usual drum roll that leads into the chorus, but it's difficult to tell what the intention was there; the instrumental break is like a truncated verse and so the drummer had to choose whether to do that triplet thing from the verse or jump into the drum roll and he chose the triplet. It does sound a little odd.

There's a glaring howler on the 12-inch of Hypnosis "Pulstar", just after the 4:40 mark - http://youtu.be/NvyzI8g4NUc?t=4m34s - then a bad splice into a really dull breakdown, which almost sounds like they're too embarrassed to know what to do next.

I thought Kim's bass note there was to both have that unhinged-recovery-from-the-guitar-solo-section-feel, and to provide a bigger resolve/hit at that final/climactic "you'll never wait sooooo loooooong!" of the song.

xps

My best mate was pretty impressed when I played him this. "They actually released an out of tune record!" It's really obvious by the time the keyboards come in. I love the Blue Orchids, and to me it just adds to the sinister edge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_f2ys3Q-b4

Her keyboards on the first fall lp are awesomely out of tune and dinky, I love that sound

I'd hesitate to point the finger at Una Baines, as keyboard tunings are pretty fixed. My guess is they didn't get the guitars in sync with the keys. I think Witch Trials keys were played by Yvonne Pawlett, though Baines may have written many of them.

David Gilmour hocking a loogey at the beginning of "Wish You Were Here."

My favorite: I Saw Her Again - Mamas & The Papas

Denny comes in too early, or so it seemed until I read the wiki:

While mixing the record, engineer Bones Howe inadvertently punched in the coda vocals too early. He then rewound the tape and inserted the vocals in their proper position. On playback, the mistaken early vocal could still be heard, making it sound as though Doherty repeated the first three words of the verse, singing "I saw her...I saw her again last night." Producer Lou Adler liked the effect of the engineering error and told Howe to leave it in the final mix.[4]

Is it "Camera" on Reckoning where Peter Buck noisily breaks a string mid-solo?

Xposts duh I forgot it's pawlett on the first lp

Vladimir Ashkenazy breaks a piano string during one of the frenzied bits in his recording of scriabin's fifth piano sonata. Or for all the world it sounds like it. Doubly remarkable as he is not generally a wild player at all

wow, that instant karma mix sounds terrible in a completely different and much better way from the final version. alan white's drums sound like popcorn! where's that mix from?

Jimmy Page's "Heartbreaker" solo is an inexplicable mess.
I want to say the bass in Neil Young's "Down By the River" is full of wrong notes.
I think Neil Peart flubs a fill in "Tom Sawyer" (!) in "Exit ... Stage Right." It's either on that live album or an earlier one where he breaks a snare, too.

Page's timing is pretty dodgy in Black Dog, the transitional riff in E back to the main riff in A is super rushed.

Jimmy Page's "Heartbreaker" solo is an inexplicable mess.

^have you heard any of Zep's live recordings? The guy is the sloppiest thing going. Like bordering on not giving a shit.

I love that about page and about steve howe, their willingness to be a bit sloppy

^have you heard any of Zep's live recordings? The guy is the sloppiest thing going. Like bordering on not giving a shit.

I know you're, er, not a fan, but I totally agree. However, that's Page basically playing the role of rhythm and lead guitarist at once without the benefit of overdubs, while JPJ and JB mess around. And also likely drunk and/or strung out. I'm talking in the studio, where Page is pretty slick. There's really nothing else in the entire Zep catalog nearly as messy as the "Heartbreaker" solo. I mean, compare it to the "Good Times, Bad Times" solo - song one, album one - which is super-tight. It's always been a big mystery to me. "Hey, Jimmy, want to do another take?" "Nah."

"Hey, Jimmy, want to do another take?" "Nah. And anyway, when we do it live, I'll just raise a violin bow in a faux-dramatic gesture to distract people from noticing my obvious shortcomings."

In I suppose defence of LZ the one area they could afford to be sloppy was Page's lead work. They had the foundations down better than most IMO

Really they needed a second guitarist. There's a reason someone like, say, Pete Townshend, who also had a solid (or at least exciting) foundation to work with really stuck to aggressive rhythm. It's pretty hard to pull off rhythm and lead at the same time. I guess someone who does is, I dunno, Alex Lifeson, or Andy Summers, someone who knows when to just take up space and when to show off. But Page was all over the place.

Great example of Page working around the awesome rhythm section, especially his solo starting around 2:20:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm6w4J4wXf4

Certainly not dramatically sloppy.

It's a lot easier to fill up that sound when you're heavy on distorted open chords as your 'sound' compared to a barre-heavy riff machine w/ regular solo breaks

Also, in Townshend's case, Entwistle did much of what a traditional lead guitarist would have done.

It's pretty hard to pull off rhythm and lead at the same time.

D. Boon was a natural master at this, probably the single biggest thing I take away from his playing/writing.

More Mamas & Papas: There's an out of tune guitar string on "Got A Feelin'"... possibly the B string? It actually doesn't sound out of tune all the time. Bad intonation?

Going back to the original post for a moment...

Simon & Garfunkel: Sound of Silence - drums speed up just before one of the last verses

Y'know, I'm not convinced that this was actually a mistake, given the way that version of the song was made. The rhythm section is overdubbed on top of a pre-existing track that had a fluctuating tempo, so they would have no doubt had some problems staying in time. I'm amazed it turned out as well as it did, to be honest.

Dean Ween + Matt Sweeney have a great impersonation/conversation about Page's sloppiness in this Guitar Moves episode. Makes me laugh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU9fTmTsssA&t=655

i thought i'd timestamped that. part i'm talking about starts at 11:55

wow, that instant karma mix sounds terrible in a completely different and much better way from the final version. alan white's drums sound like popcorn! where's that mix from?

― rushomancy, vendredi 13 mars 2015 02:11 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's the track without Spector's production.
The performance of all involved is pretty bad without the wall of sound : borderline amateur bass... Lennon's many bum notes on vocals... It's raw on purpose but still, without Spector's work there's no way this would have been a hit !

Portsmouth Sinfonia to thread.

Not an "obvious" one, but when the Jackson 5's cover of "Doctor My Eyes" was played on Pick Of The Pops last weekend, I did notice for the first time that whichever Jackson it is that sings the second verse ('Cause I have wandered through this world…') appears to come in two bars early. He sings 'Cause I have' and then stops and starts the line again in the right place.

Unbelievable how bad the Instant Karma recording/performance actually is - the single sounds amazing. Makes his attempts to flesh out the Get Back material make a lot more sense even as it's shocking how much less successful they are. I guess the basic track/approach of Instant Karma is more suited to his style and at least has some momentum and energy around which to drape the oomph and echo.

The ECM debut recording of Steve Reich's "Music For A Large Ensemble" has a big gaffe by one of the percussionists at the start of the second 'cycle'.

Makes his attempts to flesh out the Get Back material make a lot more sense even as it's shocking how much less successful they are.

The thing with Get Back/Let It Be was that there were never any agreed-upon master takes. Phil (and, to some extent, Lennon) just chose whatever sounded most complete, and then added strings etc. Ian MacDonald accused Lennon of "sabotaging" McCartney's song for allowing a middling take of "The Long and Winding Road," with many obvious Lennon bass flubs, to be released.

But yeah, "Instant Karma" was, "Yep, this is it! This is the take! This is the single!"

in "Be My Baby", Ronnie comes in early after the instrumental break. Oddly, I'd heard that song a million times before I noticed it.

Nah, the band was recorded first and vocals were added later, so there's no mistake.

The ECM debut recording of Steve Reich's "Music For A Large Ensemble" has a big gaffe by one of the percussionists at the start of the second 'cycle'.

That could be a whole separate thread.

I'm told the first recording of Glass' Music In Twelve Parts is a bit crunk overall, haven't heard it though.

I'm fine with the aforementioned vocal miscue on Mamas & Papas "I Saw Her Again", but the warbling pitch throughout drives me crazy. It's especially bad on the second bridge, like the tape machine couldn't keep a steady speed or something.

I know jack shit abt playing guitar but that clip with Ween and Chavez guys was pretty amusing, thanks.

Oh, one just occurred to me!

You remember "Can I kick it?" Tribe called Quest, various words that end in "Ay-er" : "I command you to be the O-bey-er" "Mr Deakins would you please be our May-er?" "You'd be doin us a really big Fay-vah"

Except for one line where the dude has it "Do you like the garments that we Wear?" like he hand't noticed that it should have been "Way-ar"

I'd say that was a mistook

Was gonna say The Amps "Pacer" it always seemed like "Just a just a kid never learned..." may have started this way, with her coming in early, and she decided to just repeat it twice and now it's another hook in a song full of them.

In "Europe Endless" one of the snare drum hits has echo removed.

Harry Nilsson stats "At My Front Door" by singing the opening lines of "Remember" and then belching loudly and restarting the song.

Chorus to "Survivor" by Destiny's Child, sounds like someone's singing "Keep on survivor!"

Just listening to When You Were Mine by The Church and noticed that there's a weird bit of stray vocal that gets chopped off just after the first bridge section ends (plenty of islands....)

the first thing i thought of was the bass in "maggie may."

and there i am upthread just one week shy of 10 years ago saying the exact same thing.

About 2:00 into "Way Down", Elvis comes into the verse too early.

I looked around for this one on the internets, nope..

On "A Hard Rain's gonna fall", somewhere in the middle, he sings "What did you meet, my blue eyed son .. then corrects/carries on to "Who did you meet, my darling young one?" and you can hear him laughing slightly.

It's just weird that I've heard that track for so long, but just noticed it yesterday.

I did see some page where they said about how engineers would fix word-flubs by patching in a bit from elsewhere in the song of the same word, and that one would have been easy to fix.

not always. it helps if you're recording to a click, but i doubt dylan was doing that.

Actually, there might not be another "Who did you" apart from the following line, which would be too easy to spot.

Now that you mention it, that whole bit is a total fuck up - as well as laughing at the mistake, he goes into the second line too quickly, and he holds the chord after the second line for one bar too long before he sings "I met a young child..."

My favorite example of a song' tempo increasingly speeding up comes from the leadoff track on the first album I ever owned — Billy Preston's That's the Way God Planned It. (A solid album all around, IMO.) Maybe it was by design, but I like to think the band just got swept up in the moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GnhE6sewoI

I recall reading an interview with Roli Mossiman where he talks about producing The Young Gods and how when singing in English, Franz Treichler would habitually leave off the 's' at the end of a word or phrase, so he kept a little library of them to add in later.

In his song of the same name, Robin Gibb pronounces "Farmer Ferdinand Hudson", "Farmer FERNIDAD Hudson". This is even more obvious in the full 12 minute three part version released on his recent boxset, because it's the very first line of the second part of the song, "Farmer FERNIDAD Hudson"... I mean, WTFLOL?!?!?

Is the intro to The Smiths - Some Girls are Bigger Than Others a mistake? I heard a theory that things like that are done deliberately to "spoil" a mix, making it impossible to leak, and that this mix accidentally made it to the final master. Or it could also be an inspired studio engineer?

Too early to be a 'leak spoiler'

On "Beggars Day" by Crazy Horse, you can hear Nils Lofgren coughing before the opening lines.

on last year's New Pornographers album "Brill Bruisers," Neko Case comes in early on a vocal part, and then you can hear her whisper "fuck" into the mic as a reaction to her mistake. they left it in.

you can hear it at 1:22-1:24 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msRbJW_rmFU

mmm, sorry, didn't mean to embed that

Is the intro to The Smiths - Some Girls are Bigger Than Others a mistake? I heard a theory that things like that are done deliberately to "spoil" a mix, making it impossible to leak, and that this mix accidentally made it to the final master. Or it could also be an inspired studio engineer?

The recording was given a distinctive intro by engineer Stephen Street, who increased the reverb on the drums, faded the track in then out again, and took the reverb back off when reintroducing the song: "A bit like opening a door, closing it, then opening it again and walking in". (wikipedia).

is this the thread to ask about that harmonica on galaxie 500 'leave the planet' where the harmonica is obviously in a different key than the song

Velvet Underground, "Who Loves the Sun", throat clearing followed by two coughs on backing vocal track, right channel, between 1:04 and 1:07 approx.

Stranglers - walk on by : there's an edit mistake right before the long keyboard solo. A small bump in the keyboard sound.

I wonder if Phife Dawg was supposed to say "Do you like the clothing that we way-yer?" instead of "wear"

REM The Wrong Child where Stipe comes in early *twice* with "Hey (very faint).. Hey those.. Hey those kids are looking at me"

Was gonna say The Amps "Pacer" it always seemed like "Just a just a kid never learned..." may have started this way, with her coming in early, and she decided to just repeat it twice and now it's another hook in a song full of them.

― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, 14 March 2015 17:01 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's "Just a twisted kid" not "Just a just a kid"!

Obvious mistakes in posts

Beefheart stumbles over the word 'licorice'in that one song on trout mask replica, which has always annoyed me. (Orange Claw Hammer)

But then, on the radio the other week, they played a live version from a radio show with Zappa doing backing guitar and he doesn't stumble.

ok, i know the pauses between lines aren't as obvious as on "the dust blows forward and the dust blows back", but he kind of did record it on a home tape recorder (was it a webcor, or was it some other kind?) on the fly, pausing the tape between lines. i'd think that his stumbling over a word would be the thing of least concern!

(it's also funny that he did it "right" live because the man was notorious for fucking up his lyrics in concert... i'm not sure i've ever heard him do "my human gets me blues" without fucking it up!)

Any time Peter Hook sings.

Prefab sprout - life of surprises, that weird master-track fuckup at the end :,(

Beck, "Loser" - there is (what sounds to me like) a very obvious edit at the start of the "get right if you can't relate" stanza. If I had to guess, this actually went "How you gonna get right if you can't relate?" but they realized the start of it would overlap with the previous stanza's "...pigeon wing," and just slid the volume knob up real quick. So it just goes "...gonna get right if you can't relate," which doesn't make any sense.

The line is 'can't write if you can't relate' though.

or rather 'You can't write, if you can't relate'

Hmmm. My ears are unconvinced! But maybe the beat is creating a ghost syllable or something.

Jesus Christ Superstar - On the film version of 'Heaven On Their Minds' at 2'19" there is a really noticeable sour note on the piano.

The vocal flub in the Who's "Eminence Front." No idea why they left that in. They didn't replicate it when I saw that tour.

REM The Wrong Child where Stipe comes in early *twice* with "Hey (very faint).. Hey those.. Hey those kids are looking at me"

This is interesting... I've heard that song a zillion times and never really processed that as a "mistake," but I guess it was!

Ween's first 3 albums have a lot of stuff like this but I guess it fit their M.O. to leave it in. It's really prominent on Pure Guava, sometimes you can even hear bits of the tapes they were recording over

On 'She Sings Hymns Out Of Tune', Nilsson comes in too soon on the last chorus and also slows down the harmonium part.