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.

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.