C*ck-ups

[OldGit]

[quote name='Buzz' post='45825' date='Aug 15 2007, 02:00 PM']No matter what happens, you cannot be as bad as these guys:
[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw8sNoodIDk"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw8sNoodIDk[/url][/quote]

Priceless

[3V17C]

haha...those dudes rock!!!


c

[Machines]

These guys (and gals) are also pro's.

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF4YdyUeSIk"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF4YdyUeSIk[/url]

[dirtystatic]

There are certain reasons I play bass, one of them is my love for the lovely low rumbly stuff, the other is that you're average punter is far less aware of a cock-up on the behalf of the bassist...

Which coincidently is why none of you fine chaps are invited to any of my gigs.. your professional ears would be the ruin of me!

[cetera]

Had a classic this last weekend....

We're playing a wedding..... and the sound is DREADFUL. The room is all glass and wood and the sound is a mush of mids.

Despite this, the gig was going well until we decided to play 'Livin La Vida Loca'. Trouble was the two keyboard players said it was in D (forgetting that as a band we tune down a semi-tone) and so we played the whole song with half of us a semi-tone out! The singer was like a rabbit caught in the headlights.... and the sound was so bad/communication between the band members so poor... that we couldn't work out who was playing it wrong or who should change....!

Noone in the wedding party seemed to notice though.... good job it was at the 'pissed end' of the evening..!

[terryblyth]

[quote name='Machines' post='45957' date='Aug 15 2007, 05:38 PM']These guys (and gals) are also pro's.

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF4YdyUeSIk"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF4YdyUeSIk[/url][/quote]

Has anybody checked out the tags for this video?

Still, at least they're giving it a go. Plus, it shows what can happen when there's no bassist up there holding things together!

[charic]

That "nirvana" vid brought back painful memories. It was almost as bad as some guys at my old school who decided to play limp bizkit "just keep rolling". We couldnt help it, we p1ssed ourselves laughing (but we were polite, we left first.... for their sake and ours)

[Phaedrus]

This is a topic close to my heart.

I make mistakes every gig. Some gigs, I make mistakes in in most songs. Usually it's small - fretting one fret down and sliding up to the right fret, accidentally damping one note, etc, but sometimes it's big. We played Kaiser Chief's Ruby at a multi-band gig recently. We were first band on. I started it in C, guitarist started it in A#, where it's supposed to be. Not my amp, nerves, whatever.

As has been said already, it's how you recover and what you do about it that's more important, unless you keep making the same mistake over and over.

But it's also important how the rest of the band react. Our singer used to be a complete twat - turning round with a big grimace on his face when someone made a mistake and apologising to the crowd afterwards. We put him straight quick rapid. Do your best to sing through the mistake, trust that the band will sort it out. But DO NOT highlight any mistakes to the punters. Some will notice, most won't, so what's the advantage or gain in bring it to your attention? "Hey, for those of you that didn't notice, we're crap!"

If the clanger is big enough, you won't need to point it out and all you can do is laugh and get the punters in on it with humour - they will realise you are all only people. But IMO, this attitude can really only apply to pub/club bands - wedding & functions bands really should be more professional than this. They get paid a lot more and more is expected from them.

We played a gig in a golf club recently - to celebrate the handing over of the annual Wednesday captaincy. We play hard rock - RATM, Limp Bizkit, Velvet Revolver, AC/DC, but also Killers, U2, Green Day, Snow Patrol, etc. When we were asked, we pointed this out and were told it was going to be a young crowd, not just the golfers, so we'd go down well.

But sure enough, we arrive to set up among 50 and 60 year old trousers & tank-top men, asking if all our gear is for The Rolling Stones in Slane next month. Ha Ha. Yeah, real funny. Set up, eliminated the heavier songs from our set, add in a few lighter ones that we had previously dropped, ready to go.

Nervous, contemtuous crowd, jibes about dress code (we wear shorts, drummer has long hair), not looking forward to playing at all. Guitarist played Stereophonics' Dakota and Snow Patrol's You Are All That I Have with his low E somehow tuned to F. The full songs. I thought it was me after Dakota and checked my tuning - bang on. I asked him to check his tuning and was told he was ok.

We went straight into Snow Patrol and that sounded just as bad - singer hunting for his notes, me wondering if it was me playing wrong - couldn't work it out. The bass drops out in the middle of that song and I had a moment to realise he was playing a note sharp (god knows what else was wrong, but the dominantly wrong note from him was F), so I just played the rest of the song one fret up and when we were done, I called over to him to check his tuning. He realised it was him and that somehow his €2000 Ibanez Joe Satriani's tuning had taken on a mind of its own.

He hadn't noticed his tuning was AWOL for TWO WHOLE SONGS!

But a few punters had danced the whole way through the songs - WTF?!

Incidentally, also at that gig, we played Foo Fighters' Times Like These. What fun we had as we watched the gentlefolk of the golf club struggle to dance to the 7/8 sections...

Mistakes? The pros make them, so so can I. What I do about them immediately and longer term is what matters.

Mark

EDIT: Even if you don't know It Bites, you'll probably enjoy these. The music is actually okay, IMO, but the singing is ... well just have a look:

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mYVNOMoFcA"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mYVNOMoFcA[/url]

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu3Y8wZ738M"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu3Y8wZ738M[/url]

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5v5Q7J8rFk"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5v5Q7J8rFk[/url]

Edited August 20, 2007 by Phaedrus