Obvious mistakes on recordings

1. Led Zeppelin - Black Dog, listen to the end of the first keychange, right as it moves back from E to A, Jimmy Page flubs the timing of the first four notes, playing them much to fast. Tight but loose? Loose but looser..

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.

Mike + the Mechanics, "Silent Running": Paul Carrack mis-sings the final line before the final refrain as "stit still" instead of "sit still."

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.

The string sample in Marshall Jefferson's "Move Your Body" is way too fast and you can hear splices in it.

Van Morrison gets some of the lyrics wrong on a live version of Rave On John Donne, which has many a complicated thing to say, but I have forgiven "sweet swine we drink" for one of the most intriguing flute solos I've known.

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.

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" !

The sound engineer made a really obvious mistake on (What's the Story) Morning Glory.

Dylan's stuff is full of goof-ups, probably because of his famous resistance to multiple takes. I'm pretty sure "Stuck Inside of Mobile (with the Memphis Blues Again)" has two: in the verse about grandpa dying, where Dylan sings, "when I sa...he built a fire on Main Street", like he starts to sing "I saw" and changes up halfway because he remembers he rewrote the line; and the verse about "the tea preacher," which sounds to me like he starts to say "teacher" and remembers halfway though that it's "preacher." I love the idea of stoned college kids through the years deconstructing the significance of the Tea Preacher.

mccoy tyner fluffing notes on his solo bit on "my favorite things" - he really did, go listen...

How could this thread get so far without any mention of John Coltrane - Giant Steps? Tommy Flanagan had only heard the (extremely difficult) tune once, at Coltrane's hosue months before the recording session. He said that it was MUCH slower at the time. On the recording, he gives it a good try but fucks up and pretty much stops playing during his solo, and had to live it down the rest of his life.

Nirvana - Heart Shaped Box: Cobain slows down during the solo, realizes it's the last bar, speeds way up to nail the ending, still misses it.

"The string sample in Marshall Jefferson's "Move Your Body" is way too fast and you can hear splices in it. "

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.

And I cannot forget from where it is that I come from...

JOY DIVISION "HEART AND SOUL" IAN CURTIS GRRRR

Will Oldham on either Joya or I See A Darkenss, whichever one has "Open Your Heart" he flubs a long and then covers. You almost don't notice.
I was just listening to Aretha Franklin's Rhino collection and there are a lot of songs where it sounds like she's, um, not sure of the technical term, "hot" I think, like singing too loud, so it sorta, I don't know, it doesn't exactly break up, but it's, like, a little distorted, I guess. I think it's awesome.

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.

Several missed organ notes on Timmy Thomas's "Why Can't We Live Together." No mean feat, since he apparently hit only 7 different keys over the course of that 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.

i just heard the mamas and the papas' "monday monday" from the monterey pop festival box set and i'm reasonably sure their bass player makes the most ear-crushingly obvious mistake in recorded pop history. the song has some weird modulations in it, and when they come back from the second bridge into the final "monday monday" part after a long pause (at 2:44 on the cd), it's just vocals and a really really out-front bass, and the bass dude makes a big dramatic slide down to his new root in the (clearly wrong) key of F, while the vocalists keep going in G. it appears to take the bass player a while to wake up and figure out what's going on, while the singers make a nearly superhuman effort to stay in G. it's weird, fascinating and quite eerie sounding.

the bass dude on that mamas and the papas recording is joe osborn, for whatever that's worth.

Joe Osborn? Wasn't he a close second to Carole Kaye as the LA session bass player of choice?

he was certainly on the LA session A-list.

Sometimes bass players play the 5th as opposed to the 3rd and freaks people out because they think it sounds "wrong" but it's not wrong, it's just not usual. I used to do this sometimes, once I sparked a great fight in the recording studio when a less experienced player said I was "off" by playing the 5th and a more experienced guy jumped down his throat with a lecture about keys and scales. Aw, nevermind, it was just funny, very Spinal Tap "She's playing the 5th man" "No Dude, it's out of tune" etc.

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

prince makes a mistake on a drum fill in the intro of the cross from sOTT.

(x-post)
orbit makes many many good points and i in agreeance with all of them. but if the mamas and papas actually wanted that particular bass note in that particular place, then the acid at monterey must've been way better than previously reported.

The Who "Happy Jack"

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.

In an amazing coincidence, I watched the Mamas and the Papas doing Monday Monday at Monterey tonight too.

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

The Pogues' "Dark Streets of London": Bass somewhat wobbly throughout, and really misses in the line "and the drugged up psychos with death in their eyes".

The very beginning of Bowie's "Never Let Me Down" album sounds like it was edited together by lazy chimps wearing boxing gloves. (Granted, the critical concensus seems to be that the entire album was a mistake, but I mean the beginning was just a messy amatuerish edit. And its on the tape and cd versions like that.)

The Special AKA - Gangsters

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...

this has bugged me for years and years - i'm pretty sure it's a mistake but it's so OBVIOUS that sometimes i convince myself otherwise and it sounds perfectly normal. only Ned Raggett can set my mind at rest (probably)!

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 classic contemporary example is during the opening track on
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.

Oh, and someone mentioned Van...

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 "

Get Behind Me Satan, the "new" album by the White Stripes.

Their mistake: recording it.

Oh and when the keyboard player drops something on the keys on the intro to "Lazy line painter jane"..

xpost so it seems, marcello.. Shall wait for the LP I guess...

Xpost myself.. that's the Belle and Sebastian song, not Van's cover version obv.

I'd quite like Van Morrison to do a Belle and Sebastian covers album.

Pink Floyd - "Let There Be More Light"; second verse (I think) the whispered vocals get the lyric wrong

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.

I'm impressed you guys can spot 'mistakes' on those records. I thought it was "oops I went wrong" "Don't worry, it's jazz" ...

On the Allman Brothers' "One Way Out," after the drum solo and the guitar-dueling part, it appears they come back in on the wrong chord (they should be coming back in on bar 1 of a 12-bar blues, but they come back in on bar 9--it may have been deliberate, but it always sounded wrong to me).

There are two crude, dead obvious edits on the Count Five's "They're Gonna Get You" (the B-side of their hit, "Psychotic Reaction").

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.

The first tune on the Arcade Fire album speeds up immensely between the beginning and the end.

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

i just sat down with my ipod and had a listen to some of the mistakes mentioned on this thread. The Jimmy Page one on Black Dog is spectacular!

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?

That song on the first half of Spoon's "Girls Can Tell", where the keys and guitar play an arpeggio in the intro, but don't quite nail it. It's really sloppy, but sort of endearing in a homemade recording fashion.

There's also the track on Miles Davis "Workin'" where he's trading fours with Philly Joe Jones. Philly extends it into eights, and in the fifth bar Miles comes in with the first couple notes of a phrase and then stops.

There's another trading-fours mishap on Sonny Rollins' Volume 2, I think it's on either "You Stepped Out of a Dream" or "Why Don't I." He comes in too early but then totally makes up for it by repeating it and making it into a riff.

There's an obvious recording error at the end of "Impossible" by Wu-Tang Clan. It's the part where Raekwon is talking about how "when you play with guns, son, that creates the problem of you going against your own..." There's an editing problem there where it sounds like the CD skips. It always stuck out like a sore thumb to me.

I know Dylan's been mentioned before, but on "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream", there's a really obvious screw-up that occurs when the producer (Tom Wilson?) starts laughing loudly 20 seconds into the song. It cracks me up every time. Dylan starts the songs again after that.

I've always wondered if it was intentional or just a mistake when Malkmus sang "Nature kids / I - they don't have no function" on "Range Life".

Check out the fade-out to "Fire" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience -- Noel Redding goes back to the main riff for a second, nobody joins, so he abashedly returns to the verse riff.

Nick Drake forgetting that he hasn't written an ending for a song and fumbling around for a few beats