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

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

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?