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

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

Went to a Mudhoney show in 1990 wearing a Mudhoney t-shirt I bought from the local punk rock record store. The guitarist saw me and told me it was a bootleg shirt and started interrogating me about where I got it.

At a club a woman came over and started talking to me because I had a Superchunk shirt on. We were talking about shows we’d seen but then I mispronounced “Polvo” and she corrected me and then there was awkward silence.

I worked at a bookstore and a group of customers were still browsing after we’d made all the closing announcements and locked the doors. The security guard was just standing back so I went over and in a probably annoyed tone told them we were closed. One of the group turned around and said, “Thank you so much!” It was Erykah Badu.

Wait how do u mispronounce polvo

Pronouncing the L. I think the correct way is like Poy-vo

http://seinfeld.wikia.com/wiki/Dolores?file=Mulva.jpg

:( stupid phone

I have listened to Polvo for 20 years, have seen them live twice, have spoken about them with other fans, and I have never once heard any pronunciation other than POLL-VOE

While stumbling around drunk on campus on the Saturday of the spring weekend of my sophomore year of college, I saw a flyer for a free Hans Joachim Roedelius that had literally just started in the music building. I wasn't super familiar with his music at this point in my life, but knew his name from a couple of Cluster albums I had downloaded off soulseek so I quickly made my way to my dorm room to take a gravity bong rip, convince my roommate to come along, and to grab a couple extra beers for the show. When we arrive at the music building, it isn't exactly apparent where the show is taking place (we are maybe 10-15 minutes past the listed start time by now) as there are no signs, noise, or people pointing the way. I notice a door that looks like it goes into the auditorium where I think it would make sense for it to take place and I loudly throw the door open and bellow "Is this the right door?" to my roommate behind me while I bulldoze into a room where it turns out Roedelius is playing super chill and very quiet slow piano music in front of a projected image of the rainforest. I'm greeted by a chorus of sushes and every eye in the room turning around to disapprovingly look at me as I try to sneak into the empty row in the back without making a larger ass of myself. After a couple minutes of uneventful sitting in the back, I get the great idea that I should crack open one of the beers I brought to keep the party going. The can opening creates a deafening echo throughout the whole hall, which gets accompanied by a considerable amount of laughs from some of the audience so I guess the juxtaposition between my party animal antics and the super peaceful and quiet musical performance was at least amusing to some. Either way, it is honestly one of my favorite show memories of all-time and it goes to show what will happen when you book even the most unlikely musical artists during the biggest party weekend of the year on a college campus.

thats outstanding

party + nathan fielder

Noice.

This is basically unrelated to the topic at hand except that it potentially made SOMEONE look like an ass but that story and mentions of Polvo (which I think, frankly, is pronounced just the way you'd think it was pronounced) reminded me of it so here goes: one time in college, I was walking down the main drag and suddenly I started noticing flyers for a Helium show had been plastered everywhere. No way! Super exciting! This would've been like '97 I guess? None of my friends at the time were hip to them so I was talking them up and getting people to listen to tracks, really trying to drum up excitement in the lead-up to the show. So then it's like maybe a day or two before they're supposed to play and I'm walking back down that main drag and suddenly I started noticing that the flyers plastered everywhere now had the band's name hastily scribbled out with 'OXYGEN' scrawled above.

Lol. They should’ve gone with Argon.

I was onstage playing geetar for a one night cover band in 1999 and we were doing "Jump in the Fire" by Metallica, which me and the bass player had learned while the vocalist was in California.

Before we go to play the song,my friend starts panicking and saying he doesn't know the words, and I dismissively told him that he did, just do it.

He walks out on stage and screams "YEA" over and over for the entire song. On the video you see me laughing so hard I start fucking up the riff, and see 4 people (of like 20) get up and leave

Also i met Jon Schaffer from Iced Earth and asked him dumb questions and he clearly thought i was a tool.

I remember one of the Kaiser Chiefs embarrassed me when I requested Suede at their indie club, Pigs in Leeds. This was probably a year before they made it big. He just gave me this disgusted look and said, "Ugh, we don't play them here". It really did make me feel foolish and how I was I supposed to react to that? Of course, now I look back and just feel embarrassed that I was at the Kasier Chiefs indie club called Pigs in the first place.

I started working in a record shop here in Saint Paul last year. I am constantly making a fool of myself when I'm asked about an artist I don't know that well. Just the other day I got a confused look from someone when I suggested Peggy Lee might be in folk. The main issue is that we have a huge metal section and lots of people who come in specially for that. I really don't know anything about metal. We have an old fashioned system where we have to write down the titles of what we sell. Almost daily, someone will come up to the counter with an album that either does not reveal the artist's name or if it does, it's written in some weird text that is impossible to read. I always feel so self conscious when I either have to ask who it is or just pretend to scribble something down that is kind of close to what I can make out. I really should just study all those Der Weg Einer Freiheit album covers closely so I know them off by heart!

I hung out with Destruction Unit a couple of years ago when Don Bolles from the Germs was playing w/ them. he was really cool but several hours in I take it upon myself to say to him HEY DO YOU LIKE THE DESCENDENTS on the basis that he's mentioned in the lyrics to one of their songs. he's like, am I? uh sure they're OK, much later I realise I was thinking of Darby Crash

c. late 90s I was at an indie club night and asked the DJ to play Sonic Youth while he was playing something by Ciccone Youth (which I hadn't heard at that time). tbh I used to hassle that poor DJ all the time round then because I disliked most of the then-popular indie music i.e. tail-end of Britpop they would play so I was always trying to get them to play "old" indie rock/noise rock/punk, which they would occasionally oblige but they must've got so sick of me.

tbh almost any incidence of asking a DJ in a club to play something falls under the "made an ass out of yourself" heading

A little band I was in recorded a single with Bob Weston at Southern Studios, he was over a the behest of Idlewild, with whom he was recording some demos over at Abbey Rd and we managed to persuade him to stay an extra day and record/mix two tracks for us. He was nice, but obviously a bit burned from a weeks recording, he spied a copy of Mojo magazine in my rucksack, and remarked upon it, I said something like 'yeah, there's a really good article on the Grateful Dead' and he just kinda looked at me and said 'why would I give a shit about the Grateful Dead?' it was a little awkward, dunno why I thought he might.

xp perhaps, think that depends on the night really. not done thing if it's a dance club yeah, but that club had indie/60s/70s/80s nights where requests were encouraged (or at least tolerated)

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?