The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Konichiwa Songfighters,

How's everyone doing today? I'm finding myself crazy busy in a good way. I'm trying to figure out the Purple Reign issue. I'm trying desperately to finally put together a band (and blogging about the experience) and I'm doing that whole yearly "listen to the whole archive" thing. That's been quite the laborious journey so far but I'm almost done and will be able to do my top 200 of 2007 soon. Expect PMs and e-mails and the like from me.

QotD: What's the biggest flub you've ever made during a live performance?

As I'm still reeling from my biggest at SF: BK, I wanted to hear stories of other people's.

Roll Call: That storm is here now. It's gonna be snowing for a while, they say. I was gonna go up to Franconia to find out about those Saturday gigs, but I might have to put it off.

I've started writing some drinking songs for the RPM Challenge. I'll likely include Cute Boots on my RPM album, even though it was written before February. I'm justifying it like this: I will be doing a new recording of the song (thankfully), and I'm not going to count it toward the 10-song requirement.


QotD: It was at someone else's performance, actually. Cry'n Out Loud, a local cover band, was playing the Second Stage show at Meadowbrook (opening for The Cars and Steve Miller). They asked me to take photos for them, so I was running around getting all kinds of angles. And I accidentally kicked out the power cord that served, well, everything. It was dead silent for about five seconds before I could get the thing untangled from my leg and plugged back in to the wall. Thankfully, everything came back up without having to reboot or anything, and they kept right on playing. I put down the camera and picked up a drink.

qotd: Two new songs were to be played at the last Ghost Town Gridlock show. When we got to the new one that *I* had written and was to sing I decided it wasn't ready to be performed so I told the guys that we were skipping it. As it turns out, we had already skipped my song and I was in fact suggesting that we skip one of the other guys' song. With the help of our bass player in his ear, he took thats as 'on purpose'. (even though a song later he started into the song and we played it anyways) I had to explain all of this later.

It's Friday. Yay. I'm in need of a drink and I still have a few hours left at work. Upside, I had a big ole bacon cheeseburger for lunch.

qotd: i fell asleep on stage during a slow waltz, once.

QotD: I played the opening to "Chest Fever" in the wrong key once. It's an extended organ opening, so we didn't notice till the rest of the band came in.

...I don't use the auto-transposer anymore.

Hmm, well, at the last show the entirety of "accelerator" was a big flub on my part because i had trouble figuring out when i was supposed to sing, haha.
then also on chaos vs. order i sang a verse a measure too early causing the echoes to sound really weird. but really, all of my sf live shows have had lots of flubs.

the other day i was listening to a king crimson live cd. this was right after the nyc show. i noticed that at one point adrian belew sang the wrong line in a song and i felt a little better about my own flubs... if these professionals do it, i can too, haha.
-bill

Octothorpe's on-stage mistakes are legion.

There are eight lines to each verse in our song "Skyline".

In one performance, we played two versions, the Sweetleaves version (slow, reggae version), and our own high-energy version.

Both times, I started the first verse with the second line rather than the first, and was off by one for the entire verse, leaving me with nothing for the finish.

DAMN.

In Santa Cruz, I forgot the lyrics to the entire third verse of Kompressor's "Don't Dance", but that was less embarassing because I made some up as I went along, and with the thick fake german accent, it really doesn't matter what I am saying anyway.

In Austin, our synthesizer refused to hold a tuning, and we played a couple of songs with the keys in some totally unknown and non-evenly-tempered key.

I have started "What We Need More Of Is Science" in the wrong key on several occasions.

I am sure I have barely scratched the surface.

SPUD

Jim, that story made me laugh. The imagery is hell'hairy'ass. Ohhhhh....meeee.

I started a guitar/vocal opener in a higher key and didn't notice until the vox came in. I kept going and everyone moved up a key. It was fine until the high vox hit. I knew I couldn't hit it, so I went low, lol. What made it funny was that the high part was the chorus, so Edgar and Lindsey had to hit the high or go low too, but they don't come in until the second half. Lindsey went high and cracked. Then after we got through it the first time around, we still had to do it 3 more times. As the chorus came, we looked at each other and I could hear them laughing in the mic trying to go really low, which made me laugh. It was funny and it sucked, but no one noticed.

QotD: So, I join Glennny and Friends on stage for a rendition of the song "Submarines" (from the Zinkline album). We didn't rehearse it before hand but I knew the words and thought everything would be okay. But I didn't realize two vital things: 1- Zinkline songs are jams that are cut down into songs so they don't flow the same live. And the more important thing, 2- the verse and the chorus have the same chords. I do the first verse and all is good. Then I wait for the chorus to come in. And I'm wondering why are they playing the verse again. I wait a little more and still no chorus. I whisper to Glennny- "Where's the Chorus?". Glennny replies "We're playing it". I recover and finish the song. The recording doesn't sound too bad (expect I butchered a note towrads the end since I was knocked for a loop by the aforementioned) BUT I fear what the video must look like.

QotD: Apparently I played an entire Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in the wrong key at a college xmas party. No one seemed to care, but honestly, I don't remember much from that evening. All would be well except it was recorded.

Perhaps the most famous flub in recent history is Ella Fitzgerald forgetting the words to Mack the Knife in Berlin. But as only she can, she more than won the crowd with her improved skat and lyric.

Man, I just had four sneezes in rapid-fire sucession. I got a pause the length of one or two of them, barely enough time to recover, when a big fifth one came. That might be a record for me.

Lord of Oats wrote:Man, I just had four sneezes in rapid-fire sucession. I got a pause the length of one or two of them, barely enough time to recover, when a big fifth one came. That might be a record for me.

Multiple nasal orgasms, oh yeah. Giggity giggity. Enjoy a cigarette in your little 'after glow'.

drc: I have been depressed this whole week. Apparently I've actually been a lot more productive than I realized though. I get this way sometimes I guess.

qotd: Oh man, if I could remove every recording of my Song Fight Live: Austin set from the planet, I would be much happier. That whole thing was just one gigantic mistake.

Of course my longest-running continual mistake is not having enough time to practice with other performers and just hoping that they can fake it well enough. From now on, for ad-hoc performances like SFLive I'm only going to use a loop pedal and fail or succeed on my own terms. No sense taking better musicians down with me.

Lord of Oats wrote:Man, I just had four sneezes in rapid-fire sucession. I got a pause the length of one or two of them, barely enough time to recover, when a big fifth one came. That might be a record for me.

I think we need to go to the judges on this one:



low scores for that post from the judges.

I think where depression was my thing last year, this year it's anxiety.

GOD I TYPED OUT A POST AND IT WAS AWESOME. I LOST IT.

I remember it ended strongly, like this:

"I am a solid rock of strength and determination. Have you fucked the naysayers lately?"

Of course, that makes me sound like a jackass out of context. Heh, oh well. The point was, comittments that were made to me have been broken. I'm setting out to do on my own things that I was supposed to have help doing, or at least company. I will triumph, as I have before.

Hoblit wrote:

Lord of Oats wrote:Man, I just had four sneezes in rapid-fire sucession. I got a pause the length of one or two of them, barely enough time to recover, when a big fifth one came. That might be a record for me.

Multiple nasal orgasms, oh yeah. Giggity giggity. Enjoy a cigarette in your little 'after glow'.

I'm going to go snort some pepper and sneeze off.

A man, sitting next to a woman on a jet, suddenly sneezes. Unexpectedly, he unzips his pants and wipes the end of his penis off with his handkerchief. He then zips up and continues reading his magazine.

The woman cannot believe what she just saw.

Then he sneezes again, unzips, pulls out his penis and wipes it off with a handkerchief.

The woman says, "Excuse me sir, but that is disgusting and rude."

He says, "I am so sorry that I have offended you. I have this very rare, embarrassing physical handicap that causes me to orgasm every time I sneeze."

The woman, disarmed by the man's honesty, and somewhat embarrassed by her own callousness, says, with sympathy, "Oh you poor man, what are you taking for it?"

"Pepper," he replies.

At Tree Surgeon General's first gig, I saw a microphone in front of me and decided to sing a back-up vocal to a song for the first time ever. Didn't matter that it had never even been rehearsed. Off I went with a foghorn low ahh ahh ahh thingy and I see the two guys sitting in front of me pointing and laughing. I backed off the mike to never sing a note again. I don't mind addressing the crowd, but I'll never torture anyone with live vocals. Promise!

Also that gig: Bass player broke low E string, he also fell off of the back of the drum riser when he switched to drums for a tune, the drummer had an apparently cracked cymbal because when he hit it mid song, the stick got stuck in the cymbal and he came back empty handed. That's all fine, as our next gig was the night Bush Sr. started the first Gulf War.

qotd: every drum solo I've ever done has been a flub. I always try to play too fast.

Paco Del Stinko wrote:Also that gig: Bass player broke low E string

Was he using it to launch projectiles or something? Jeeze.

HaHa!! Fluf, good sneeze joke.

...and Paco, I lub your low voice.