Favorite "mistakes" in great recordings

[Jazz Ad]

FUnny you start with Simon & Garfunkel because my favorite ever is Garfunkel starting too early on the Boxer.
It happens over a very quiet melody so it's impossible to hide. THese days though it would have been edited out.
It would be sad because in the 1/2 second glance after, you see all the complicity, experience and grief between these guys and why they're unable to work together on the long term.

Not sure if this fits exactly, but it's hilarious. The trigger is at about 50 seconds.

She was spot on. She was just way too loud in the mix.

 

[Guitalia]

More of a "technical mistake" but the vocal bleed-through on Zep's "Whole Lotta Love"

If you're referring to the reversed reverb tail on ". . . Woman," ". . . you need . . . . ," that was intentional, given that they had to play the tape backwards (or flip the reel over) to achieve that effect.

 

[Cookies0nDowels]

The Sound of Silence thread got me thinking. I think music has suffered in the digital age, where the goal is technical perfection, as you can digitally alter everything, and you have virtually limitless tracks (which some people seem to think you have to fill them all.

What are some of your favorite recordings where there were "flaws" in fantastic songs? One of mine is the Abbey Road medley. In the last minute, the tuning changes almost half a step.

Andy Rouke of The Smiths completely cocks it up on "This night has opened my eyes" from the album Hatful of hollow which is a compilation of tracks recorded for John Peel's radio show on the BBC.

 

[retslock]

At the beginning of the middle section of Dusty Springfield's Son of a Preacher Man, Tommy Cogbilll seems to make a clanger but recovers quickly.

 

[baileyboy]

The absolute worst mistake ever - a voice crack at the highest note of your big hit in front of the largest audience you'll ever play to:

[/QUOTE]

I remember when this happened... "the note heard 'round the world", it was dubbed. Andy Taylor's "shoot me now" look up immediately afterwards- around 2:55- aptly shows his bewilderment.

 

[Chrisk-K]

1) Steve Gadd stick smack at 4:59 into Steely Dan Aja

It was intended. Impossible for Fagen and Becker to leave a mistake uncorrected.

 

[2tonic]

Twice, in one of their biggest hits, the drummer in the Ohio Players (Jimmy "Diamond" Williams) manages to get sideways coming out of fills.
In "Skin Tight" at 1:07 he drops a beat coming off the horn flourishes, and again at 3:40 coming out of his own (obviously rushing) fill!

 

[Hummergeist]

Grand Funk Railroad - I want freedom. from the album survival. they actually started the song twice and kept the tape running between.
I Want Freedom (Remastered 2002) - YouTube
That is one of the best albums ever recorded. and not only because of Mel Schacher's bass playing. Although the bass is awesome on all of the songs. I like the version of gimme shelter from this album better than the Rolling stones. both Mark and Don have more interesting voices than Mick Jagger in my opinion.
but i am not objective... my first band was virtually a Grand funk, and iron butterfly cover band.

I'm probably one of the few British people who know that album, and yes it's great.

 

[ricardol]

The Edge practicing scales during his solo starting at 1:00

 

[mrjim123]

It sounds like Mick Jagger belches at the end of the first line of Ruby Tuesday, about 7 seconds into this recording:

 

[brianrost]

In the middle of Stevie Wonder's first big hit "Fingertips P. 2" there's a breakdown for an encore and when Stevie comes back in on harmonica he's in a different key. You can hear the pianist softly hit a couple of notes to try to figure it out and a voice in the background says "What key? What key?"

Go to 2:18

 

[TemplesOfSyrinx]

I was listening to Led Zeppelin when they first put out their discography on CD. Zeppelin 3 to be exact. Since I've Been Loving You comes on, and to my horror, during the quiet intro, you can hear Bonham's kick pedal squeaking everytime he hits it. Now I can't unhear it.

 

[equill]

Sting's laugh at the beginning of Roxanne, occurred because he accidently sat on a piano keyboard.

Came here to make sure this one was in the list.

Their budget at the time meant that they were all crammed into a tiny recording room. Sting leaned back from the mic, and hit a bum note on the piano.

 

[GFreeman1008]

In Zeppelin's song "The Ocean" at about the 1:20 mark, you can hear a phone in the studio ring in the background. I used that song as my ringtone for years because of that.

 

[obieito]

Wild Horses:
After many years of listening to the song I once realised Bill Wyman completely misses a note about 1:32 into the song, when they're singing the second "couldn't drag me away..."

 

[Altitude]

There's a fantastic tune on the first Mike Stern album called "Mood Swings" with Jaco on bass. The whole tune is nuts, it's a modified blues form.

Jaco plays a double stop motif at the beginning and comps around it while Stern blows in front of the head. Jaco changes to a half time feel for the head. At 1:05, you can hear him move to the half time feel a chorus early, thinking that everyone was going to play the head. They don't, and it takes Jaco four beats to hear otherwise and go back to the motif.

 

[PWRL]

I was listening to Led Zeppelin when they first put out their discography on CD. Zeppelin 3 to be exact. Since I've Been Loving You comes on, and to my horror, during the quiet intro, you can hear Bonham's kick pedal squeaking everytime he hits it. Now I can't unhear it.

I couldn't either, after the first time I heard it.

 

[southpaw723]

At around the start of the nah nah nah's in Hey Jude (jsut before) Someone (sounding to me like Eric Clapton, but I can't find any indication he was there) comes in early, someone else shrieks in surprise and John Lennon swears. If any one had picked this up at the time, the song would have been banned.

Similarly under 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 in the medley in Abbey Road side 2, Lennon again swears.

When the drummer drops the sticks in Louis Louie, the drummer lets out a swear word (in the first minute)

Strange brew was meant to be another track. That's cream

Someone mentioned Barbara Ann. In an early take, Carl Wilson tells Dean to 'sing on key, ....)

I've heard that Lennon curses because his headphones were very loud lol

 

[India_Sierra]

There's a fantastic tune on the first Mike Stern album called "Mood Swings" with Jaco on bass. The whole tune is nuts, it's a modified blues form.

Jaco plays a double stop motif at the beginning and comps around it while Stern blows in front of the head. Jaco changes to a half time feel for the head. At 1:05, you can hear him move to the half time feel a chorus early, thinking that everyone was going to play the head. They don't, and it takes Jaco four beats to hear otherwise and go back to the motif.

That is an absolutely slamming tune and not one that I had heard before. Despite being an absolute fusion nut I've never listened to that much Mike Stern, I need to change that. For all you have labelled that shift in time feel a mistake (and I have no doubt it was), the music doesn't suffer for it. I would have noticed the shift in feel there but not necessarily picked it up as a mistake. I suppose that is indicative of the form, where many fusion albums were put together pretty quickly on a tight budget.

 

[India_Sierra]

I never verified this with a metronome, but I always felt like Danzig's "Cantspeak" had the sloppiest time-keeping ever. Very inconsistent tempo...to a point where I wondered if it might be intentional.

I just went to check that out as it's not one I had heard before. Yeah, it is an absolute trainwreck. The drumming is very sloppy throughout and the fills seem to totally throw the drummer to the point where he seems to drag them out even further. The whole thing sounds pretty lazy, I'd be disappointed if an amateur put out a performance like that. In fairness, the rest of the band sounds very poor too and the track is cut together badly. The part at around 00:25 seconds where the reversed guitar starts to play is really sloppily cut, the drums almost seem to lag over that bar. Really, really bad stuff.