My Worst Trainwreck

okay so on january 21st of 2017 the jazz drummer mark juliana played a gig at the blue whale in los angeles california and there's a clip from this gig that i am just absolutely fascinated by where everything on the bandstand just seems to go to complete hell the symbols just kind of fall over into the audience in the middle of the drum solo [Applause] the keyboard just kind of falls randomly off of its keyboard stand there clearly was something in the air on this gig the music and the gear just kind of unravel before your eyes the music in particular feels as unhinged as the symbol filths several weeks later in stamford connecticut another musical train wreck would happen but one that i'm very thankful never made its way to youtube this is the story of the greatest musical train wreck i've ever been part of okay so let's talk about wedding gigs yes the music can be cheesy and the hours can be long but the pay is good and the work is steady two things that don't often occur in the music industry i've played probably upwards of i'm going to say 100 weddings in the past couple of years and i've seen a lot of stuff both great things and terrible things and probably my favorite glorious train wreck of a moment came when a bridesmaid came up to the band during a break and asked to sing can you feel the love tonight by elton john as a dedication to the newlyweds the band knew the song and we thought it would be a nice moment so yeah why not let's do it everything would run smoothly in our minds so long as the bridesmaid knew the song and uh no everything was not fun we came back from the break and a crowd gathered for the big dedication a hush fell across the entire reception of several hundred people the pianist started playing the first opening chords to can you feel the love tonight and as soon as the bridesmaids started singing we knew we were in for an ordeal [Music] so ellen john's original version of can you feel the love tonight is in b-flat major but the version from disney's the lion king is an f major to this day i don't really know which version the bridesmaid was singing i mean we were doing it in b-flat but she didn't seem to notice there clearly was a disconnect happening so the pianist started doing that thing that rehearsal pianists have done since time immemorial he started playing the melody in the right hand of the piano in a desperate bid to try and get the singer back on track now unfortunately i can't demonstrate that for you because the melody of can you feel the love tonight is copyrighted but fortunately there's another melody which sounds kind of similar it would have sort of sounded like this [Music] unfortunately this initial gambit to correct course failed and the bridesmaids soldier dawn and atonal ignorance the drummer and i looked at each other and thought well maybe we should play quieter maybe the stage volume needs to be quieter so that she can hear herself better but playing quieter didn't help it just meant that we were even more exposed to the intense scrutiny of a couple hundred onlookers when we got to the first chorus can you feel the love tonight one of the singers from our band started lightly singing the melody in the background to try and get the bridesmaid to match his pitch but unfortunately i think she took that as a cue to try and harmonize with our singer which just ended so so so poorly it's at about this point that normally we would just cut our losses and throw up the universal hand signal for god please let's end this and launch into something like i don't know uptown funk it was at a wedding in connecticut two years ago white people love uptown funk but the bridesmaid launched directly into verse two she had a mission she was going to sing can you feel the love tonight and we would be there her unwilling passengers looked over at the drummer and he mouths there's no way out it was about halfway through the second verse where the bridesmaid settled into a key about a half step below where we were and this got the wheels turning in my head you see on the car ride up a couple of the members of the band had watched a video of a pianist chasing the key centers of a tone-deaf singer singing the star-spangled banner [Music] hmm could can we modulate our way out of this situation could we modulate down and catch her in her key and do it at the beginning of the final chorus so it sounds like a big climactic moment is this the way that we save the day i looked over at the guitarist and the pianist to see if we couldn't coordinate this scheme but as the final chorus approached the pianist was actually making the universal modulate up a half step signal which made no sense the singer was singing down a half step and then i panicked can you feel the love tonight is one of those songs that you just can never remember if there's a big climactic modulation in the final chorus i mean without checking can you remember if elton john modulates yeah at that moment neither could i the final chorus of this tortured rendition of can you feel the love tonight is fast approaching and it's clear that something's going to happen the guitarist pianist and i are going to go somewhere but we just don't know where are we going to go up are we going to go down or going to stay the same and then it hits the guitarist the pianist myself and the poor poor bridesmaids start doing can you feel the love tonight in four keys at the same time it was a quadritonal rendition of elton john's vision of pop it truly was the darkest timeline [Applause] now it turns out that elton john's version of the song doesn't modulate but the version that's used in disney's the lion king does it modulates unprepared from f major up a whole step to g major this whole step modulation by the way is sometimes called the disney modulation which has a very particular feel to it that's kind of bright and airy but the feeling of that kind of modulation does not compare to the supremely sour phenomenology of modulating to four keys at the same time holy crap honestly it was so bad that it was funny i had to suppress laughing because there was something so perfectly terrible about the moment that i had never experienced before it was just the cherry on top of it all it was just so beautifully cringey scrambling to put the sham back together we self-corrected back to b-flat major and let the song finally die it's sad slow terrible death we had burned the song to the ground in front of this very attentive audience and from the ashes no phoenix would rise there would just be rubble the audience was treated to a live version of a shreds video and so we returned to the scene of the crime the stanford marriott hotel where two years ago tragedy befell a helpless wedding band but you know it really wasn't that bad musically don't get me wrong it was god awful but it wasn't the first train wreck the band had ever experienced nor would it be the last honestly it kind of comes with the territory anytime that you perform on a stage be it on dance or theater or music technical and logistical meltdowns could happen and if a few minutes of cringe is the worst thing that happens in your job honestly it's a pretty sweet gig it certainly helps to keep things in perspective i have a friend who's a jazz bass player who quit playing jazz full-time to pursue a maritime career piloting boats and things like that he said that the worst thing that happens in music is you look kind of stupid when you make a mistake in music nobody gets hurt nobody dies the only wrecks are metaphorical i think about this sometimes especially when i'm getting dark and inside my head and when things around me aren't going well on the bandstand or when i don't feel like i'm playing very well it's easy to get wrapped up in something that you believe in and that you love but it's important to learn how to let go and i think it's an important experience for everybody out there who plays music to at least have one good train wreck because i think musical train wrecks are just great practice for the real train wrecks that might happen in your life where the world really is falling apart around you and you need to know how to let go and ride that energy and not break with it mark juliana and cruz certainly knew how to ride the wave during their musical train wreck and magic seemed to happen the date of the gig seems somewhat significant to me january 21 2017 the date after trump's inauguration it's hard not to think that that contributed to the general vibe of the gig at least in that corner of la it might have seemed like the world was falling apart so train wrecks if we're going to define them are any time that the situation is completely outside of your control and the only thing that you can control is your reaction to the situation in this way i think they are a great opportunity for practicing self-growth and music in particular provides a safe space for practicing that kind of awareness remember it's just music in a musical train wreck nobody gets hurt everybody goes home now the difference between juliana's train wreck and my train wreck is that after the band stopped playing they didn't have to play uptown funk i did that's the real tragedy face

Channel: Adam Neely

Views: 781,174

Rating: 4.9619904 out of 5

Keywords: adam, neely, jazz, fusion, bass, guitar, lesson, theory, music

Id: nuCRgeD4CQA

Length: 10min 9sec (609 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 08 2019