What's musical moment makes you laugh the most when you look back on it?
For me .. I use to play with a group at a friends house every Wed night. We played mostly classic rock material ... which included Smoke on the Water. My friend had a Spring Reverb tank plugged into a cranked amp and at the end of his solo he hit the top of it with his fist. It created a GIANT thunder crash that distorted through the amp ... and setup this amazing feedback loop back-through his guitar, the reverb tank, the amp, the guitar. After a couple seconds we all stopped playing and just listened to the feedback take these weird amorphic turns for about a minute. At then end we just looked at each other and laughed for 5 minutes ...
I use to work at a dance hall in the midwest called the Holleyhock ballroom. It was a time that bands played in these rural places because mtv and cable and tv were just coming into there own. Jerry lee lewis, the beach boys, red dogs and a lot more use to play in the place People even danced back then. I remmember one of the guitar players was getting into his lead playing so much. he fell off stage and landed just right that it ilooked like it was sopposed to be that way. I ask him after the dance and he said "No it was the luck of the draw. look at my nose this isnt the first time it happened. How I miss those old dances the player and the good people we use to meet....
When I was with Muddy we were playing the Bottom Line in NYC and had a sold out show. His manager told him that Bob Dylan was in the house, and wanted to join Muddy onstage. Muddy had no idea who Bob Dylan was but his manager explained that Bob Dylan was a big star and there were photographers from Rolling Stone there and that it would be good publicity for Muddy to call him up. Muddy repeated the name a couple of times and said, "Okay."
When the time came, Muddy shouted to the audience, "Ladies and gentleman we have a big star in the house and we're going to bring him out right now. Dylan's here - John Dylan, come out here John!"
I tried to hide my considerable amusement as John Dylan ambled onstage.
Even though I have been playing professionally since 1994, there areCorey Harris fans out there who have followed my music but who often get confused whenever my band is onstage with me. Seems that they have a hard time picking me out from the other members of my (all Black) band, even though none of us look anything like the other. A few years ago we were somewhere in America and when we all came on stage I heard somebody say, "I didn't know Corey played bass!" when they saw the bass player (who was about 15 years older than me, taller and with a lot more gray hair). It got to the point that we would wait and see how many people mistook the keyboard player or the bassist for me. I would let the whole band get onstage before me to see who in the audience shouted out "Hey Corey!", thinking that I was already onstage. Mistaken identity for real!
I had a singer fall off the stage drunk at a fairly big gig once....I opened for Pfunk which is crazy. Pfunk guys were scary to hang around and the crowd really did not want to sit through an opener...we played our set very up tempo that night and then hung out to watch the show. I have had some wonderful night hanging out with some of the jazz greats like Art Blakey Elvin Jones Percy Heath, Johnny Griffin etc. I had an amp fall over on my guitar and pop the bridge right off and all I had left was a guitar with high action for the slide tune opener....that sucked.
