Rock mistakes you’ve caught in movies

The Simpsons had quite a few of those. There was also the time Homer did his gymnastics routine to "Music Box Dancer," at least six years before it was released (the flashback doesn't say what year it was, but since he and Marge hadn't met yet - we see her in the audience and she asks who he is - it can't be any later than 1973).

I brought that one up once at a bar. One of my drinking buddies replied, "Yeah, that's a mistake, but you're one of about twelve people in the entire world who would catch it!"

I don't see the mistake here. It's plausible that a teenager from California would be familiar with both of those songs in the summer of 1962.

If I recall correctly, in the audition scene (where Huey Lewis tells him they're "just too darn loud"), one of the other guitarists in the band was Fox's guitar teacher.



And to those who say we're taking this all too seriously, really, I don't disagree. I point these things out because they're fun - up to a point. Beyond that point? Well, the movie Ray has already been mentioned, and it's full of easily-corrected mistakes. Walk the Line is another, which implies among other things that the title song and "Ring of Fire" were hits years later than they really were, and invents completely baseless stories about how they came to be written. I do think that sort of thing does a disservice to the real-life subjects and their music.

Where does one draw the line between what's harmless and what isn't? I guess I know it when I see it. I do remember the mistake that convinced me not to take it all too seriously, but it wasn't a rock song and it was in a TV show rather than a movie. It was the Downton Abbey episode where they sing "If You Were the Only Girl in the World." The mistake isn't in the song's presence - it was published in 1916 and that scene takes place in 1918 - but rather in the arrangement. While we now mostly know that song as a waltz (and that is how Edith and Mary do it), it wasn't usually performed that way until the 1930s. Before that it was usually done as a foxtrot. But that is an awfully easy detail to miss, especially given how much better the song works as a waltz. So I've grown a lot less prone to pointing out the mistakes out loud - but I do still notice them, because to me, it's kind of fun.

 

Not a movie, but a TV show (largely based on the movie FM) WKRP in the pilot episode where the newly self-christened 'Dr Johnny Fever' puts on the turntable and cues up the first track on IIRC a Casablanca label album (perhaps Kiss Alive! as that was clearly one of the albums Andy hands to Johnny just beforehand). Firstly its (again IIRC) a Ted Nugent song that plays (he wasn't on Casablanca Records) and secondly after a closeup of Johnny doing his manic DJ talking thing for a few seconds, they go back to a wide shot where the songs is still playing totally uninterrupted but the stylus now seems to be "playing" the label. They "corrected" this in a flashback episode where that scene was newly re-filmed.

 

If memory serves, wasn't there a scene in Sid & Nancy where the title characters were watching John Lydon on the Tomorrow show?

The latter took place in 1980, Sid and Nancy were dead by 79.

 

Ahhh! Made a mistake finding the mistakes.

 

I remember the KISS poster from that pilot episode. My brother and I watched only because we had seen it in the preview.

 

In the Virgin Suicides when the girls and boys are playing phone tag, trading songs and hanging up. The girls are play Alone Again Naturally by Gilbert O Sullivan on a 45 which looks nothing like my 45. It may be an import of some kind, but would really seem weird because of the U.S.'ness of the film. Also the second verse is playing just after they drop the needle at the beginning. However I always believed that was done purposefully to help build the climax of the film and not a mistake,

 

You want a bigger BTTF goof related to the Chuck incident? The Gibson ES345 that Marty is playing wasn't even made until 1958!

 

Not sure if this counts...I haven't read through the whole thread, but I just played the American Graffiti Soundtrack recently, and read that the film was set in 1962, but there's a Beach Boys song from 1964 on it..."All Summer Long"...bugs me

 

Sorry for the imprecise statement - I meant that the album in question was on CBS and the movie shows a different (incorrect) label.

If they were gonna play music that hadn't been released, at least they could've gotten the label right!

 

That movie should come with a subscription for a fifth of good whisky for every bi-annual viewing.

 

In High Fidelity when Cusack plays The River, he puts the needle at the start of the side, whereas on the actual LP the cut is the last song on the side.

 

There's also a zombie movie whose title I can't recall offhand, where "Hungry Heart" figures prominently, and you see it playing at least once. The label is correct - 70s-80s Columbia, with the name around the edge - but the needle is about halfway across the record when it should be on the first track.

 

In Mad Men, a 45 being played on the Eric reissue oldies label and a 1973 RCA company sleeve. Details here from Phast Phreddie Patterson:

Are We Not Mad Men? | The ARChive of Contemporary Music

 

Yeah, if people are using the film as if it were a source of factual info, that's on them. Although it's also a bit on folks who exhibit the realism fetish, because that contributes to a misconception that films are "supposed to" match facts in the real world (rather than the obvious realization that a fiction necessarily won't match many facts in the real world).

I love that film, too. I like or love most of Oliver Stone's film work. But of course I know it's fiction, and that it's Oliver Stone's fictional version of the Doors story (not actually Oliver Stone's version of reality).

 

But "All Summer Long" is only used over the closing credits, not in the film itself. And I'm guessing
Lucas chose it because it fits well with the movie we just saw...they in fact were having fun "all summer long".

 

"I spent all of this time learning just what days this song was released in 1973 in various markets, learning what the original labels look like in different markets, learning just where on the vinyl the track starts, memorizing the radio stations that played the song and what their typical playlists were--so if a character hears the song on the radio, I'll know if it should be followed by a Tony Orlando & Dawn song or not, and so on. I expect you to spend time learning that stuff and I expect you to care passionately about it, too. Otherwise it's as if you're suggesting that I've been wasting my time."

 

Also, Don's mistress plays Sketches of Spain on the Columbia 2-eye label, a year or so before it existed.

 

UK version as I remember.

 

Right. Imagine if someone made the same type of biopic about Elvis, and portrayed him as a secret leader of the Church of Satan.
Fans would be a little...upset, or disappointed.

 

This (enjoyable) thread is specifically about "rock mistakes you've caught in movies". It even says so in the title. It's not about how historically accurate films *should* be. Maybe start a different thread on that?

 

Some people would probably be upset, especially because now there's a culture of being offended at any thing one can manage to be offended by, no matter how ridiculous it is to be upset by it, but note that there have already been plenty of films in that vein. There's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), there was a Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001); there are films like Dick (1999) and Zelig (1983) and Forrest Gump (1994) and so on; another category is stuff like I'm Not There (2007) and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002). There are plenty of films that present heavily fantastical versions of historical persons and events.

 

Or possibly it is symbolic that time has moved on as the film is ending.

 

The record the girls play for Alone Again is a 7" small hole with a half black half red label. During this scene the boys are playing Hello It's Me and So Far Away as well, but we do not get a clear shot of the LP labels. Their TT appears to have a wooden tonearm however. The back and forth song trading goes on for some time as the mood changes from happiness to hopelessness.
One thing I love about the film are the needledrops that can be heard throughout making it seem like 1975.

 

Surely you realize that this thread is not so much about a realism fetish as it is about music nerds proudly demonstrating their exhaustive knowledge of trivia details.

 

Has anyone mentioned the bit in Jerry Maguire where the jazz freak says his tape features Miles Davis & John Coltrane playing together in 1963?

Not rock I know but annoying nevertheless.