Van Halen Backing Track Disaster

Here’s a great YouTube video I came across on Create Digital Music where the stage tech’s (or board op) really, REALLY screwed up! The song was Van Halen’s famed “jump”, and the keyboard intro was to be played as a backing track on tape (well, not tape really, digital – probably mp3 or something). So, whoever queued the track played it at 48K instead of 44.1K (cd quality standard) – and in digital terms that’s like playing a tape too fast or playing an old 33 1/3 album at 45 rpm. Basically it made the keyboard parts a “microtone” higher, but not high enough for Eddie to even play it a half or whole step higher to match, and what you get is a brutal, brutal version of the song. As their web site says it was definitely an “on stage disaster”!