Panopticist: Eric Clapton Is All Thumbs

March 16, 2008

Eric Clapton Is All Thumbs

Posted by Andrew Hearst

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Late last year a Finnish media artist named Santeri Ojala got a lot of attention for a series of hilarious YouTube videos in which he lifted concert footage of various guitar heroes and overdubbed his own intentionally awful playing. The bad musicianship was funny enough, but the verisimilitude made it even funnier: Ojala was great at matching each player’s hand movements and timing, and he sprinkled lukewarm applause and other sound effects throughout. The videos were like alternate-universe versions of rock-god cliches.

A month or two ago, YouTube yanked the videos and suspended Ojala’s YouTube account, apparently due to copyright complaints from several of the guitarists. Many of the videos have now resurfaced on YouTube, and because I never got around to posting them the first time, here’s one of the best. Eric Clapton does jazz:

More: Stevie Ray Vaughan, Steve Vai, Slash, Eddie Van Halen, Metallica, Jake E. Lee with Ozzy Osbourne. Also, Yngwie Malmsteen, complete with symphony orchestra!

Inspired by Ojala, someone else contributed this Oscar Peterson-Joe Pass train wreck:

Tags: comedy, Eric Clapton, guitar, jazz, mashup, music, performance, video

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comments (12)

Abby T

March 16, 2008

4:48 PM

I could laugh at these for hours. Thanks!

-ATM

Antonio Lopez

March 17, 2008

4:31 PM

I think Santeri’s musicianship is quite good, actually!

kevin

March 17, 2008

4:37 PM

This makes me happier than you can imagine! There is something very revealing about showing these videos to non-shredders and people without rock experience. They will inevitably shrug and walk off. The parody is so well executed as to appear real!

paul

March 17, 2008

6:28 PM

Thanks! It’s been awhile since I’ve laughed so hard. The Steve Vai parody is especially funny because of his facial expressions.

matt

March 17, 2008

7:44 PM

Ironically the first 15 seconds of the oscar peterson quartet video songs a bit like charles mingus tune.

Marilyn Terrell

March 18, 2008

12:46 AM

I had to wipe away tears— thanks for the hilarity!

Walt

March 18, 2008

12:50 AM

Tears are streaming down my cheeks and I can barely type for the spasms of laughter that are shaking me from head to toe…THANK YOU FOR THIS!

Willy G

March 18, 2008

5:56 AM

Is this not the funniest thing of all time? I think so. I am crying with laughter.

2fs

March 18, 2008

12:05 PM

It took me a while to recognize that the Malmsteen one was fake - these guys are so concerned with Notes Per Second!!! that it hardly matters what they play. And yeah: clearly on a technical level, Ojala knows what he’s doing…although I’ve heard some avant-garde guitar playing that’s pretty much indistinguishable from his parodies…

shannon

March 18, 2008

4:31 PM

It just goes to show how “ordered sounds in time” can be so arbitrary. I actually enjoyed some of this as music in its own right, despite the intent. Sure, it was very funny seeing Clapton playing like that but once past the humor, and I actively listened to what was going on musically without watching the screen, there were some real moments there, despite in all likelihood being captured unawares!

GEB

March 25, 2008

4:08 PM

For years I have been recording movies, dumping the audio and re recording my own (with quite antiquated gear) with hilarious results. In all honesty, I don’t think I’ve EVER laffed so hard as when I watched/ listened to Joe Pass play his guitar that sounded like a ukelele or some small wind-up guitar!!!!! This has to be THE funniest thing I have ever seen!

I swallowed an entire pretzel!

Chuck T

April 21, 2008

5:30 PM

The Oscar Peterson clip reminded me of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards albums I grew up hearing with my parents.

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