A Gold Coast band has garnered millions of views online after their drummer took a perfectly timed tumble mid-performance.
Indie group Forever on High has clocked millions of views in just two weeks, thanks to a chaotic clip filmed on a canal pontoon at a private waterfront property in Biggera Waters.
“I don’t know why it resonates but maybe people just like seeing others fail or do stupid things,” drummer James Noble told 7NEWS.com.au.
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“It was an accident — it wasn’t meant to happen — but I think that’s why it’s done so well.”
The band was recording a video for Don’t Wanna Be A Millennial Idiot, a cheeky remake of Green Day’s American Idiot, when things quite literally fell apart.
Drummer James stands up while still playing through a break in the song.
But as the track kicks back in and he goes to sit down to hit the hi-hat, the chair is no longer there.
Within seconds, he is stumbling backwards, arms flailing, before disappearing straight into the water.
“Holy f***! Holy s***! Oh my god!” his bandmates shout. “You alright? You got it, you got it, you got it!”
“The f****** chair just fell back,” Noble replies.
He said there was nothing staged about it.
“We had a couple of takes where we were trying different things and … we were all standing singing ‘Don’t wanna be a millennial idiot’ so I stood up,” he said.
“You can see in the video my foot must have flipped the chair back as I jumped up, but I just thought the stool was still there — so when I tried to sit down, I went straight into the water.”
The band first posted the clip on Instagram with the caption “Bro lasted 6 business seconds”, before it quickly spreading across social media, racking up more than 7.4 million clicks.
“Time for a new drummer,” the band joked in the comments.
And it almost wasn’t a joke.
“There are actually bull sharks in that river,” Noble said.
“So, I was pretty keen to get out of it as quickly as possible.”
But it wasn’t the sharks that left the biggest sting.
“The worst part was everyone noticed my thinning hair,” Noble said.
“I’m blond and when I came out of the water people were like, ‘bro fell in and came out looking 60’ … or calling me a full millennial.
“There were some pretty nasty comments. Those comments make want to shave it off.”
Made up of Jeremy Sammut (lead vocals), Will Parsons (bass/vocals), Kevin Kojima (guitar/vocals) and James Noble (drums), Forever on High has been steadily building an audience.
The band’s parody clips built around relatable millennial struggles like bad backs, mortgages and getting older have racked up nearly 22 million views across their last nine videos.
Noble said the idea was to tap into “what’s really relatable” for fans in their 30s, with the viral success now helping drive listeners to their original music.
In videos since the fall, the setup looks a little different.
“We’ve actually pushed our setup about 1m further forward now … you can see that the drums are further forward, so definitely a lesson learned,” Noble said.
The band is hoping the audience drawn in by the humour will stick around for their tracks they “spent a lot of hard hours” creating, with several new releases and their Back to Basics Queensland tour starting April 24.
