Odd reasons you didn't get the gig or were fired

[thumpbass1]

Originally Posted by kesslari

And this surprised you because...??

Didn't surprise me at all. I am after all a man and then I was
a young man. She didn't hurt the eyes at all! I knew what was
up the minute I got that polite phone call to tell me that
they went with the best player, blah, blah, which was b.s.
To get a call back and have someone admit what was up
later on was amusing. I'm a guy,we lie about this sort of
stuff as a gender constantly. They could have just said,
" She went back home to Saskatoon" or something like that.
To hear " She was hot and well the drummer you know......
ummmm... you know how it goes...." was amazingly honest
after the fact.

[taiwright]

cuz i played a 5 string.

F that noise.

tai

[RED5]

I got the gig on playing ability and then was turned down by a well known band because I wouldn't dye my hair black. Oddly enough? The guy they eventually took? had red hair.Must have been someone's cousin.

[Etbass]

Guys I dunno if this counts, but I got fired from a real job just after I picked up a gig, so sort of exactly the opposite of what we're talking about.
I got out of school last year, so I picked up some casual employment (that scheduled me in like a full time job) at a local retirement village as a kitchenhand. Part of the work was that I needed to drive their van to move food around and deliver to some of the oldies. I don't have a drivers license, but they covered for me.
I did my first day, and that afternoon I got called up asking if I wanted to audition for a full time ministry band that toured all around Australia, and this year, Mexico, and maybe the U.S.
So I came up on my first scheduled days off (after working for four days), and got the gig. On the last of my days off, my boss called me up. I hadn't told him anything of the band.
"Hey Etienne, *awkward ramble that comes before firing somebody*, you still haven't got your license. Sorry, your position's been filled."
"Bahahahahahaha. Awesome!"
He was as relieved as I was, cos I really wasn't keen to call up after like 4 days and say that I'm quitting, cos my boss was my mate's dad.

Anyway, sorry about that one.

[namraj]

Originally Posted by NKUSigEp

That's actually a really good excuse believe it or not. Hang around the metal-head guys long enough and you'll acquire a serious distaste/borderline hatred for pop-punk music. I know I did!




...and I have no regrets

Alternatively you may just realise that shouting about death and killing is alot more cheesey than pop-punk, i don't even like pop-punk.

[bassman1185]

Originally Posted by namraj

Alternatively you may just realise that shouting about death and killing is alot more cheesey than pop-punk, i don't even like pop-punk.

Yeah, because we all know that killing and death is the only thing that metal bands sing about.

[Jools4001]

I once failed an audition for an Irish 'Pogues' type band. They gave me a CD of their stuff a few days beforehand and I worked it all out in a couple of hours and really had the songs nailed (they weren't that complex). The audition was at 6pm one Tuesday, and the only way that I could make that time was to come straight from a customer meeting. I played the audition with no fuss and fitted straight in only to hear "Well, you play the songs better than the guy who is leaving, you really put some kick into them....but we could never hire someone who wears a suit." It didn't seem to dawn on folks that I normally wore a T and jeans at the weekend

20 years before that I was asked if I wanted to play in a Country band. I don't like Country music much so I said "no", then the guy who asked me said "It's £50 per gig and we gig Friday, Saturday and Sunday". I was in my first few years of being married, with two young kids to feed and what seemed like a huge mortgage. Since £150 a week was nearly the same money as my day job back then I thought "bugger the artistic scruples, I'll take the gig." Sure enough, the band was successful enough to pay good money and also hold down the sort of gig where you get a proper dressing room for the band instead of changing in the toilet. The lead singer was a really nice looking woman who thought nothing of sharing a dressing room with the guys in the band and used to whip all of her clothes off (down to her panties anyway) right there in front of all the rest of us. She also happened to be married to the band leader who played guitar and shared vocal duties.

I played with the band for a couple of years, but funnily enough even though I found it impossible to keep my eyes front when there was this woman standing there next to naked I didn't get fired for anything so trivial as staring at the band leaders wife's breasts...oh no....what got me fired was that we were playing a song that I can't even remember the name of but I think it's called "Spirit of New Orleans"...song about a train crossing America....anyway, after years of playing the song straight I started to get bored playing the same old thing so when it came to the chorus I put a walking bass line under it instead of the old "Root, 5th, Root, bom, bom bom"...the band leader was tied up doing the harmony vocals at that point but as his wife took the next verse he wandered over the stage and yelled "What's with all the fancy ****?" I just grinned and thought he was joking so I did it again the next chorus whereupon he raced over and shouted "You can STFU...and don't bother turning up next week"

[megadan]

Originally Posted by Jools4001

20 years before that I was asked if I wanted to play in a Country band. I don't like Country music much so I said "no", then the guy who asked me said "It's £50 per gig and we gig Friday, Saturday and Sunday". I was in my first few years of being married, with two young kids to feed and what seemed like a huge mortgage. Since £150 a week was nearly the same money as my day job back then I thought "bugger the artistic scruples, I'll take the gig." Sure enough, the band was successful enough to pay good money and also hold down the sort of gig where you get a proper dressing room for the band instead of changing in the toilet. The lead singer was a really nice looking woman who thought nothing of sharing a dressing room with the guys in the band and used to whip all of her clothes off (down to her panties anyway) right there in front of all the rest of us. She also happened to be married to the band leader who played guitar and shared vocal duties.

I played with the band for a couple of years, but funnily enough even though I found it impossible to keep my eyes front when there was this woman standing there next to naked I didn't get fired for anything so trivial as staring at the band leaders wife's breasts...oh no....what got me fired was that we were playing a song that I can't even remember the name of but I think it's called "Spirit of New Orleans"...song about a train crossing America....anyway, after years of playing the song straight I started to get bored playing the same old thing so when it came to the chorus I put a walking bass line under it instead of the old "Root, 5th, Root, bom, bom bom"...the band leader was tied up doing the harmony vocals at that point but as his wife took the next verse he wandered over the stage and yelled "What's with all the fancy ****?" I just grinned and thought he was joking so I did it again the next chorus whereupon he raced over and shouted "You can STFU...and don't bother turning up next week"

Haha. Great story.

[Zooberwerx]

Originally Posted by Jools4001

I once failed an audition for an Irish 'Pogues' type band. They gave me a CD of their stuff a few days beforehand and I worked it all out in a couple of hours and really had the songs nailed (they weren't that complex). The audition was at 6pm one Tuesday, and the only way that I could make that time was to come straight from a customer meeting. I played the audition with no fuss and fitted straight in only to hear "Well, you play the songs better than the guy who is leaving, you really put some kick into them....but we could never hire someone who wears a suit." It didn't seem to dawn on folks that I normally wore a T and jeans at the weekend

20 years before that I was asked if I wanted to play in a Country band. I don't like Country music much so I said "no", then the guy who asked me said "It's £50 per gig and we gig Friday, Saturday and Sunday". I was in my first few years of being married, with two young kids to feed and what seemed like a huge mortgage. Since £150 a week was nearly the same money as my day job back then I thought "bugger the artistic scruples, I'll take the gig." Sure enough, the band was successful enough to pay good money and also hold down the sort of gig where you get a proper dressing room for the band instead of changing in the toilet. The lead singer was a really nice looking woman who thought nothing of sharing a dressing room with the guys in the band and used to whip all of her clothes off (down to her panties anyway) right there in front of all the rest of us. She also happened to be married to the band leader who played guitar and shared vocal duties.

I played with the band for a couple of years, but funnily enough even though I found it impossible to keep my eyes front when there was this woman standing there next to naked I didn't get fired for anything so trivial as staring at the band leaders wife's breasts...oh no....what got me fired was that we were playing a song that I can't even remember the name of but I think it's called "Spirit of New Orleans"...song about a train crossing America....anyway, after years of playing the song straight I started to get bored playing the same old thing so when it came to the chorus I put a walking bass line under it instead of the old "Root, 5th, Root, bom, bom bom"...the band leader was tied up doing the harmony vocals at that point but as his wife took the next verse he wandered over the stage and yelled "What's with all the fancy ****?" I just grinned and thought he was joking so I did it again the next chorus whereupon he raced over and shouted "You can STFU...and don't bother turning up next week"

You were fired over this one incident or had things been a brewin' for a while? I'm sure that given a chance, the band leader would start rattling over your shortcomings he's noticed since day one...but isn't that always the case?

Riis

[vegas532]

Image obsessed Southern California is weird in general. I'm older, a little heavy, and have hand deformities. I've not actively played in a band since moving to SoCal. However, 4 bands that I auditioned for and didn't get the gig called me at a later date to "teach the guy they got" how to play the songs, and I even played on the label debut of one of those bands because the guy they got didn't know the material or have his own gear!

SoCal is a strange little subculture indeed...

[kesslari]

Image obsessed Southern California is weird in general. I'm older, a little heavy, and have hand deformities. I've not actively played in a band since moving to SoCal. However, 4 bands that I auditioned for and didn't get the gig called me at a later date to "teach the guy they got" how to play the songs, and I even played on the label debut of one of those bands because the guy they got didn't know the material or have his own gear!

That's just plain messed up, 12 kinds of ways.
Some days humans make me a bigger fan of dogs than I already am.

I fled SoCal years ago. Don't miss it at all.

[jbo]

I joined a country band shortly after I graduated high school, not being a huge fan of the genre...I joined mainly because the guitar player was a friend of mine, and they supposedly played a lot of high paying gigs. So I showed up at the audition, played a few tunes, and everyone's is awestruck at how every song sounded so much better. I really didn't think I was doing anything special (I mean...it's country) but, apparently, the previous "bassist" was actually a VIBES player who thought bass wouldn't be a difficult instrument to learn . Anywho....they gave me a couple of CDs and wrote up a list of tunes to learn for the next rehearsal. Great! Country isn't too difficult, this should be easy. I showed up the next week with the tunes learned and ready to go.

About three songs into the night, the singer/bandleader stopped in the middle of a song and said I needed to tone it down a little, that I was putting to much into the songs and playing to many notes, and I need to focus more on just playing the root and the fifth like what was on the CD. Well, I just sat there and looked at him with the "cow-lookin-at-the-on-coming-train" look on my face, because the song we were playing had a bluesy, shuffle feel to it .....playing a root-5 line simply wouldn't/couldn't work!! When I tried to explain this to him, he assured me that i was wrong and that he knew what he was talking about because he had been a bass player in a rock band some 15 years before . Not wanting to back down to such stupidity, I told him to play the CD and we'll listen to it. So he went ahead and played through the PA, which included a pair of nice 18" subs so one could really hear the bass, and it just so happens that I was playing exactly what was on the CD! When I pointed this out AND played along....the leader, his wife a.k.a. "the manager", my friend the guitar player, and the keyboard/back-up singer (who was terrible) went into a type of huddle by the mixing board and after a short discussion, told me that what I was hearing was probably a baritone guitar or something of that nature and I needed to just ignore it and do what they said. Now, not wanting to boast or brag, but by that time in my life, I had played with the university jazz band (with the guitard friend of mine!), a couple of rock bands, and with a few jazz combos around town (again with the guitard friend of mine!!) and it was because of that experience that they wanted me to join in the first place, and then they were telling me that I was hearing a BARITONE GUITAR!!!!!!! The rest of the night and the next morning at work, I kept thinking "what the hell did I get myself into?"

For reasons I still don't even understand however, I ended up staying with them for a month and playing three gigs...two of which were non paying but were a good professional experience; before they started to ignore all my phone calls and stopped telling me about rehearsals. At the time, I was pretty pissed off about everything (including all the band drama that would take two pages to describe) but when i look back now, I get a good laugh out of it and realize that I got a good experience at a young age on what to watch for and what playing with a bunch of is jerks like.

And if any of them just read this.....