I had a conversation Sunday with a guitar player friend of mine - we used to play together, but he's in the military, so between deployments and getting re-posted this coming summer, we had to put things on hiatus several months ago and were just catching up. I told him about my latest band's junior-high-level drama over the holidays and what we were currently doing about it, and that I concurred with his point, made to me more than a year ago, that the best mix is just a trio of bass, drums, and guitar, with one or two people singing.
He replied that in his further opinion, one person needs to be entirely in charge of song selection, the one singing them, and everyone else should be essentially a hired gun - you maybe get paid $25 for each rehearsal and $100 per gig, guaranteed, but you *have* to show up and you *have* to know your parts. No input on whether you want to do a song or a completely different song.
I was kind of taken aback, and didn't say much about it, but the more I thought about it later, the more I thought "that doesn't sound like a very fun situation to be in, I'd have to nope out of that." I have a job, I have responsibilities, I have people telling me what I have to do, and so much of my life as an adult male revolves around my performance, and measuring up. If a band situation is not fun, I'll put some effort into getting it where it needs to be, but if it looks irredeemable, then I am out of there. I'm a bass player with 37 years of experience across a variety of genres, and pretty much all of the time, I am the person in the room with the best knowledge of theory and time. I have choices available to me. If the musical chemistry isn't there, if the songs suck, if the BL is a dictator, if people can't have some fun, if there are no gigs in sight, if we aren't making any progress after three or four months, then things start becoming work. If after working all day, dealing daily with all the adult things like my son's first girlfriend or what my boss is gonna say when he finds out a project is going sideways, making supper for my kids, and driving 30 minutes to band practice - if after all that, I still face two to three hours of *work* with no reward in sight, plus a 30 minute drive home in the dark and the rain and the cold, then I just don't wanna do it. I'll take a break, learn some songs, find a different crew or re-build one out of some of the members of the previous crew.
So if and when I get a few gigs lined up, you'd better believe that I've earned my $100, as well as access to the bar. If someone were to show up - a "professional" - to tell me that I need to start asking for more dough so he can get paid more, or else I'd better GTFO, then although I'm a peace lovin' man, I'd have a hard time not swinging my bass into his crotch.
