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Drummers from Hell..True Stories

#81
a friend of mine heard a song that he liked that had alot of double bass and offbeats. not necessarily a bad thing...
but since then, the pocket is nonexistent. he cant play a straight beat for S*** anymore.
hes a good friend, but im trying to convince him to open up his mind to the groove.


hed make a great fusion jazz drummer though
 
#83
I'm the "House bass player" for our Monday jam, some times its great, some times I just wait to get paid an go home.
We don't have a "House drummer".

One of the drummers that come often is a chemistry teacher who would always wear ear-plugs to protect his ears.

The result - him being super loud and sometimes out of sync with the band.

At first I've used to put my own ear-plugs, and go into the all to familiar volume wars (my 1001RBII is willing and able), These days I would just turn to him and signal him to turn down. :rollno:

The new drummer in my band is about twice my age (I'm 26) he is a pro, so much fun to play with.
 
#84
interesting thread. i too, moonlight as a drummer...and i hope over the years i've learned enough about gigging that i'm not causing too much trouble... :ninja:

anyway - the worst guy i played with had a few of the symptoms already described:

couldn't keep time
massively overplayed everything
had the hugest, most over-the-top kit, which he refused to downsize for even the tiniest venue
used to pick fights with the sound engineer, other bands - practically threatened to hospitalise some poor kid who he thought had used one of his (three. THREE!) china cymbals.

it does seem like the guys with excesses of kit and histrionic playing are also the ones who can't hold down a beat. and i can't abide drama queens.

anyway he's the only guy i've ever chucked out of a band. i heard he got kicked out of a couple of other bands after ours, too.
 
#89
last year...

well i was 17 and getting fairly decent at bass. i knew a bunch of guitar owners, nothing super special till i met the guys im currently playing with. at least not available ones. and i knew NO drummers. so whats an eager bassist to do band wise?

one day at the mall i meet this random freind of a freind who says he plays drums. he owns his own set and covers multible genres. i was so happy (but professional of course) so we set up a jam meeting and i do my homework on the songs were gonna cover...

before the jam i looked at his myspace page and hes sitting behind a SICK set and recording some emo song pretty well. i figure this guys got a nice set AND something to record with at decent quality!

i get to his house and he shows me his set.... it sucked. old cheap beat up tiny lil set that any drummer worth his salt could probably still do well with. apparently the other was his dads. whatever still hope right? wrong. guitarist is some 25 year old stoner who never shows up, this drummer has massive a.d.d. and he didnt even bother learning the songs he told me to learn.

he would start off playing a generic drum beat that i can play along with and then without warning try some crazy pete moon solo and come back to a completly different beat. it went on like this for 6 hours. ive been dodging him ever sence.

i play in a smalltime highschool band right now, and our drummer "the lil drummer boy" (hes insainly tiny for his age) is pretty good. doesnt try to do super crazy stuf, great beat keeper, throws drums onto anything i show him including a couple slap lines ive made the 3 guitarists (garage band x1000) scratch their heads with. so im pretty content and relieved.
 
#90
I played with a drummer who got himself "impaired" during break, came back in, and decided to get silly. During my solo, he dropped out, which would not have been unusual. When it was time for me to bring the band back in, I turned around and he was sitting there with a childish expression on his face, and his drum stick all the way through the top and bottom heads of his snare drum.
 
#91
Xavier Knox said:
I'll try to keep this short and sweet. Although I do have an extensive list of drummers I have not enjoyed playing with there's one that stands out.

Played a gig with a band I had been in for about eight months. We had to replace the drummer since the original drummer was diagnosed with diabetes and was unable to play anymore.

The new guy we got was great at practice. Very solid, reliable and punctual. On stage however, the closet drunk came out. This guy had mastered chugging a beer between songs and tossing back about three between sets.

On one occasion (which coincidentally turned out to be his last gig with us) he got so drunk that by the third set he was so drunk that he couldn't keep time, got two songs that are sound nothing a like mixed up and hurled over his floor tom. Its a night I will never forget. We were never asked to gig at that venue again and the next day the three remaining members voted to find yet another new drummer.
Click to expand...


....how does having diabetes prevent him from playing??

my dad has diabetes, and he seems to function like everyone else....
 
#92
Hi I thought of another drummer I played with. (I wish I could forget him). Have you ever experienced the drummer who constantly has to re-adjust his set while you are doing a show? He would be playing with one hand while he would be adjusting a cymbal or his bass drum pedal, or worse just play his bass drum while his two hands while relocating a cymbal stand. This went on all night...song after song, set after set. He was the established "drummer" in the band I didn't stay with that band very long. The band didn't last very long either.
 
#93
Ahh, I remember one. We called him the Terminator.

The guy was taking drum lessons for almost 8 years but had never played with anyone but himself.

We (my band/ friendgroup) did jam-nights every weekend at the time and he heard about it. Practically invited himself to come and drum, get a feel for what a band is like. We are pretty open to that stuff so we let him...

Basically he pounded our drumkit to smithereens with what sounded like one big technical drumsolo, unbelievable! There was just no ending to it. We started with a very low tempo stoner/blues groove and he just pounds right through it.

As it was a jam we just got along with it and turned it to utter mayhem speedpunk. But after awhile we asked him to moderate his drumming. Turns out he just can't listen to anything but his own drumming. No interaction with the other instruments whatsoever.

He leaves after awhile so we are glad...

The week after he's there again, turns out he thought he was now our drummer. We already had a drummer, but for jams we switch around (like me on guitar etc.) so he gets all emotional about being asked to leave...

Classic.
 
#94
Squigly Wiggz said:
he would start off playing a generic drum beat that i can play along with and then without warning try some crazy pete moon solo and come back to a completly different beat.
Click to expand...

Ha ha ha! Who is Pete Moon?:D

After reading all of these stories I have come to the very sad conclusion that just simply being able to play your instrument of choice well enough to be able to play in a band is not the hard part of being able to play in a band.:p
 
#95
PocketGroove82 said:
I work with a drummer periodically who is in his 50s and claims to have been in the Glen Miller Band and gone to Berklee in the 60s. :eyebrow: It never ceases to amaze me how on EVERY SINGLE 1 measure drumbreak he manages to come in on beat 3 1/2 or a full beat late. :rolleyes:

...I'm tempted to ask him if he ever had a stroke. :hiding:
Click to expand...

I may be wrong, but wasn't Glen Miller like, WWII era? That would make him playing drums in the negative double digit age group.
 
#96
....how does having diabetes prevent him from playing??

my dad has diabetes, and he seems to function like everyone else....
Click to expand...

Strenuous physical activity can play havoc with your glucose levels. You can end up seriously hypoglycemic (low blood sugar) which is very dangerous. Playing drums for several hours fits into that category.
 
#97
when I moved to a new town a few years back and got involved in a regular jam, the drummer wasn't very good, but it was just fun an informal and i was just settling into the area. then, without warning, the drummer developed an unacceptable predilection for electric drums. he was okay with his regular kit as long as it was straight 4/4, but then he started bringing his electric kit around and a tiny 8- maybe 10inch speaker and I swear it eliminated his ability to hit the One. and the Effects! i couldn't believe he really preferred the electric kit- but the guy loved it. it was inexplicable.
 
#98
I got to the Australian Institute of Music in Sydney, and we have a hardcore drummer here who never goes anywhere without his double-kick. I asked him if he's ever played some jazz, to which he replied no, and then asked if he played funk. He responded with "In drums we don't really have styles, we just really play for 4 beats each bar." I luckily refrained from just falling over and laughing.
The same guy, in a Performance Studies class (where we are studying Motown, to my delight), he starts machine gun double kicking all over Stevie Wonder's 'Signed, Sealed and Delivered,' weaving in and out of time.
Unfortunately the only two other drummers in our grade and the one above, are both hardcore drummers with the same theory...
 
#99
Joel S. said:
This doesn't make any sense. How can he play 6/8 but he can't ease up and play a 3/4? That's like being able to play a minor scale, but not being able to play a pentatonic. :eyebrow:
Click to expand...
you're telling me! I guess he only practiced in 4/4 and 6/8 or together with 4/4 and 6/8 songs. when he tried 3/4 his tongue came out of his mouth, he had this intense focused look in his eyes, like he was trying to bend spoons with his mind, he played a couple of bars in 3/4 and then he just started stumbling and stuttering... very sad
 
#100
Hillarious that this was on the front page of TB as I was just in my own local music shop today. I walked in unnoticed, eyeing a couple of fancy local luither acoustic guitar work, making my way around when I hear two folks (one obviously a drummer, buying sticks) the other just talking all about horrible bass stories. I didn't chime in but, the one guy was telling the drummer, "...and then he only would play fills apon fills, then randomly slap 2 or 3 notes, it was like having 3 different songs thrown at you at the same time." :bassist: lololololol
 

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