Let's Try it Slower

I almost responded with something snarky, like "No, because I've never been in a band with a complete idiot" ...but then I remembered a bandmate from many years ago who had such a bizarre sense of rhythm that he would come in with a new tune he'd just written and one of us would say "whoa, that's hard to count, what meter is it in?" and he would look all quizzical and say "It's in 4/4, look" and then proceed to tap his foot along with the music in a way that not only had nothing to do with the phrasing or beats or subdivisions of the music he was playing, it wasn't even in the same tempo!

It was almost like a cool parlor trick: This guy could stomp his foot along in an almost-metronomic four-on-the-floor pattern at, say 90bpm while simultaneously playing a riff that was in 15/16 at 100bpm. Uncanny. Musically useless, but uncanny.

But no, never had a bandmate say "let's try this slower" and then play it at the same tempo.