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Most Unprofessional Thing You've Done at a Show

H

Haysoochreesto

Dec 30, 2007
309
2
57
Riverside, Ca.
#1
A year or so ago me, our guitar player, and our singer were getting ready to leave the band we were in. The key/sax player had decided to take over the thing and had just turned it into a big mess. We were fed up with the guy. His sax playing was nails but his keys were always up too loud, he insisted on playing when the song didn't call for it, and he wanted control over the overall sound. This led to contentious practices--rehearsals that lasted over four hours because he was picking out every tiny thing that he thought everyone else was doing wrong.

There's more to it than that but anyway...

Our last gig together, we're up onstage and he starts yelling at me from across the stage with that little cockroach look on his face, "You're way too loud!" Or something like that. He'd been on me for weeks and earlier in the day made the entire band endure a 4 hour soundcheck at a brand new venue---it was embarrassing.

So I yelled back at him, hearing his out of place clanging keyboards, "NO! You sound like sh!t---STFU!" I was ready to walk over and put the business end of my 5 string up his... you get the picture.

Normally I'll withstand any nonsense with good humor but that time... not so much. I felt bad afterward and apologized to the owner who never even noticed it'd happened.
 
#2
I had a band open up for us that gave me a demo and they didn't sound horrible on the demo so we agreed to give them a shot. I worked with the guy.

First song: "Way down south where the mexicans grow"

Second song: "I WANT ROOFIES"

All off key, off time, and painfully loud.

Not only did I apologize to our crowd I had to apologize to the band after cutting them off after an 18 minute set. I felt horrible about it and had to face to guy at work lol.
 
#8
To me, one of the most unprofessional things a band can do is stop a song midway through. I know sometimes it can be a trainwreck up there, but I believe you just have to try and soldier through and pull it out and pull it off. Get through the song.

One of my very good friends is an ace musician and for a few years he had a sort of jazz-based band that would do everything from standards to Zappa-esque type material to jazzy versions of rock songs. They were really tight, really good.

But he would get so uptight before and during a set all the fun just dissolved from it. The band didn't enjoy it and neither did the audience, most importantly. He was a great guy really, but a control freak.

I went to see his band play on several occasions and I don't think there was a single time that he didn't get upset on stage and stop a song somewhere to berate one of the band members and start again.

These were mistakes that 99% of the audience wouldn't have even noticed or been able to identify as a screw-up or clam note, but he would do stuff like yell out "Okay..STOP IT! STOP!" and then he'd turn to the audience and say things like "Well, we're gonna try this again as soon as the sax player gets his stuff together so he can play along" or some such. It was very disrespectful to the guy in the band, the band as a whole, the music itself and, of course, the audience.

I used to tell him "Man, those people are hear to have a good time. They are just going along with the tunes. They don't know or care if the sax player was a little off time or played a bum note or two. They were grooving to it--you gotta just keep it together and keep it going." But he never listened. I heard many people say their shows were no fun and eventually people stopped turning out for them. Now he can't find anyone to even jam with. Sad, really.
 
#20
Haysoochreesto said:
FTW. What's the story?
Click to expand...

in a punk band but the guitarist was a metalhead, and he would play pinch harmonics all the time during practices, but none of the songs used them ever, so got fed up after like the 1000th time reminding him(not an exageration) so during a show when he played one i was already annoyed with him so this sent me into a rage and i whipped it out and told him that if he's wants to play pinch harmonics he has to play them on my c__k or on his own time or else he is out of the band. luckily this was a very short notice show at a small venue so only like 5 people actually showed up and they were friends so they had already seen my unit before anyways. oh and he left the band after this too
 

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