specific situation, help me decide

[thehangingmist]

i got introduced to this band, they have a whole album recorded. i heard it and it sounds decent. very simple and straight forward music and maybe commercially viable. they only want to play their original music.
but the thing is when i met them i found out the main guy who wrote everything cant even tune his guitar by ear. they will be playing to a lot of loops and samples and stuff so they have a guy who will be handling the electronics so the drummer has to play along to some looped beats and all. everyone was a bit clueless about how its going to work. anyway the main guy admits he doesnt know much about music but he knows his thing. he has done everything and the whole project is NIN inspired sort of.

now my rule of the thumb is i only play with musicians better than me, where the situation is challenging besides being paying and all. anyway for how long would you stick around these guys?

 

[Jason P Bass]

I briefly played with a singer/songwriter who sounded good/great on his self-recorded CD. At practice, he could barely play his guitar and it became very apparent that his recordings had LOTS of vocal effects.

The band quickly became a wreck. The "fast pace" of getting up to speed was like 1 song per week. We sounded terrible at rehearsal but he was not interested in working on the sound / tightness / performance / volume levels / tuning / anything.

What I learned from the experience is that if the leader isn't going to fine tune the live performance, someone else needs to take that responsibility. That means, at rehearsal, if a song is going badly, STOP the song, discuss & fix the problem, and try again. Someone needs to be in charge of the live band.

And if the "leader" is upset by this arrangement, best of luck. If that's the case, I would keep looking.

 

[snyderz]

So do you have a rule, or not?