What's your 'almost famous' story?

[fretter]

My story has several almost famous angles. I was in a band with two brothers who were cousins with a guitarist of a famous hair band. The term hair band didn't exist back then. Anyway, I sent our demo cd to Leviathan Records, David T. Chastain's label. He politely replied that it wasn't the right fit. My BL got upset and sent an email to the label, telling him to stick it. I ended up having to smooth things over and sent an email apologizing for my BL's message. Chastain was a gent about it. A copy of our cd recently popped up for sale on Ebay in Greece, for $25 plus shipping. It looks like a slow seller.
The BL went on to be the sideman for a singer-songwriter who was produced by the bassist for one of the biggest rock bands in the world. The project went nowhere.

 

[patrickj]

Headlined the Whisky once as a band from Baltimore... that was cool.

Multiweek tour through Italy and France.. that was cool.

Another band I was in lead the charts and ultimately won the online polling (international) for an independent DIY music label (kinda like patron or Kickstarter backing before those existed).

A band I’m in now has (in the past, currently nominated again) won national blues awards.

I wouldn’t say I’m famous, but I’m known and well regarded among my local peers. That’s all one really needs.

 

[EddiePlaysBass]

6 years ago I was in a blues band. Covers, but the level of musicianship was pretty high (I had to struggle to keep up) and we were getting some momentum locally, good press and so on. The singer then brought on an original track he'd written years ago, and asked if we would want to rework the arrangement and put it in the set. None of us felt like doing that, and he ended up taking it to his other side-project.

That side-project recently released their 5th album, has ranked pretty high in some European blues competitions and is getting airplay all over the world. They've gone on a few tours and generally are making quite a name for themselves. Me, I'm back in someone's basement hoping to get a $50 gig somewhere this year. I buy their albums and go see their shows, because their fame was never mine to be, but dang I do wish I were up there sometimes.

It's worse for the drummer in that blues band of mine. He almost got signed in the 80s but the label collapsed. He actually joined the above-mentioned side-project and decided to quit and focus on us, right before the other band broke through. Which obviously meant the end of us. Poor fella.

 

[jmattbassplaya]

Nothing crazy. I was part of a group that was starting to make it small in the southeast. An AR guy from Eleven Seven found us at a local music festival, talked to us for a few hours after our set, and told us he'd be in touch. We got a call from him asking us when we'd be rehearsing next because he wanted someone to check us out. We tell him, and we get a call a few hours before our next rehearsal from this other guy saying he was coming to hear us. Weird, but we rolled with it.

The guy makes it to our rehearsal and says he wants to hear the scared to love song. We play it, he takes notes and records it with his phone. He asks to hear some other tunes and leaves after an hour. We get a call from the guy at the festival a few days later asking if they could invite us to record at a private studio of theirs to cut a track to show to their label exec. We say sure and they ended up sending us a limo to pick us up and carry us to this McMansion a couple hours out of the city.

We get there and the festival guy and the guy from the rehearsal are there. They tell us that they like us, think we have something special, and want to record a track to shop around. We go into this absolutely gorgeous house, have some food they ordered in for us, and went into this massive finished basement that has a full studio in it.

We record the song of ours, but the rehearsal guy has us redo our parts different ways and then starts talking about how to rearrange and produce the track to make it more "accessible." We go through the motions because it's a strange situation but there are no alarm bells going off. We end up taking a break and the guy recording us talks about the label, how his band is also on it but how he's looking to move more into production and engineering. We ask to hear some of his stuff and he shows us some music videos of his group on YouTube; all very well produced, polished, and sporting several hundred thousand views and tens of thousands of likes.

We finish after a few hours and the limo drives us back. After a few days we get a copy of the track we cut and it sounds nothing like us. There are similarities between us and the recording, but it was almost like a bizarro take on what we really sounded like. It actually sounded similar to the other guys band which had a synth pop thing going on. Anyways, we go through a couple revisions of the song and it supposedly got sent up the ladder. Nothing ever came from it other than a free recording and a couple free meals, but it was a fun experience and it's cool to say that I was shopped to a label that a number of famous bands are a part of.

This next story isn't my own but belongs to a friend from high school. He was a musician who didn't have much going on once graduation rolled around in 12th grade. On a whim, he asked a nationally touring band if he could help them setup for a gig he had backstage passes for. They said yes, liked his work, and asked him to join the crew. 10 years later he is now one of the guitarists for the group, has played on SNL and a couple of the "night shows," and has met many B list celebrities in LA. Kind of cool for him, but like many other musicians that I know who have "made it" struggles to make ends meet when he isn't actively touring. Then again, he gets to play to hundred of thousands of people every year across the US and Europe.

 

[Slevage]

I'm 67 now. When my daughter was in grade school, she had a friend who seemed very impressed by me. I had long hair and wire-rim glasses and played an electric bass, unlike most of the other moms and dads. One day she told her parents, "Lisa's dad is John Lennon". They didn't buy it, but I think she kept wondering for awhile. Oh well. . .

I’m impressed— most people think that Paul played all the bass lines.

 

[Nephilymbass]

Couple situations like that. Been offered a couple record deals only to see they were basically worthless. I was on a good Indy label at one point. it was a small label run by good people who weren’t too greedy and really just wanted to help bands succeed. Probably should have been a little greedy though because they ran into finaincial trouble paying for studio time for multiple bands and ran out of funds which led to the label dissolving.

Outside of music when I was a kid was on a locally televised game show in Chicago once. It was sort of a pop culture version of jeopardy but just for fun. I actually won and I’ll never forget the last question I won it with. They played a song after asking what movie it was from. Everyone thought I was crazy when i hit the buzzer like two seconds into the song. It was Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins so I replied “Top Gun” which was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Another funny thing about Top gun was I remember I wanted to be a pilot at one point and at the time I didn’t even know that I was afraid of heights lol. Which I’m not terrified of little stuff, i worked as a roofer at one point and didn’t mind it and I love roller coasters But basically if I’m more than say 50 feet off the ground and not secured to something pretty solid I get pretty nervous lol.

 

[5StringBlues]

I have appeared in tortillas in many parts of Mexico.

 

[MichelD]

Didn't happen to me, but I have friends who were in two different Vancouver bands plus a solo artist who all should have been the "Next Big thing" but due to record company collapses and other business issues right at critical points in their careers, lost the opportunity to get noticed by the rest of the world.

The Scramblers



Copyright




Art Bergman

 

[Duder]

I have appeared in tortillas in many parts of Mexico.

Cheesus?

 

[keyboardguy]

In late 79 my Fort Lauderdale musician friends and band mate were going to be extras in a movie being filmed in Miami. I forgot how much the pay was, but I was interested.

I then asked what time we had to be there (in Miami). They said 8 AM
I said "thanks but no thanks" as we played until 1AM

The movie was "CaddyShack"; my friends are in the scene when a boat hits a scaffold on a dock, and all the musicians fell into the water. They had to do 2 takes......

 

[Wood and Wire]

In late 79 my Fort Lauderdale musician friends and band mate were going to be extras in a movie being filmed in Miami. I forgot how much the pay was, but I was interested.

I then asked what time we had to be there (in Miami). They said 8 AM
I said "thanks but no thanks" as we played until 1AM

The movie was "CaddyShack"; my friends are in the scene when a boat hits a scaffold on a dock, and all the musicians fell into the water. They had to do 2 takes......

Rodney Dangerfield : "So you want me to crash this powerboat into the jetty, and flatten the bandstand? You'd better hire a bunch of those guys... what do you call them...? You know, they throw themselves under the bus for a living. They only get paid if they actually perform the gig."


Harold Ramis : "You mean professional stuntmen."


Rodney Dangerfield : "No, they're way too expensive... musicians! That's who I mean, musicians. They'll work for 17 hours straight, for low pay, with no insurance, and no unions to deal with. They'll be grateful for the exposure."

 

[keyboardguy]

Rodney Dangerfield : "So you want me to crash this powerboat into the jetty, and flatten the bandstand? You'd better hire a bunch of those guys... what do you call them...? You know, they throw themselves under the bus for a living. They only get paid if they actually perform the gig."


Harold Ramis : "You mean professional stuntmen."


Rodney Dangerfield : "No, they're way too expensive... musicians! That's who I mean, musicians. They'll work for 17 hours straight, for low pay, with no insurance, and no unions to deal with. They'll be grateful for the exposure."

 

[Passinwind]

In late 79 my Fort Lauderdale musician friends and band mate were going to be extras in a movie being filmed in Miami. I forgot how much the pay was, but I was interested.

I then asked what time we had to be there (in Miami). They said 8 AM
I said "thanks but no thanks" as we played until 1AM

The movie was "CaddyShack"; my friends are in the scene when a boat hits a scaffold on a dock, and all the musicians fell into the water. They had to do 2 takes......

I had a similar chance to be an extra in Jaws II. All they wanted was someone to sail around in a dinghy for however long it took to get the shot, which ended up being pretty much all day. The money was OK, but I decided to stick with doing a double shift at the hotel where a lot of the actors and crew were staying. IIRC I made around double the scale for a one day casual extra gig. Those guys were good tippers and the month or so they occupied pretty much the whole hotel was pretty sweet. I also worked at the same joint when the original Jaws was filmed, so the second time around was really easy.

And then years later I got recruited into a Super Bowl commercial for VW. They were filming windsurfers on the Columbia River and a friend's team rider/endorser crew were kind of foundering in the light wind conditions. He waved me over since I was the only one around who had rigged for the conditions properly and I played stand-in for him, which worked out well since I had the same sail colors and they could just blur the shot. But I got nada, and the companies I was representing at the time did as well. I didn't really care, I was just out there zooming around recreationally anyway.