I work in an academic hospital pharmacy. We have egos similar to the average local band, which is unfortunate. No flake factor, especially compared to local bands.
Summed up nicely.
Summed up nicely.
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Why are so many musicians flaky?
- Thread starter Killed_by_Death
- Start date
-
- Tags
- musicians
This is my story as well. The good ones tended to be in 2-4 bands. I picked up bass because I couldn't find guys who would show up for more than a few weeks and/or learn the tunes. After picking up bass it should have been a red flag that several bands had a bassist fleeing law enforcement.
Maybe you don't understand the conversation or our idea of what it means to be flaky.
I never said ALL musicians are flaky!
No, but making up arbitrary over-inflated prices for replacement parts & service, for the sake of an argument that you're losing, is kind of flaky.
Last edited:
there are a ton of musicians in Austin TX. In my band's genre (punk-ish) I'd say almost ALL musicians are flaky almost to the point of being totally unprofessional. Same goes for most bookers at clubs as well. Yes.....I'm bitter.
so long as we're making generalisations, the old rock 'n' roll myth glorifies big egos, poor sense of personal responsibility, reckless behaviour, use of intoxicants, rebelling against "rules" and structure, and generally behaving like an ass.
so you might meet musicians in the toddler end of the pool who still think that kind of thing is a good idea.
so you might meet musicians in the toddler end of the pool who still think that kind of thing is a good idea.
In a professional, career type job, a minimal amount of flakiness is accepted. For example, in my day time corporate environment I see hints of flakiness here and there. Nothing that would affect productivity, of course, but enough to say "I've got personality".
In contrast, excluding professional orchestral and wedding musicians and other working musicians (the grinders, not the soarers), I see a lot of entitlement issues and self medication issues. The kind of stuff that gets you fired from a day job. Does that count as flakiness? Only until they pop out onto the "big scene", at which point they are viewed as "artistic".
In contrast, excluding professional orchestral and wedding musicians and other working musicians (the grinders, not the soarers), I see a lot of entitlement issues and self medication issues. The kind of stuff that gets you fired from a day job. Does that count as flakiness? Only until they pop out onto the "big scene", at which point they are viewed as "artistic".
Some (not all) of the people involved with "the scene" outside of bands are doing that because they couldn't quite handle playing an instrument.
I've worked as an engineer for 42 years and we do call the various specialties within our overall profession disciplines and quite a few of us are flakes or musicians or both! It is actually surprising how many of us are musicians, mostly because we have the reputation of being unhip, boring, nerdy, and not creative. I guess the fact that society at large tends to view us as unimaginative even though we live in this amazing world of human technical achievement that is entirely the product of the creativity of engineering and scientific minds says a lot about how clueless society at large is! Someone posted a picture of the human brain earlier in this thread that purported to show where various mental skills are localized in the brain. Assuming that it is accurate you can see that both musicians and engineers need to use both halves of their brains so it is not so surprising after all that in many cases a musician is also an engineer. The engineering world has a low (but not zero) tolerance for flakes so they tend to get pushed out of the profession, perhaps before they graduate from college. Presumably these displaced engineers go on to become musicians, which explains why there are more flaky musicians than engineers! My musical "boss", the worship pastor at my church, is not a flake but while in college he did decide to switch from an engineering major to a ministry and music major. I had also toyed with the idea of being a music major. In the end I think we both made the right decision, not because either of us could not have done the other but because we probably both ended up in the roles we were best suited for.
I have a Lot of musician friends. One is incredibly flakey and is the poster child for stereotypical stoner drummer. The other 6 or so are pretty well put together people that balance work, school at a relatively prestigious university, and music well. I feel like In the real world it's about 50/50. Musicians just have a Lot of places to show up (practices gigs etc) and a little more room for error than their is at a day job (driving places, showing up at odd hours, not getting paid a salary most likely, able to drink while working, all kinds of things).
I've been doing this crap for 43 years. Booking agents are usually flaky, granted. Club owners and promoters too. Studio-owners, producers, mix-ops, not usually.
Playing with Flaky musicians is a dead end. Just don't do it.
I've run a sound-board for "names" a lot too. The only one that was a certifiable screwball was Pete Seeger. Pam Tillis was a little "unusual". Cuter in person than in photos (pretty gorgeous actually, and remarkably talented, there was no curve-ball she couldn't handle with calm and ease), but a little insular to the point of ...umm.. "really different".
Playing with Flaky musicians is a dead end. Just don't do it.
I've run a sound-board for "names" a lot too. The only one that was a certifiable screwball was Pete Seeger. Pam Tillis was a little "unusual". Cuter in person than in photos (pretty gorgeous actually, and remarkably talented, there was no curve-ball she couldn't handle with calm and ease), but a little insular to the point of ...umm.. "really different".
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
Call it left-brained/right brained or just by anecdotal evidence - those in "artistic" fields tends to be less focused on the "real" world.
Think of it this way - if you had a son/daughter, and what you wanted for them was financial security, would you want them going into music or art?
Think of it this way - if you had a son/daughter, and what you wanted for them was financial security, would you want them going into music or art?
In addition to playing, I have been booking musicians for well- paying corporate gigs and weddings for almost 20 years (several thousand gigs) and I can tell you, if there was just some way to do it without having to depend on musicians we would all be much better off. There is no group of people more undependable and self- defeating than musicians. That's a fact, Jack.
Why so many musicians are flaky? Spells Dunning-Kruger effect:
Dunning–Kruger effect: The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled persons suffer illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their own ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately.
Dunning–Kruger effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
As to my examples:
Do a little research about King Crimson rehearsals and recordings (especially form the 80's onward) if you want to know about discipline!
Dream Theater are fiends who practice individually many hours daily and waste no time when rehearsing together.
Personally, my main band had a relatively strict rehearsal regime as well. Know your parts, show up on time, don't open a beer until we had played through a few songs, stick to the tunes that need practice paying special attention to the problem parts, don't noodle or jam when it's not time for that, no guests... We wound up parting ways with our vocalist because he missed rehearsals and didn't seem to take things seriously enough. Well, also because he was pitchy and wouldn't do anything to address it, but that's a whole other post...
Anyway, I"m just saying that people who play technical and/or moderately-to-intricately arranged music are probably by nature not flakes to begin with. I've personally never been a flaky person in anything I do and I don't tolerate being in any kind of endeavor, musical or otherwise, with flakes.
I agree that the tolerance threshold for being a flake is much higher in some bands, but I suspect it's because those situations aren't very pro. If there's any amount of money on the line that the people involved care about, flakes are usually the first ones to get handed their walking papers.
If they show up.
if you hire peter erskine for a session i doubt you'll walk away thinking what a flake he was..
pro players definitely act as professional as anyone in any other field does. yes musicians can be a weird bunch of scatterbrained creative lunatics, but you can pay to watch pretty much any major symphony rehearse- i've never seen any flakery going on there
i know most of us aren't working at that top level, but still- the flake musicians i played with when i was a teenager, looking back, they were just doing it for fun and therefore it makes sence they cant be completely reliable and committed.
pro players definitely act as professional as anyone in any other field does. yes musicians can be a weird bunch of scatterbrained creative lunatics, but you can pay to watch pretty much any major symphony rehearse- i've never seen any flakery going on there
i know most of us aren't working at that top level, but still- the flake musicians i played with when i was a teenager, looking back, they were just doing it for fun and therefore it makes sence they cant be completely reliable and committed.
Reading about the Dunning-Kruger Effect a few years back on The Gear Page opened my eyes. Things in life made much more sense.
