Just quit one today, actually... Side-band that I've been in for about 6 years now, Irish-rock band along the lines of Flogging Molly, Young Dubliners, Pogues, etc.
The drummer was the main driving force behind my decision to leave, but not the only reason. Ultimately it's a time commitment that I just can't make between my 9-5 job, family/home life, and my regular working band that's gigging on average 2x per week. The Irish band wants to practice once a week, even though we have maybe 4-5 shows per year, and is definitely a "hobby" band. Contrast that to the working band, where we don't rehearse at all, and everyone involved is a very high level player.
Even if there weren't time constraints, the drummer's behavior and playing on a gig this past Saturday night was the final straw for me. I was about to describe him as a rudimentary player, but I'm fairly certain he doesn't know rudiments... so I'll just refer to him as an incredibly basic player. Drops the beat constantly, tempo is all over the place, etc. I've asked him before if he practices to a metronome and 1.) he doesn't practice outside of when the band gets together, and 2.) he said a metronome throws him off... Dude, you're already off! Maybe it'll throw you ON!
Anyway, I've never seen the guy play without getting incredibly stoned, which is whatever, but if you're gonna do that you better be able to hang! We were about to start our final set and he comes up asking how much time he has left. I said none, but one of the other band members made the mistake of telling him we had 2 minutes left. He proceeds to go outside and smoke more weed.
He relies on the kindness of the rest of the band to get his gear not only into the venue, but to get set up as well. Seriously, dude does not even set up his own drum kit most of the time. Has no bags for anything other than the drums themselves, and has one small milk-crate for some smaller hardware. Everything else gets carried in piecemeal.
We were asked turn down twice in the first set, but he continued to just beat the ever-loving **** out of his drums and specifically his cymbals.
He makes changes to his patterns which make absolutely no sense: He'll start a build in the middle of a verse that NO ONE is onboard for or following, will drop out the kick/snare completely to do something on the ride, fills that just flat out sound bad, etc. He puts no thought behind is playing, but heaven forbid if you try and talk to him about it. According to him he knows a LOT about drumming and percussion.
He spilled two drinks on his kit over the course of the night.
Dropped several f-bombs over a hot mic between songs (he sings on a few tunes, but we can't always get to the board to mute his mic between his songs). Which, isn't always inappropriate, but this place gets most of its business as a restaurant and really isn't set up well as a live music venue. The dinner crowd doesn't want to hear that. All of his banter is just super cringey. Additionally he'll just scream randomly into the microphone during songs.
Probably over 90% of the setlist are songs we've been playing for 6 years now (even more for the rest of them), and he still doesn't know how half of them start, specifically the ones that start with him!
I've never seen him tune his drums, and they sound like garbage. Pretty sure all of his brass is borrowed, but also sounds pretty bad.
I'm sure I could think of more, but that's plenty enough to get the picture. I spoke with the defacto bandleader and he's pretty much had it too. This show on Saturday cost me a pretty good chunk of change too since I couldn't play a really good gig with the working band.
