I drafted and named this article a week or so ago, but I figured, hey ‘spooky month is around the corner, I’ll save it for then’ 😛 Jokes aside, considering how much time, effort, and money goes into creating a band, it sucks when one person can hold things back or even cause it to fall apart.
I’m a very independent person. Since I’m very goal driven, I like being able to achieve things and cross things off my bucket list in my own time. I love the freedom of going where I want when I want, and not having to compromise on anything, especially on trips.
But sadly, it’s been a dream of mine since middle school to play with a band on stage. I didn’t have musician friends in school, and I almost threw the dream away, but after watching K-ON!! in 2014, that spark was relit. In the span of 7 years, I had 3 band attempts. The first only had one rehearsal. It went well, but with different schedules, locations and priorities, it was impossible planning a second. The 2nd one didn’t get past chatting.
Chromatic Dreamers was my most serious and most successful one, but it’s certainly been…a journey. Now that the band project is over, I feel I can finally share my experiences more openly.
My Nightmare Bandmates
In 2020, after picking up guitar again, I was eager to try the band thing again. When the pandemic started, I figured it’s a great time to try again because people would be at home and have time to practice in advance. I did find a couple friends, and found a couple other people. One new guy rushed us to set a rehearsal date so we did….and then he cancelled the day before. The drummer also ghosted us.
I put up ads over the next lockdown and got quite a few replies, but no one wanted to commit in advance. I decided I wanted serious people and I made that clear in my ad. The goal was to perform and build names for ourselves, so they could expect social media, a website etc. We then had an audition/rehearsal, and 3 guys came out, a drummer and two guitarists.
One guitarist was finishing school and I always make sure to give members time and consideration. The band as a whole had 2 months before the first rehearsal, and I gave him an extra month so he can learn and catch up. I kept in touch with him throughout and shared a lot of music tips and insight. Despite him being a beginner, he was in 3 or 4 other bands.
When he finally came out to our rehearsal, it was clear he didn’t practice at all, and his rhythm skills were poor. He spent the rehearsal learning with his tabs in front of him. A few days later, I asked how he felt about the rehearsal, and if he truly liked anime music. From observation, he was usually fiddling with Western riffs. He got offended and super defensive, totally doing a 180, and I knew I had to let him go.
Now our drummer, I felt iffy about him from the rehearsal. He was a private/secretive guy, which isn’t bad, but he seemed to be against or trying to delay anything promotion wise, like social media and the website. I was actually really surprised he came out to the photoshoot as I felt he would ghost. So he was committed in that he was present and on-time, but he didn’t seem to align with the goals he signed up for.
During rehearsals, he would play with his sheets and his headphones on, so he was in his own world. He relied on both of them heavily. When I told him he has to be able to hear us and that I’d like him to memorize so he could interact with the audience, he said ‘it was one or the other’, so I said he can keep his sheets.
Despite him having his sheets in front of him, he would make mistakes, pause, slow down, rush, etc thus throwing everyone off. I had to learn how to play around him (which is annoying as a rhythm guitarist), and the others would listen to me cause they didn’t know the songs that well to follow him on their own, especially when he was unpredictable. None of us felt confident with him as the backbone.
I did give him tips and suggestions for months, but he didn’t care to listen or follow them. I took music through school, was in drumline in school for a couple years, and learned the basics of drumkit, so it’s not like I’m clueless about the drums, but he didn’t respect me enough to listen. He even thought we were good enough to perform and said that new bands just naturally suck.
I offered to get a more advanced drummer to come in and teach him, but he refused. He even said that guy can perform with us but he will practice with us, which confirmed my suspecions in that he really didn’t care to get on stage, thus why he wasn’t putting in the effort to improve. For consistent mistakes, he’d try to blame the sheets, but he wasn’t reading it properly. He just played them how he wanted to, and he wasn’t working on the songs between rehearsals.
Eventually, I just couldn’t continue to let him hold us back. We will never be ready for the stage with him as our drummer, and I wasn’t going to let us get up there just to crazy and burn and be embarrassed. I told him I’d have to let him go with a thorough explanation on how this just isn’t for him. He agreed that it wasn’t right…but then threatened legal action if I didn’t take all pictures and photos of him down…aka all our content from the last 8 months.
I said ‘no’. He consented and agreed, and I have all the Whatsapp chats and such as evidence. I was surprised a few months later when I saw his paralegal actually sent an email saying I shared his pics without consent. I sent a long reply explaining everything and that it’s not going down. If you work at a job, all your work doesn’t dissappear when you leave. If he’s desperate, he can pay us for the photoshoot and the rehearsal sessions, but otherwise, he’ll have to wait. They didn’t respond.
After the band project was over, the others wanted to continue, so I said someone else will have to take charge cause I was burnt out already, and I only start this as a short term band project to begin with. The bassist volunteered and seemed excited to take over. I found it a lil suspecious as he was always the least prepared, always had low energy and such, but the others were fine, so he took over.
He tried to manipulate the songlist to his own choices that included some unknown songs. Even if no one voted for it, he said it’s going on, end of story. I didn’t really care anyways. What I did care about was that he wanted to record Youtube videos in January, 2 months later, when he yet to ever memorize anything fully. He had a year to learn parts and lyrics, and some of those are songs we performed already, but he still didn’t have them down. He didn’t explain why it had to be January, so I found this very sus as well.
Eventually, I had my limits because we had our last rehearsal of the year and he wanted to record the first week of January, but he didn’t have his stuff down yet, as usual. I was very upset and said I’m quitting, as I’m used to people not listening to me or taking me seriously when I told them to memorize and be consistent. I figured maybe they’ll realize I’m at my last straw now.
After leaving the group chats, I was exploring Kijiji as I usually do, and I found out the bassist/new leader had ads up for a 2nd anime cover band, the exact same concept and such, aka a competing band. I told the others and confronted him privately as well. He didn’t even try to argue with me, and instead tried to paint me as crazy in the group chat, but the others weren’t buying it.
He said he was just going to sing in that band, and play bass in our band, as he can’t seem to multitask. Regardless, he never discussed it with us. He already dropped a keyboardist in the group, even though we aren’t stable enough for one, and then it sounds like he was going to drop a new singer too. He always says he’s tired and that he’s busy so it’s hard to learn stuff, but he suddenly has time and energy to run a second band. Nothing he said was logical, and it made me sick thinking of how selfish and sketchy he was.
That’s not the first time he wanted to do things secretly either. One time, we were discussing performing at Anime North. He’s a regular, so he was in charge of organizing us. He wasn’t giving updates, so I felt something was off and confronted him. He admitted he wanted to do something solo there, so I told the others we’ll work on our acoustic gig, and he can focus on that. I wanted to support him. But this time, knowing he just really wants the spotlight and would do this? Naw..
Anyways, I’m done with bands for now. Egos, different schedules and priorities, lack of preparation, secrets and backstabbing, etc, I just can’t. Or if I do, I want to work with more advanced musicians who know music theory and take music very seriously, because I don’t want to deal with lazy, irresponsible, and schedule people anymore.
Other’s Nightmare Stories
Ready for more nightmare stories? Whether you’re in a band or thinking of one, I hope these can give you insight on redflags, but also give you hope if you don’t have to deal with troublesome members.
These were taken from Reddit threads: What are your bandmate horror stories, What was the worst bandmate you had to deal with, Your worst band mates, Bad experiences with bandmates, and Share your bad bandmate story.
As a senior in HS, a local Christian-Metal band lost their drummer because he was caught selling coke on campus. They invited me to come jam with them and see if i would be a good fit with them.
I don’t recall who threw the first punch, but when the cops showed up they were both bloody, my set got knocked over and the guitar’s neck was snapped in half. They disbanded that night and the chick ended up pregnant.
So i get to the rehearsal spot, set up my kit and we get halfway thru a song when the guitarist and singer begin arguing over a girl. The guitarist apparently had a crush on her since 6th grade, and the singer banged her at a party the weekend before.
That was the only time i ever jammed with any of those guys. They weren’t very good Christians.
ruready1994
In the 80’s we had a singer who would always show up at practice very high and not prepared. We played a couple of gigs where this guy would forget the lyrics of cover songs we were playing and would have to hold a piece of paper in front of him while holding the mic in the other hand. It looked ridiculous.
BaconReceptacle
I took a craigslist add to start playing keyboards with a pop / dance band. I got my degree in percussion performance, but I am a decent keyboard player. So I get the setlist, learn the 30 or so songs they do in a little less than a week, and show up to the first rehearsal with my stuff.
Red flag #1: This dude (the drummer / band leader) literally never stops talking. But, he still seems like a generally nice dude and he plays well, so I’m pretty content. Everyone has their “stuff.”
Red flag #2: I text him asking if we are rehearsing the same time next week. No response. I show up anyone, because it seemed like the plan (1hr+ drive for me). He is actually pissed that I even asked. “Yeah, we rehearse the same time each week unless you hear otherwise. That’s how we do it, why would it ever be anything else?” I’m like word, really dickish way of saying that as I’ve literally met you once before, but whatever, I’m over it and now I know.
Red flag #3: Something doesn’t “feel right” and homeboy says something to the effect of “Yeah, that’s what makes me good here. I can’t put my finger on what’t wrong, but I can clearly hear whenever somethings off.” I’m thinking “no dude, that just means you have ears. If you know your shit, you absolutely should be able to say exactly what the issue is.” Starting to get peeved.
Red flag #4: Several more disagreements / notes about music stuff later in the rehearsal… every. single. one. feels like it’s about to break into a fist fight. This dude just can’t handle people having other perspectives than his own. I’m getting ready to back out of this thing, but I’ll stick around a little longer in case it gets better.
Red flag #5: By the end of the 3rd rehearsal, this guy wants to micromanage every single keyboard sound I’m using. That’s the point where I give my quiet, internal “Alright, fuck you too buddy, I’m out.”
Post-Mortem red flag: I send the guy a text saying that it just doesn’t feel like it’s a good fit musically and I’m gonna back out. No response, and I’ve never heard from him again.
On the other hand, the bass player was pretty solid at least.
[Deleted]
We had a dude who was going to be our rhythm guitar/backup singer/harmonica player in a blues-rock group (think Zep meets Kid Rock). This dude kept fighting with our lead guitarist and kept trying to turn the band into rockabilly or horror-core; he got a pedal that made his electric sound like a church organ and wanted to write a song about Frankenstein’s monster.
The guy was super manipulative and attempted to kick the lead guitarist out of the band in a really fucked up way. We all walked out on him, caught up with our lead guitarist, and started something new.
schumannator
Tried jamming with a guy a few months ago. He wanted to work on a weird guitar riff. I tried watching his hands for finger placement etc so I could learn it and play along. He kept turning around so I couldn’t see him play. He finally explained that he doesn’t like it when people watch him play. Good luck ever playing a fucking gig. Guy was so weird , never spoke to him again.
CrazyJaded
Orchestra here, we had this one kid that if I could smack him at least once I would’ve. Annoying af, wouldn’t listen to the conductor. Would lie on the ground sometimes when we stopped playing as a brief break of explanation. Then refused to get up sometimes. Would make sexist jokes in a room of if not mostly women then at least over half. even his siblings in the class were done with his shit
Clockwork_Artist
Let’s see…
There was the drummer who couldn’t remember any of the songs. He literally had us go through the set list with him every time right before the gigs and play the songs unplugged for him while he wrote out the beat/intro in some mysterious drum heiroglyphics he developed. And no, he never saved the papers.
The drummer (and thus the whole band) who followed my beat (guitar player) instead of holding it himself. Which meant I couldn’t lag or rush the beat during a solo or add character to anything, ever, or the whole thing would begin to tilt toward a train wreck. The last gig I played with that band, we had a substitute drummer who was absolutely awesome–best gig I ever played with that band because I was free, free at last to do my own thing.
And then there was the bass player who owned his own company–we’d been friends for years, and I worked for the company for part of the time the band existed until the recession forced mass layoffs.
Once I got laid off, he often had to work late, showing up for rehearsal too tired to play for more than a half hour, or cancelling practice altogether. Eventually I broke up the band because it was so discouraging to have practices so randomly.
Only that wasn’t it at all, I found out later. He was, in fact, sleeping with a co-worker and reporting to his wife that he was at practice when he was skipping them to carry on his affair. He ruined the band for three other people to get some on the side, and making me responsible for his antics being revealed to his wife because his excuse for not being home unraveled when I broke up the band. When it all came out, he told me he had a lot to apologize to me for. I said, look, I’ll still be your friend even though the band broke up over this, and he said that wasn’t even what he was talking about, and couldn’t bear to discuss it further. I can only assume that he put me into the layoffs from his company because I would have known he didn’t really work late if I’d stayed.
So yeah, I’ve had some bad ones, though maybe not the typical bad ones.
feckinkidleys
Don’t necessarily have a worst, i just don’t like the ones who complain about having to play. (I play trumpet) if you don’t want to put in the time, then just don’t waste anyone else’s with your complaining. It’s not too hard to quit if your not in to it.
Duffelii330
I had a singer once who refused to trust himself with lyrics. He brought a binder that he used on stage which eventually evolved inti an ipad mounted to a mic stand. It looked so shitty and kept him from engaging the crowd. He refused to go without it even after it was proven at practice he didn’t need it and that if he got stuck i would jump in to help him.
popscockle
I was in a seven piece rock band with a keyboard player, flautist and violinist
The violinist led to so many damn fights. The entire band would write/pick a song and he would flat out refuse to play if he didn’t like the song. He also refused to play any song that we didn’t write a violin solo in it (quite often I played duels with him but unless he had his own solo, he huffed). Quite often, I was having to improvise a solo over his violin solo section because he wouldn’t show up if we insisted on having a song in he didn’t like. Worst part? We couldn’t kick him out as it was in a college band (we split practice between college work and gigging work).
He eventually calmed down, thankfully, after our keyboard player lost her temper at him for a solid 15 minutes after he didn’t show up for a very important charity gig. He shut the hell up and let us sort everything.
[deleted]
The narcissistic bass player who once spent the opening act’s entire set whispering in my lead singer’s ear how she ought to fire the rest of us scrubs and form a new band with him. We fired him the next day when she told us.
Or maybe the bass player we hired to replace him, who turned out to be an unhinged bipolar and also got sacked after one too many angry outbursts on the bandstand.
Or the guitar player years before that in another band, who fucked off to Montana for 3 weeks when we had studio time booked. He returned to find that not only had we fired him, we had hastily worked up four brand-new songs without him that we went and recorded ourselves.
ItsPronouncedMo-BEEL
I was jamming with a guitar player who couldn’t write a half decent riff. He would write a song with mediocre riffs and all he would do is shred over it. I told him he need to learn how to write songs. He got offended that I didn’t like all the shredding and never heard from him again.
hewhodrums
My current guitar player/singer isn’t the worst, but he does some things that I find to be completely objectionable fairly often.
Rarely if ever helps get set up for gigs. I have my drums to contend with, and our bass player usually runs PA/sound. He also usually transports his own bass rig and the guitar player’s rig. The guitar player almost never helps load anything in other than his amp, so he’s usually drinking at the bar while the bass player and I spend 45 minutes or longer getting the stage ready for the show.
He hasn’t done this in a long time, but he would frequently forget entire verses for songs while on stage. Like, songs that we’ve rehearsed hundreds of times. His mind would just go completely blank. Thankfully we practice improvisation at practice all the time, so the bass player and I are pretty good about keeping the song from sinking until he gets his bearings back.
Occasionally gets pretty sauced before, during, and after shows. Sometimes it works well and gives a good swaggery vibe to the set. Sometimes he just ends up saying too many “fucks” in his sentences while interacting with the crowd, and it gives a weird, unprofessional vibe. Usually it’s fine though, and we’ve actually gotten significantly better at playing live in the last year, so I’d say this one is more of a non-issue at this point.
Occasionally has an incredibly dismissive attitude towards any ideas about songs that aren’t his own. Like, will interrupt me when I’m trying to explain a concept to him and just say “no” even though I haven’t completed the thought. I’m also the only trained musician in the band (I also play guitar and bass pretty well), so it gets frustrating when I’m trying to explain actual musical concepts and get shut down, despite the fact that there’s centuries of musical theory that I’m pulling this information from.
By and large he writes good, thoughtful lyrics, but has a tendency to want to write the occasional song about being a general fuckboi, which I personally don’t identify with at all and it makes me feel uncomfortable attaching my name to the project at times. Again, he’s moved away from this somewhat, but we still play these songs live, so until we write enough songs to move those off the playlist permanently, I still have to cringe a bit.
Tends to talk shit about every band that we’ve ever played with. This one really grinds my gears. He’ll never say anything to anybody’s face thankfully, be his is remarkably competitive about music. Like, thinks that we’re great and everybody else (with some rare exceptions) are bad and below us. It puts me at odds a bit because I do all the booking for our band, and it’s annoying hearing him talk about how bad everybody is all the time, how we should have more time on stage, how so and so shouldn’t be on this show, how we shouldn’t accept this show because they suck, etc. etc. It’s hard to get bookings done and build a musical community with friends in the scene when one member of your band is visibly absent all the time when you’re trying to socialize with other bands and members of the audience.
He’s not all bad. These are the things that bother me, but he has plenty of good qualities as well. I’ve certainly worked with far inferior musicians than him in the past, and I’ve also worked with much bigger assholes as well. But he does tend to piss me off a bit a least once every other week 🙂
center24tp
The leader (singer/guitar player) of the cover band I’m in now likes to take liberties with the songs we cover. He especially likes to extend songs, which I don’t mind if he does so by extending the guitar solos, because he is a good player and his solos sound great, but he has an annoying desire to repeat entire verses, lyrics and all. This is especially bad on popular songs that everyone knows, as you can see the audience following along with the song and they look confused when we repeat a verse. It really adds nothing to the songs and it makes me cringe every time we play them. I have successfully convinced him not to do this on some of the songs we cover, but on other ones he is adamant about repeating verses.
Another liberty he takes with songs is switching sections around, like reversing verses and choruses. This makes it difficult to learn new songs because I listen to the original recording and get the drum part down, but when we play it the sections are in different places and don’t match what I’ve been practicing. His excuse for this is “I’ve always played it that way”, but this also adds nothing to the song and just makes things more difficult than they need to be.
[deleted]
Respect for everyone’s time is my biggest issue. I have a guitarist that just can not be punctual. And honestly, it wouldn’t be so bad if it was once in a while, or 10-15 minutes late. It is regularly 30-60 minutes late, and he goes incognito after he calls you saying hell be there in 5 minutes, and ends up being 30-60 minutes late. The bass player and I (drummer) will just jam our tunes and run through the covers and get our sections down.
I just hate the lack of respect that being late and just being a general shithead about time brings. We all have lives, some of us have kids, some have other obligations…if you cant figure your shit out, I’m kickin him out. That’s where we are currently haha
Irish_whiskey_famine
But aren’t all drummers divas? Here’s my diva drummer story…
I was in a metal band in High School (late 80’s), I played lead guitar but I’ve always been a “tapper”. Meaning, I “air drum”… and honestly I’m not all that bad at it, aside from driving people absolutely crazy with it. I remember during a test in school, the girl sitting in front of me slams her pencil down, turns and through gritted teeth says “would you please stop it??” …I honestly didn’t even know I was tapping. I still tap. So does my son. Apparently its hereditary.
Anyway, the band is in my basement jamming one day and one of the songs we’re working on was the (then) newly released “One” by Metallica. You know, the song with the cool double-bass part. We’re doing it over and over… and over… and over… the drummer just can’t get the timing right. He’s getting pissed, we’re getting annoyed.
Finally, I say… “mind if I try?”
Drummer laughs, gets up, hands me the sticks, says, “yeah, sure, good luck!”
I sit down… I nail it. First time. Like seriously, it was perfect.
The other guys jaws drop… the drummer gets up, flips me off, suggests that I suck something, and he leaves in a huff.
Leaving his drums at my house.
He never came back for them.
…and I didn’t need to tap on desks with pencils anymore.
swany5
I was rhythm guitar in a band. Our lead guitar player was fantastic and he knew it. He was such a douche that he would insert random guitar solos wherever he felt like it, even over our singer, drum solos, etc. He started the band so eventually everyone just quit. He found more people to replace us and the lineup just kept changing because of his douchbaggery. No one can stand to play with him. He is now looking for new members and is a part time guitar instructor at the local music store. Poor kids. I’ve honestly never met a bigger douche than this dude.
Jpinkerton1989
I joined a band after the previous drummer left. One of the guys in the band was a problem. He didn’t show up at the first practice I had with them. He got himself arrested the day of our first show. He showed up five hours late to our first recording session. Eventually he got busted for walking out on bar tabs all over town, including at the music venues we played.
I was mostly in the band as an excuse to spend more time with the guitarist, who I was an old friend of, otherwise I would have left this band after the first gig.
5centraise
My worst band mate wasn’t actually in the band. It was our singer’s father (not sure if this still counts or not but hey ho). All band members were 15 or 16 at the time. im also on mobile so formatting might suck. There’s too many stories to tell so I’ll shorten them all:
-Once had an argument with our singer just before a gig at the venue and proceeded to leave him there, and not come back. He crashed on our bassist’s couch.
-Got caught stealing jack-to-Jack leads from a rehearsal space
-Insisted on being our ‘sound guy’ for a gig, and proceeded to completely break the PA provided by the pub venue
-When our singer, his own son, moved out for uni, sold all the musical gear he had to leave behind to find a heroin habit.
I’m very glad I left that band. Hope the singer is alright, last I heard he basically disowned both his parents.
YouthScreamsAndFades
I had a drummer who got so drunk before a set that he had to tie his drums together to avoid knocking them over. We propped him up on the drum throne and hoped to god he could actually play the songs; he did, but not well. At the end of the set, after making everything sound god awful, he threw his sticks over his head with a “fuckin nailed it” pose, and simply got up and left us to haul off his drums.
story two, had a singer who didn’t have the lyrics to the songs memorized a full year after recording our album (and a dozen shows). Every time something was brought up about it, she would deflect and blame her anxiety. That’s a tough situation to deal with because it’s probably true. Mental health is tricky when it’s someone else’s health, but your problem because, you know.. what do you do? All you can do is just let it happen, or find someone new.
story three isn’t my story, but one I witnessed. Friend’s band went to play a set after playing together for several years. After song number 3, the singer announces to the audience AND THE BAND that this would be his last show. They literally had no idea, and you could see the shock on their faces for the rest of the set. DONT EVER DO THIS. dick move.
ChoopAdoop
Had my first “band” with a good buddy who was learning to drum and I could only play power chords. We grew up together as musicians but he got lazy and only played during our rehearsals and never practiced anymore. I started to get better and he was stuck. We had multiple arguments because he never learned his songs, he didn’t hold the beat and he was always following me instead, so I couldn’t play anything with a “complicated” rhythmical pattern because he would get confused, and the worst, because he couldn’t count. With the time things got worse, the skills gap got too big and the arguments were plenty and because of that we could never hold a singer for long. One day we had a massive argument basically because he couldn’t count to 4 and we split.
It took me long time to learn that basically no drummer can count to 4.
With the time we both were in different bands and we missed each other as friends so we started talking again and talk about the positive things of the good old days when we were n00bs. We ended up putting the old band together, played for a while and again having massive arguments, so we split again.
We are again good buddies and meet once in a while to jam without any compromise, we both play unstructured nonsense and call it avant-garde. We might have a couple of shows coming up this summer. There is public for everything.
Krieg
I had a project last summer that I was working on with two friends of mine. I started the project after having written an entire album and needed some other people to actually perform it. The rehearsals started out great and they were super on board with my music and the whole vibe. As the rehearsals went on, however, my guitarist kept becoming more and more disinterested in the music but kept showing up to rehearsals and was just moody the whole time. I hated that. He wasted a lot of our time after he finally ditched the group and we had to find a new guitar player to learn all this new music and play the gigs. Had he just been real from the start we would have avoided a lot of headache.
pianomanisoverrated
Okay so imagine 15 year old me (I’m 16 now but ykno) I just started a band with people I had never met before, and they were super cool, all into the same music styles, all could play really well… then next thing you know, out lead singer / lead guitarist goes through 4 flippin breakups in the year… Because if that his lyrics are so shitily emo and edgy… And it’s not nice to listen to… Or first ever song “Hornet”‘s opening lyric is “you stung me right in my heart” and our second song Chain Reaction has the lyric “you made me flip my romantic table”. Now we never had a problem with it earlier on, but it just got worse, every song we wrote had to be about G I R L S… And this is just the start of the problems… Tell me if you want to hear more..
jo3lparton
Me and my friends were recruiting around our high school for people who just wanna hang out and have jam sessions. We found a guy, but he turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. His role was supposed to be the rhythm guitarist as our usual had broken her wrist.
Every time we got together he would clown around. He wasn’t a bad player, just a jackass. When our lead guitarist was soloing, he’d jump in to solo himself and it threw her off. He’d always change amp settings without permission and add unnecessary pedal effects. If we were playing a nice blues improv, he would jump in with a distortion that just didn’t fit. Shit like that. Despite all this, we had to keep him in cause we needed that second guitar.
This came to a head when he broke our lead’s $2000 Les Paul while horseplaying. She cried her eyes out cause she spent months saving for it. Our bassist was not amused and punched him out of the garage we practice in.
I wish I could run a background check on people just by looking at them sometimes.
MC_CrackPipe
I played with a bassist once who only played notes along the lowest string and would only play 1-2 different notes per song. He also tried calling all the shots despite never really contributing to anything and wanted us to always run through “his set list” at rehearsals. It wasn’t too long before we kicked him out. Not long after that he went to jail for assaulting his gfriend. Fuck that guy.
sandwitchloord
Had a bassist that was paranoid that we were jamming without him. He couldn’t comprehend that the rest of us had full time jobs and families and shit, so we couldn’t practice every week. He would freak out regularly. There was one simple riff he couldn’t ever remember how to play (and for more lols, after we kicked him out and I called him out on that, he says “that riff sucked and you guys just didn’t get the hint”, fuckin pussy).
[Deleted]
I don’t know which one is worst of these, but I’ll let you decide…
Case one was my former best friend that I was in two bands with. One band disbanded after the leadsinger had a mental breakdown and the other guitarist was demotivated as hell. We kinda reformed as a new band and my old buddy saw this as his moment to shine. His cocaine habit became worse and before we were even in the rehearsal room he was already there tweaking out and playing all of our parts himself and recording it into our demo files. He would often rage and yell at us for screwing up while he was constantly out of tempo or missing drums. We eventually broke up because of his coked out of his skull behaviour.
Case two was also in the same band as the Dr. Rockso above. This guy was a great player, but had a HUGE ego. He’d see jams as guitar battles and he’d pull shit like just switching an expensive tube amp off without standby to get his point across. He was also the kind of guy that was always short on money and wanted to get away with not paying his share of the rehearsal room rent. We kicked him out eventually.
Case three is a demotivated drummer I was in a band with that would ALWAYS come up with excuses to miss rehearsals. Because of that shit, the singer became demotivated as well and also bailed out making it quite pointless for me and the bassist to jam together almost every damn week. Eventually we broke up again and reformed a few times with different drummers but man, it’s as if they’re all the same…
Last one is a bit of a bonus. An old college buddy of mine wanted to play in a band with me, his slacking bassist brother, horrible snobbish key player/“studio engineer” and two options for possible drummers. We’d come together every weekend but we would never jam these songs together. No… My old buddy and mr. snobby keys wanted to put a whole perfect EP together first before “wasting time in a rehearsal room”… They re-re-re-re-recorded over and over until we had a few fights and eventually “broke up” for as far as we were a band. We never played those songs together and I really liked them.
I’m totally fed up with bands nowadays.
GreenLurch
Why Is It So Hard Finding Good Members?
I took music through school. Played clarinet, was in a couple choirs, drum line, musicals, all that. I learned to read sheet music, follow direction, and be a part of a team. I find most musicians have a mutual love and respect for music, and they live to serve the song first and foremost. They don’t mind being in the background or sharing their parts with others.
When I picked up guitar and started getting more into the band world, it was a complete switch. It felt like everyone was self trained, no one knew theory or how to read…and no one cared! Most were bedroom musicians who had their own way of doing things, so their timing may not be the best. Some are used to having tabs or just improvising, so their memory isn’t the best either.
But all of that is made worse through egos. A lot of the worst bandmates are those who feel they are the best, or think they are praiseworthy, even though they suck. But don’t you dare give them any criticism because they’ll either ignore it or they’ll blow up. Because they never took lessons nor see music as a subject, it can be extremely hard explaining concepts like rhythm and progressions with them. They just feel and play what they want.
Some then become some stubborn and stuck in their ways that if you even dare to bring up something new, or pitch a song idea that doesn’t align with their sound, the answer is always “no”. I’ve read enough stories of some being the boss or becoming such a baby that they are unbareable…but musicians are hard to find, so the other’s just bare with it.
Then of course, you got the alcohol and drug addicts who look at a band as just something fun and casual, and that smoking weed during rehearsal is just part of the culture. Some stories I’ve read mention a bandmate drowning a whole bottle before rehearsal and barely being able to play the drums on stage, making their performance worse than it could have been.
Even before I got this band off the ground, I was totally aware of why many musicians would rather work solo and create their own backing tracks. Who wants the drama? Who wants to feel like their wasting their time, money and energy? Who likes working with lazy, incompetent, and uncontrollable bandmates?
While playing with a band can certainly be a fun and magical experience, especially if you have the right people by your side, it’s not surprise that few bands make it big, and less stay active for more than a decade.
Conclusion
If you want to play in a band, go for it! Don’t let this discourage you! It’s certainly an experience that few will ever get to experience…but definitely be on the lookout for the right people.
As hard as it could be to find members, don’t let a bad, lazy, or incompetent member drag you down. As I always say, there is always better out there. Even if your band idea is more niche like mine, you can find people who are as dedicated and passionate as you.
In my “what to include in your band ad” article, I said putting down your goals is important. Do you just want people to jam with? Do you just want to do covers and make side money? Do you want to create original songs and become the next big thing?
One of the biggest reasons bands break up is because members aren’t on the same page about music style or direction, and if people aren’t happy, they’ll drag you down. Even your best players won’t stick around if they feel your worst players don’t care enough to rehearse so you can move forward.
Do you have a story to share? Feel free to leave it below!
Good luck out there, fellow musicians!
Pingback: The Stressful Side Of Being A Guitarist In A Band ⋆ Chromatic Dreamers