Talk About Your Experiences in Bands
 

So after years of saying I would do it I finally formed a band (Ronald McFondle) and we've even played a few shows out. I love playing live its like a whole other ther kind of high. Anyway my drummer and bassist started fighting about little things (who should book the gigs) and won't play together anymore. Now I"m left with no drummer and a show coming up soon. we have someone to replace him but they're not as good. I don't think I'll ever stop playing music but it's becoming a real problem just to stabilize a group.

Anyone have any cool or fucked up storied about being in a band to put mine in perspective? Any advice for patching things up in a band?

Being in a band is all about finding people you have chemistry with and can work with for an extended period of time. The only times I've been in bands "successfully", and by that I mean bands that have played out extensively for at least a year or so, is when everyone has an implicit or explicit understanding of everyone's role in the group and their satisfied with their respective role. It's just like any other group setting: figuring out the balance and making sure everyone is satisfied. With that said, I've been in more bands that fizzled out in a month or two than in bands that have been successful.

If I were you, I'd find a new drummer. If you and the bassist have a good working relationship, then keep that up and try to find someone that works well with the two of you. It's not about talent or influences or whatever, but all about chemistry and how you work together.

i played gitar in a sort of satanic band
you know, the singer has a demonic voice

only played 1 session
just to help during a studio jam

I got kicked out of a band I hated by an accordionist. Nothing in my life has been more humiliating.

did you go quietly, or did you kick and scream and then blank them in the pub for a few weeks?

I've not seen him since, as it happens. But it was very much like being broken up with by a partner you're not into, and only with to keep the old fella (my violin arm, in this metaphor) warm for a bit. It's worse when you're punching well below your weight.

it sucks to be in a band because people suck.

and that's what you get for joining a band with someone who calls himself an accordionist?

i got kicked out of a band I STARTED and they continued to play my songs, I win.

honestly guitarists(especially arrogant ones) are so dime a dozen and redundant seeing you write this about another instrumentalist... well i laughed but i also kinda died inside


you're not better than anybody else because you chose the same instrument as every other skinny anglo-saxon who think he's different

i think he was coming from a violin-perspective.

what about "i didn't choose the guitar, the guitar chose me" - does that work for you?

it doesn't matter because he came to it from guitar

he probably started playing violin so he could sit there feeling superior to other guitarists

point being he's a guitarist, which is one of the easiest to replace sort of human beings, musically and otherwise.

honestly i like the accordion better than the guitar which obviously influences my view on this.


but if you mostly play the most overplayed instrument, stop feeling so special because a quick craigslist ad will be able to attract 400 people just like you.

i mean being a really interesting or awesome guitarist is cool, but they're a minority

that was kind of weird, somebody buy me a bag of herb before i end up being like the new glice/nik/sway

well i play guitar, but i'm not a guitarrist

get a bottle of wine instead, won't that work?

i actually have only ever had wine in my mouth once and i thought it was water, i'm curious but don't like jumping into things fast, well things that normal people do at least. alot of really stupid and pointless activities come to me naturally

wine is a good activity

Here's the story of my old "serious" band-

In the fall of '06, I had been auditioning/jamming with a couple different people but nothing stuck. Then I was contacting by a guy who saw the ad I had been running on Backpage (Craigslist wannabe) and in the City Paper (local entertainment/political rag) and was impressed that I listed both Nirvana and Tool as influences. He gave me a link to his music, whcih was kind of slow, downbeat, and very depressing, but it had a experimental streak that I really liked. So I met him and this other guy who he'd picked up and did some recordings and a show with a rather odd lineup; the guy who'd seen my ad singing (barely audibly) and fingerpicking/struming an acoustic with no electronics, the other guy cleanly playing the first guy's Fernandes electric guitar with Sustainer, and me making noises and playing occassional riffs/leads on my electric. A little later we found a drummer who was really good but he was totally metal, so he didn't quite fit in. Still, the clean electric player switched to bass and we did some shows/recordings as a more conventional four-piece. The music got a little harder, but it wasn't heavy enough for the drummer so he quit, as did the (now) bass player.

A few weeks later we found another drummer, but he wasn't as good as the first. We also picked up a new bass player and his drummer friend, fresh out of a metal band (whose singer was totally metal even in his between-song chatter-from a home video: (metal growl throughout) "This NEXT SONG...is on our DEMO! And you can buy it in THE OTHER ROOM!!!"). Since we already had a drummer, he played percussion. We did a few practices and a show as a five-piece, but the new bassist kept insisting to the singer that his friend should be the drummer, otherwise they'd both quit. After hearing him play the drums, the singer and I became convinced he was right, but the drummer didn't want to switch to percussion. So the singer basically quit talking to him in hopes that he'd just go away. I was not at all down with this, as I'm the kind of person who likes to be told the truth, whether I like or not. So the singer tells me I should tell the drummer he's out if I want him to know he's been fired. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, so I just went along with it (Dusty Gladhill, if you're reading this, I am SO sorry).

So we jammed with our new rhythm section for a while. The bass player had some good ideas, but it became clear after a while that he's the kind of guy likes things his way, or there will be problems. He was into 90s industrial pop-metal like Rammstein and Rob Zombie, and pretty much thought of himself as the next Trent Reznor. He not only played bass, but also had a guitar, a couple keyboards, a sequencer and a crap ton of recording gear, so he could create an enitre song on his own and didn't care for any deviations. He tried to make our music less depressing and more dark and heavy, which I wasn't 100% opposed to-after all, the singer and I shared a love of Deftones and the bassist, drummer and I all loved Pantera (plus, goth chicks are hot). But at the same time, that's neither what I nor the singer (or even really the drummer, who just loved music in general) were about. Nonetheless, things went semi-smoothly for a bit; we practiced and gigged occasionally (though we played most of the shows we played in our existance as a band during that year) to miniscule crowds with musically diametrically opposed opening acts (and opening for such acts). Then, the day of a show at a Halloween haunted house attraction, the bassist quits. We ended up doing a rather shoddy show with two guitars and drums with no bass to hold them together (although some kid came to onstage to jam with us, which was fun).

A few weeks later, the bassist apologized to the singer and he's back in. We do two rounds of a battle of the bands, and show opening for a Bon Jovi/Goo Goo Dolls hybrid from Jersey (whose audience absolutely HATED us). Before long, the bassist said we should take a break from doing shows. So we do, and he quits again. We audition a few other guys; they don't work out. At the same time, we didn't really have a place to play loud, so it was mainly the singer and I jamming over headphones. The drummer got an electronic set, so he joined in. At one point, we had an older guy with a day job making independant horror films on bass, but he wanted everything tabbed out (unprofessional), so he didn't last. He had a cool bass though (1950s Fander Precision!)...we had a younger guy audition for bass, but he was very influenced by Steve Harris and kept playing the intro to Iron Maiden's Number of the Beast after he got lost trying to do what we were doing.

Some time later, the bassist (the Trent Rezonr wannabe) decides he wants back in, and the singer, fed up with the fact that no one else seemed to "get" us, lets him back in. We do a couple shows, but the he's late to the next several practices, and the singer decides he's done with being in a band. Depressed but still determined to make it as a musician, I hooked up with a girl doing an interesting (I thought so at the time) hybrid of 90s angry girl music and modern heavy rock, but after a few practices and shows, she kicks me out, saying she can no longer deal with me second guessing her (i.e. disagreeing with her adding an awkward heavy part to an already good song just for the sake of being "heavier live") and I had insulted her girlfriend (she was gay) when she'd been nothing but nice to me (to be fair, I did once remark to her drummer that she wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, who agreed with me. But let's be realistic here; she refused to have her abscessed tooth looked at! Honestly though, sometimes I wondered if she wanted to have a threesome with me and the singer girl...maybe her girlfriend suggested this and it made her angry?). The singer in the original band reconnected with the drummer, and he contacts me, saying he'll get a bass and be the low end guy.

We were a band once more, this time a power trio. We practice on a more regular basis, and the drummer got his own place for us to play at whenever. We come up with some good jams...but then the singer does something to his hand that makes it difficult to play. The other bassist had been hanging around, so he talked to him about maybe coming back. He agrees, so now we're a quartet, singer-guitar-bass-drums. And we actually wrote a song out of one of the bassist's ideas, which had to have made him happy. He got us a show on a local public access program.

Well, the day before the show I received some very bad news regarding the one I love...and could barely eat or sleep. My performance suffered, plus my tone absolutely SUCKED, because everyone insisted I just plug my effects straight into the mixing board. Overall, the performance was a disappointment (but if you want to see it, just search YouTube for Peroxide on the Timmy Willis Show). A few practices later, the singer says he wants to book more shows, but the bassist keeps insisting we're not ready, and talks about doing electronic side projects (always his prelude to an exit). The singer wasn't a native Pittsburgher, and neither was his homesick Californian girlfriend, so they moved out there, and that's that.

I'm sure a lot of people would just say to keep looking for a new bass player, but the singer could be just as hard to deal with sometimes, and the drummer often insisted on re-recording everything.

Most recently I decided to start up another group, but just for fun as I no longer have any wish to tour or deal with the music industry. Plus recording can be a nightmare for me as I'm a perfectionist and I have a tendency to get nervous and mess up. Anyway, I've found another guitarist, and for now we're just jamming and having fun, and really, isn't that what it should be all about?

shut up

that's the only thing I read and it made me hungry.

um, ok

everyone in my band books the gigs. problem solved.