Why do musicians suck so much? / shameless plugs

Cafe Society
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I am one, so I can get away with saying this…

Are we all a mob of flakey, bubble-headed, irresponsible, non-commited bunch of freaks? I’ve been trying out drummers forever now. They’ve mainly been goth or heavy metalheads… and that doesn’t mesh with punk. So I actually finally find a really good punk drummer, who likes my origionals, shares a lot of the same views I have on music, etc etc. I get him on a thursday, we practice on a friday, I call him up today (sunday) and his mom says he left for Ohio, and asked me if I knew where?

WTF?

For the love of god someone tell me he’s just a nutcase.

BTW, Pezpunk is supposed to have a show coming up on thursday the 27th at the Orpheum in Ybor, for anyone in Tampa who cares to hear some good music.

AND, in an effort to unite the growing ‘underground’ punk scene here in southwest FL, I have created a message board. http://pub95.ezboard.com/btampabaypunk Hopefully we can stop stealing the SDMB bandwidth to keep in touch :wink:

woo

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WOO HOO! Thanks for the plug! We are playing Thursday at the Orpheum with two great bands. Should be fun. It would be awesome to get some dopers out there!

And Broc. Musicians are flaky. Especially drummers… they are a strange breed.

Off to check out your message board.

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Hey, if this board gets big i’ll need moderators… you want in?

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sure, if I can get the damn thing to sign me up!

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hrm… is it just timing out? ezboard may just be lagged…

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Howyadoin,

One of these days, I’m gonna re-write the dictionary…

One of my things to do is make sure that the entries for “musician” and “hang-up” are consecutive.

I had my bass player walk out on me the other day, because another bass player he didn’t care for was going to be at the gig.

A guitarist I know is talented as all hell, but refuses to play outside his studio.

Drunks, people with substance issues, unreliable, lazy, egomaniacal, etc…

::sigh::

-Rav

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I was in a band once. I was the keyboardist. They’d said I was going to be the lead singer AND keyboardist, then changed it to backup singer and keyboardist, and then just keyboardist.

Needless to say, I was more than a little pissed.

Everyone had a different idea of what the band was going to be. The drummer wanted it to be like Tool/Deftones. The singer wanted it to be like Alice in Chains/Godsmack/Kid Rock. The bassist wanted it to be funk/311/hip hop type stuff. The rhythm guitarist wanted it to be like Nine Inch Nails, Savior Machine, or Nick Cave. The lead guitarist wanted Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd type stuff.

I just wanted to play.

I ended up quitting, along with the lead guitarist (who was my boyfriend at the time). The band survived the summer and then started drifting apart.

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Hey! I’m a drummer, and we’re not such a strange breed. Most of us are chihuahuas, in fact, which is pretty damn common.

When I played in a band, our bass player was extremely flakey. He loved to practice, but hated playing out ( I think he had really bad stage fright, to be fair). Since the guitarist and I sang 95% of the songs anyway, we came up with a solution to his recurrent absenteeism from shows: we made a cardboard cut-out in the shape of a human, drew a smiley face on him, threw a Hawaiin shirt and shorts over him and strung a tiny plastic toy guitar around his neck and stuck him in front of the right mic stand. The crowd usually thought it was pretty funny, and would shout for him to solo. To tell the truth, he had about as much stage presence as our actual bass player.

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I have these two friends that I grew up with. We all live in different cities now, and all play in different bands, but when we were younger, we explored music together. I’m sure you know what I mean. We passed new, exciting records around, and started developing very similar outlooks on music.

About once a year now, me and Jay will get together and drive down to Gainesville, Florida, and hook up with Jason. It’s always magical. We’ll go into the studio where Jason works and just play, sometimes for three days at a time, without ever leaving. We just write songs, play them out, and put 'em in the can.

No rules. No preconceived style. No flaky musician bullshit. We all just love to hear it come together. We all love nothing more than to get in there and work…it’s the most fun you can have. We’ll write a song with me on guitar, Jay on bass, and Jason on drums, and for the next song, switch it up completely…me on drums or bass, etc.

The last time, we came out of 72 solid hours with about ten songs in the can…a couple of chordal melody ska/punk numbers (including one where Jason looked at me and said, “OK. Right here, I want you to put a wild-assed Wes Montgomery jazz solo on it.” “It’s a punk song, but what the hell.” It came out pretty damn well,) a punk/hardcore number a la Bad Brains, and several songs where we were trying for that oppressive, driving, menacing acoustic/clean sound Nick Cave gets in Papa Won’t Leave You Henry.

It’s always extremely inspiring, working with good friends and absolutely no fetters. The stuff may be unlistenable to anyone else besides us, but it acts as a wonderful relief valve, and we all go back with tons of new ideas.

[/misty reminiscence]

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woodstockbirdybird, lol pezpunk is a drummer too - so it’s funny. See? like, where you laugh, because he’s making fun of himself (see Jerry Seinfeld and the Anti-Dentist episode :)) But i’d have to say of all the neurotics i’ve met most have been drummers… I’ve had drummers who would only play slow jazz beats in punk songs, despite being nicknamed “doublekick”. I’ve had drummers tell me that they can’t play on wednesday, for no reason whatsoever (seriously, no reason, they just didn’t play on wednesday). I’ve now had drummers drive to Ohio for no apparent reason (see O.P.). I’ve had people tell me they were drummers and bring a guitar to practice… when I asked why they said they didn’t want to play drums anymore. Two guitars is bad enough in a punk band, three is just too many :wink: especially when you have no drums!

Le sigh…