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Have you ever been fired from your own band?


karlw

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Back in the late 1980s during the "metal years" I was in a band called S.U.C.M.E. that originally started out as a parody band (a-la Spinal Tap) but ended up evolving into a fairly respectable metal band. We had a local (Tucson) following and even got some radio play (the song was "White GTI" about sorority girls).

 

The singer, Kurt Larson (R.I.P.) and I started the group while we were music students, and the two of us remained in the band for several years while we went through several other members, mostly drummers (none of them spontaneously combusted, at least not that we know of). By about 1989, we were fairly serious, and had picked up a good bass player, a good drummer, and a real lead guitarist (I was more of a rhythm player) and we were playing out fairly regularly, doing mostly originals.

 

Here were some of our songs:

 

Phallic Warrior

Right Foot in Hell

Crotch Rocket

We're Gonna Kick Yer Ass

Berlin Wall (remember, this was 1989)

Death Rock S#!+

Pabst Blue Ribbon (an ode to Frank Booth of "Blue Velvet" fame)

OddMetal (solo feature for drums, guitar)

White GTI

Kiss (a parody/tribute song)

 

During the spring of that year, I was accepted to USC to study audio engineering, so I knew that by Fall, I was heading to LA. I was away from Tucson on vacation in March, and when I came back, the singer informed me that the other guys had called an "emergency meeting" and decided to fire me since I "obviously wasn't serious about the band since I was leaving in another few months". I was flabbergasted!

 

But I also knew that the band wouldn't survive. Not so much from an ego standpoint, but because Kurt and I had written almost all of the music together, and I was the one who rehearsed the band and polished the arrangements. And indeed it turned out to be true... the drummer tried to take over, and get his sister into the band to be the singer, etc. etc. etc. They never played another gig.

 

So that's my story invoking the world's smallest violin...:cry:

 

Anyone else ever deal with that kind of situation?

 

-Karl

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Originally posted by karlw



Phallic Warrior

Right Foot in Hell

Crotch Rocket

We're Gonna Kick Yer Ass

Berlin Wall (remember, this was 1989)

Death Rock S#!+

Pabst Blue Ribbon (an ode to Frank Booth of "Blue Velvet" fame)

OddMetal (solo feature for drums, guitar)

White GTI

Kiss (a parody/tribute song)

 

 

I want to hear those songs! Right Foot in Hell? Hell yeah! A tribute to Frank? I like that! We're Gonna Kick You Ass? I've just stolen that one ( not really).

 

I did fire a guy that was responsible for getting me in the group. I think I'm still paying off my Karma Debt on that one.

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I had a drummer try it once. He was the last guy I hired, and he had another agenda, and kept trying to get my guys to all quit me and go with him, hire another front man and start this other band. I had heard this about him before, so I told him if I hired him, he worked for me, but if he tried to break my band up, I'd fire his ass. He did, and I did, and since then, he's been in about 12 bands. None of my guys went with him.

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Originally posted by Lee Knight



I want to hear those songs! Right Foot in Hell? Hell yeah! A tribute to Frank? I like that! We're Gonna Kick You Ass? I've just stolen that one ( not really).

 

 

I'm working on dusting off those tapes (yes tapes) although some are on DAT (what a horrible format that was!) and transferring stuff to CD and MP3. If so, I'll post the better stuff somewhere and provide links.

 

Regarding whether or not I let the band use songs I had written, actually the singer and I sat down and went through the list for that very reason. We came to an amicable agreement and indeed the band wasn't allowed to play most of the songs we had done before. However, on some of the material, I had to admit that it was the singer who wrote the majority (such as "We'r Gonna Kick Yer Ass") and thus I didn't have a problem with them playing those songs.

 

It didn't matter, though, because the drummer had his own agenda. What is it with drummers? (ducking...)

 

-Karl

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Twice in my life, I have been dropped from bands. In both cases, they just stopped telling me about rehearsals. I ended up having to call after a few weeks and ask WTF because nobody was enough of a man to just tell me.

 

It stung at the time, but ended up not mattering at all in the long run. They were never clear about why, but I think it was the result of being the last guy hired and trying to assert my opinions.

 

Lesson: start own band or just go along for the ride.

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yeah, ive been fired from a band i started.

 

the singer was really drawn to soft rock, and songs about not finding love. i was writing more rocking stuff, and my lyrics were mostly about showing up to work drunk.

 

i thought we had a lennon/mccartney thing going, and liked the dichotomy of the songs that resulted. the singer just didnt want the tension, so he and the rest of the band "quit" together. they played one more gig, sucked, and never played again.

 

they tried to replace me with a fiend of mine, and he hated the dynamic, as the bass player was passive aggressive, and would claim to get his feelings hurt inexplicably, and hold grudges, and the singer would rehearse a song until all mistakes were totally gone, along with any enthusiasm for the song itself. he had no sense of the looseness of rock, and produced lifeless music. he was a good composer, but a bad bandleader.

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I started an original band with a friend of mine that I had been in bands with off and on since we had started playing guitar in grade school, I think we were 23 at the time. We auditioned drummers and bassists and were happy with our choices. I was the one with the most experience with getting gigs/promotion/etc. so I did all of that work -- and I mean ALL of it. I did a LOT of legwork to get this band somewhere, and we were -- quickly, in fact. After a year of non-stop work, I asked to take a few weeks off as I had finals and needed to study for them.

 

So, the semester ends, and I get called to the drummers house for a band meeting. They sit me down and tell me that they decided to boot me. My life-long "buddy" couldn't even look me in the eye and ran off before the deed was done. They never really gave me a reason, either, other than "it's not working out". Not working out? For who? Dude, you're the BASS PLAYER -- I hired YOU!!!

 

It turns out that he was a very frustrated guitarist and didn't like me much. He was booted from the band a few months later anyway. The worst part was that they stole the tunes I co-wrote with the singer (my old "pal") and never gave me credit for them when they later recorded them.

 

To this day, I have no clue why they booted me out. A good friend of mine ended up playing bass in that band after I was gone and HE doesn't know why. Apparently, it was never discussed. I guess the only thing that was good that came out of this was that a lot of our fans were pissed that I was suddenly gone and reacted by not going to shows. They floundered along for a while until they eventually ran out of gas, having replaced me with a long list of guitarists that never quite worked out.

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I've never started a band, but I've been in a band where the guy who started the band was fired. He was the lead singer and other lead guitar player (he and I shared lead duties). Unfortunately his ego was continuously growing, his work ethic was poor and at times non-existant, he would get lost in the middle of songs and start looking around at the rest of the band like "what are you guys doing, where are you, what's going on?". We tried for 6 months to talk to him about these things but he'd always say that he didn't know what we were talking about and that those things never happened (selective memory I guess, considereing people in bars, these are bar people now, would ask us what went wrong in so and such song). One night after a completely a gig completely bombed we, as a band made the decision and told him "bye". We floundered around for about 3 months looking for a new singer, found one, then played more gigs in the span of 9 months with the new one than we did in 2 years with the guy we fired. We had more return gigs too.

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Originally posted by SpacedCowboy

We've tried, but squealie keeps drunkenly muttering something about how being a founding member somehow excludes him from termination...we just get sick of arguing and give him another chance. In other words, we give up.
:(

 

Silence bitchass!

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Originally posted by karlw

Back in the late 1980s during the "metal years" I was in a band called S.U.C.M.E. that originally started out as a parody band (a-la Spinal Tap) but ended up evolving into a fairly respectable metal band. We had a local (Tucson) following and even got some radio play (the song was "White GTI" about sorority girls).


The singer, Kurt Larson (R.I.P.) and I started the group while we were music students, and the two of us remained in the band for several years while we went through several other members, mostly drummers (none of them spontaneously combusted, at least not that we know of). By about 1989, we were fairly serious, and had picked up a good bass player, a good drummer, and a real lead guitarist (I was more of a rhythm player) and we were playing out fairly regularly, doing mostly originals.


Here were some of our songs:


Phallic Warrior

Right Foot in Hell

Crotch Rocket

We're Gonna Kick Yer Ass

Berlin Wall (remember, this was 1989)

Death Rock S#!+

Pabst Blue Ribbon (an ode to Frank Booth of "Blue Velvet" fame)

OddMetal (solo feature for drums, guitar)

White GTI

Kiss (a parody/tribute song)


During the spring of that year, I was accepted to USC to study audio engineering, so I knew that by Fall, I was heading to LA. I was away from Tucson on vacation in March, and when I came back, the singer informed me that the other guys had called an "emergency meeting" and decided to fire me since I "obviously wasn't serious about the band since I was leaving in another few months". I was flabbergasted!


But I also knew that the band wouldn't survive. Not so much from an ego standpoint, but because Kurt and I had written almost all of the music together, and I was the one who rehearsed the band and polished the arrangements. And indeed it turned out to be true... the drummer tried to take over, and get his sister into the band to be the singer, etc. etc. etc. They never played another gig.


So that's my story invoking the world's smallest violin...
:cry:

Anyone else ever deal with that kind of situation?


-Karl

 

Kinda sorta...Doug, the bassist of the band I was in back in the mid-80s (Sidewinder) met this lil' fluff, who decided to become a Diva and needed a band, so by using her Hoover-like abilities (;)), suckered David, the drummer and Tommy, the other guitarist, into joining her and Doug's mutiny...the plan was that they'd go on w/ the gigs already booked, leaving me out in the cold!

 

Only contingency that they didn't plan for was the fact that the entire PA, the bass and amp that Doug used, the lead amp that Tommy played though and about the half of the drumset belonged to me...and, so I loaded up everything, made some phone calls, and was available for that weekend's booked gigs w/ nary a problem! :D

 

OTOH, the following week Doug, Tommy and David each called to ask for their position back, and apologized profusely...seems that Miss Fluff was very cold to them when she discovered that they weren't going to be much help with her impending super-stardom...being the sweetheart of a guy that I am, I told them that the guys I hired were working out real well, but that I'd sure give them a call next time I needed a replacement!

 

Ain't life a bitch, sometimes! :)

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