Members The Insomniac Posted August 17, 2005 Members Share Posted August 17, 2005 I book the band. The guys call me up and give me dates they won Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JeffBass Posted August 17, 2005 Members Share Posted August 17, 2005 Tell them to grow d1cks or you gonna find players who aren't so pussswhipped. That's pathetic man. It kills me because before you marry them, they love the fact that you're in a band! If the music's part of you, you'll become less by giving it up and then they won't like you anyway so ROCK ON!Here's a trick, take half the gig money and give it to the wife. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Zeromus-X Posted August 17, 2005 Members Share Posted August 17, 2005 At least you have schedules to work with. With Starfront, it was me calling a venue to find if we could play, calling band members to get work schedules (which most of the time led to a response of "Uh, I won't know my schedule until the week before that", which is useless when booking shows 2-3 months in advance), etc. My advice, which I also used: Have a band meeting. Explain that the band is a relationship. It's you four or five guys, or whoever is in the band. Much like a relationship, it needs time. If one of them doesn't dedicate but one night a month to their girlfriend/wife, what's going to happen? They're going to get kicked out. Well, the same applies. In our case, even that didn't work. So I went a step further. "Here's the 'band fund' box. It's got about $1000 in it that we've accumulated from shows, etc. You've got a choice. You can either actually show up to practice and shows (yes, we had people not showing up for the show), which means dedicating at least one night a week to practice and at least two nights a month to playing a show... or you can take your $200 and walk." They all took the money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members L-1329 Posted August 18, 2005 Members Share Posted August 18, 2005 That does suck. Lately I have been learning that there are two kinds of bands- ones that want to make some money and ones that only want to play for fun once in a while and feel like rock stars for a night. The former get better and more dedicated players and play good shows, and the latter never get out of the basement. I am dying to get back into a band with some goals and commitment, and get out to some shows but the ones I've been in never seem to have the drive or ambition. The harder I pushed them the less they were interested, and it became an endless cycle of finding replacement players and starting over. I am done with that. My problem is that a good, working local band is going to need a much bigger time commitment and I have a problem there due to my work schedule. Players who join and agree to a band and it's goals need to stick to it, or they are misrepresenting themselves. They will always back out but not until the rest of the band's reputations take a hit with canceled shows etc. I have no time for those kind of games or players, but it sure seems hard to find the right ones. No band is better than putting up with that kind of situation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members james on bass Posted August 18, 2005 Members Share Posted August 18, 2005 That does suck. If a date is booked and agreed upon by all, then everyone should honour it. If they didn't want to play it, they had all summer to tell you. I;ve got two bands on the go. I give my available weekends to everyone, and when one band gets a gig, the other knows about it right away. I keep a "band" calendar on the fridge so the wife doesn't have any surprises either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rikshaw Posted August 18, 2005 Members Share Posted August 18, 2005 Originally posted by Zeromus-X ...So I went a step further. "Here's the 'band fund' box. It's got about $1000 in it that we've accumulated from shows, etc. You've got a choice. You can either actually show up to practice and shows (yes, we had people not showing up for the show), which means dedicating at least one night a week to practice and at least two nights a month to playing a show... or you can take your $200 and walk." They all took the money. is that what happened to starfront? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Zeromus-X Posted August 18, 2005 Members Share Posted August 18, 2005 Originally posted by rikshaw is that what happened to starfront? That was the last straw, basically. As I said, we were unable to get everyone together to practice except maybe once every two weeks. Which was dumb, because we had a place we could play any hour of the night, any night of the week. But someone would be too tired after work, or there'd be a party, etc. It became impossible to book a show since nobody knew their schedule because all their jobs sucked and they couldn't put in for a day off without having to worry about losing the job. Combine that with the fact that when I did manage to get a show, we'd suck because of not practicing and we'd have no material... and it was obvious what was about to happen. I brought everyone over to my house and told them basically, we work on things or they can take their cut and leave. Two of them did. At that point, one of them wasn't sure, but he figured that was it anyway. Two of us were into really heavy music; two were into complete emo/pop-punk stuff; the fifth was pretty much in the middle, keeping us from going too far in either direction. It ended up breaking the band in half, because those two wanted to quit the heavy stuff and do the pop-punk stuff (as you'd hear on our newest CD if it was ever mastered); Daniel and myself wanted to get that element out of the music more and get some heavier stuff in there (as you'll hear in the first CD); the fifth guy just said {censored} it, sold all his {censored}, and moved to DC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members The Insomniac Posted August 18, 2005 Author Members Share Posted August 18, 2005 Band practice almost came to blows tonight but not for any reason I would have expected. It Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members The Insomniac Posted August 18, 2005 Author Members Share Posted August 18, 2005 My kid just told me to keep it down. That's to fu*kin' funny. In two days he moves back to the dorms. Edit - I guess I didn't go to bed. Maybe I'll fire myself for over-sleeping tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Perfessor Posted August 18, 2005 Members Share Posted August 18, 2005 Originally posted by L-1329 That does suck. Lately I have been learning that there are two kinds of bands- ones that want to make some money and ones that only want to play for fun once in a while and feel like rock stars for a night. The former get better and more dedicated players and play good shows, and the latter never get out of the basement. I am dying to get back into a band with some goals and commitment, and get out to some shows but the ones I've been in never seem to have the drive or ambition. The harder I pushed them the less they were interested, and it became an endless cycle of finding replacement players and starting over. I am done with that. My problem is that a good, working local band is going to need a much bigger time commitment and I have a problem there due to my work schedule. Players who join and agree to a band and it's goals need to stick to it, or they are misrepresenting themselves. They will always back out but not until the rest of the band's reputations take a hit with canceled shows etc. I have no time for those kind of games or players, but it sure seems hard to find the right ones. No band is better than putting up with that kind of situation. I believe it all depends on th type of music. I play with two others who get together around my funky work schedule and we can only do one weekend every three weeks, plus some weekdays. We don't play everyone of those weekends either. Because we're not learning covers but are playing jazz standards it's easy to get together once in a while to work on songs. There's a jazz jam in Akron every Wed. night wherein up to 5 or 6 people play at any one time, 35 show up, and you should hear 'em. Like they've been together for years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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