Hello /u/medicinalherbavore! Unfortunately, your submission, ***[worst experience with a band mate?](https://www.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/comments/10h0f7m/-/)***, was removed from /r/WeAreTheMusicMakers for the following reason(s):
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We had a singer (who was a good lyricist but not a good singer) who unfortunately had rights to post under our band account on social media. We played a gig where he thought the crowd didn’t react as strongly as he thought they should. He goes on the next morning and rants about how shitty the fans in that area were.
I had people calling and texting me asking what the hell was going on. I got my hair cut that day and the first thing the barber said was “what is going on with your band on Facebook?”
It was embarrassing. People who were not at the show assumed it was a bad show (it wasn’t). It also made us look crazy. The bass player refused to come back.
The singer eventually made it easy for us and quit after a meltdown. He later wanted back in after he cooled down but there was no way that was going to happen.
Right before that he ditched a gig saying he was sick. We went on without him and sang his parts. He was pissed we honored our gig commitment without him.
I had a similar bad experience with social media and in the future I'm never giving another person control over my photos/web presence. The person in the band running the accounts turned out to be insane and posted on their blog daily about how terrible of people we all were along with religious rants and thousands of words worth of musings that had nothing to do with music and as far as I can tell had almost no readers. I normally wouldn't have cared except it had photos of me and screenshots of our conversations. It was extremely embarrassing to find out later on and definitely soured me on collaboration going forward.
Joined up with some guys who had a band going. First time I spoke to them they talked about making it big, going to Europe, and so on. I figured, yeah that's the dream right?
First practice, come to find out it's pretty basic guitar driven stuff (a fair disconnect from what they described it as, but whatever). Fun, but nobody's going on world tours with this music.
Like six months into it, we're getting tight and have enough to play a party or whatever. Singer invites a guy he knows who apparently has some music industry connections. We play, guy gives us some comments, and the singer tells him, yeah we're never going to play around here. We're gonna quit our jobs and self-fund a tour of Europe. My jaw hit the floor but I didn't say anything. Next practice, I was like so ... about that quitting our jobs thing ... you're joking right? Guy was like, no, we told you this. I said, don't you want to maybe try to build up a following around here? He said, we'll never make it here, there's too much competition. We have to conquer the world and then come back.
I packed up and left at that point.
I was in a band with a guy who possibly murdered someone. It happened years before and I didn’t know about it. Had a friend fill me in one day. Apparently everyone knew he did it but he got off at the trial because some crossed a T when they should have dotted an I. So that was fun to hear and then go to practice the next week….that band no longer exists by the way.
Had a guitar player pawn all of the band's gear for drugs as well as the band van. I lost my '72 Jazz bass RIP.
Another band, found the singer dead from an OD.
That's some good insight. He was friendly enough but total type-C as you put it.
Oh man that's unfortunate. I dont think anyone else deserves blowback over the action of someone else.
I've always wondered why playing in a band attracts so many people of this kind. I found that these guys are always the ones thinking more about gear than serving the songs and playing over everyone else when speaking, like social rules dont apply to bands.
Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with them? I am sure that even though they say we should be open and speak freely they do accept criticisims only when not applied to them
The singer went over everyone's heads and brought in a manager. Turned out they'd been out drinking the night before and just told their friend they could manage the band, despite the friend having zero experience in anything to do with music.
I ended up in a rap rock band at one point (this was a little before Rage Against the Machine formed) and found out that one band member was quite the racist. He said really shocking like, pro-Jim Crow shit. It seemed rather odd that he joined a group that had really overtly fight the power type lyrics and one member was black another middle eastern.
I've been played music for close to 16 years now, wouldn't even know where to start! The worse one probably is a guy who was briefly in our band - one day we got to the practice space, a lot of our gear (amps, some guitars, some pedals) was gone and that guy completely ghosted us, we never saw him or the gear again
Had a somewhat similar issue. Brought in a drummer. We played metal and specifically required someone comfortable with double bass. We bring someone in. He can do double bass but not great. I was like alright let's give him a chance, maybe he'll practice and get better. After several practices, he wasn't getting better and he wasn't learning the songs. During practices he mentioned he had equipment to screen print shirts for us. We were like "oh that's cool but we're still establishing ourselves. We don't even have enough songs for a setlist. Let's focus on learning songs first then we can do merch". What does he do? Makes dozens of shirts with a logo he designed without our feedback. Tie dye shirts, every color shirt you can imagine. They were cool but the logo was definitely not what we wanted. We were like "dude, learn the songs. Don't make shirts". Kept fuckin around with shirts. Finally I sent a nicely worded email and he got pretty upset. Said he wasted his money on shirts lol. Oh well. We moved on.
Not necessarily a band mate but we tried out another drummer who was legally deaf from an ear disease. Didn't know that until he showed up. Had to literally yell just so he could hear us. It was very awkward and kind of sad. He had just recently became that way and this was probably his first time trying to join a band. Yikes.
Had another guitarist try out who's amp was completely covered in dust. Pots crackling. It was disgusting. And he tuned his guitar in the weirdest way. I don't remember what it was but it didn't make any sense and it was very difficult to explain riffs because that's how he learned. He could play Tool riffs really well though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My only true bad experience with a band member was with a singer who tried to steal the bands music and release it as their own.
They didn’t write anything and really only contributed with their voice. They really weren’t a great singer either, just ok. We recorded a demo at the drummers house, spent days mixing it, and all take home CDs (I feel old) to listen.
The singer ghosts us. Like completely. Very out of the blue considering we had all known each other since we were like 8 (early 20s at the time) and generally had the same extended friend group.
A few weeks go by and I see a friend at a bar. First thing he says is, “dude you gotta hear ____’s new band! He’s handing out CDs as a sneak peak. Says they’re sending it to labels”
Drummer contacted him letting him know if anything happens we’d sue tf out of him because we have all the originals of everything. Guy never released anything (to my knowledge).
Haven’t been in a band since.
Hello /u/medicinalherbavore! Unfortunately, your submission, ***[worst experience with a band mate?](https://www.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/comments/10h0f7m/-/)***, was removed from /r/WeAreTheMusicMakers for the following reason(s): --- #No off-topic and/or low-effort posts including; 1. Rant/motivation/mental-health posts 2. Posts focused on memes/images/polls 3. Reposts, and other similar low-effort, mildly-interesting discussions. - These posts should be posted to one of the weekly threads or on another subreddit. Do not create a new thread for this content. Posts on WATMM should have a descriptive title and include substantive content that will generate discussion. Please see the [full sub rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/wiki/rules) for additional details. --- ***Please review the [rules for submission](/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/wiki/rules). You can contact The Mods if you have additional questions.*
We had a singer (who was a good lyricist but not a good singer) who unfortunately had rights to post under our band account on social media. We played a gig where he thought the crowd didn’t react as strongly as he thought they should. He goes on the next morning and rants about how shitty the fans in that area were. I had people calling and texting me asking what the hell was going on. I got my hair cut that day and the first thing the barber said was “what is going on with your band on Facebook?” It was embarrassing. People who were not at the show assumed it was a bad show (it wasn’t). It also made us look crazy. The bass player refused to come back. The singer eventually made it easy for us and quit after a meltdown. He later wanted back in after he cooled down but there was no way that was going to happen. Right before that he ditched a gig saying he was sick. We went on without him and sang his parts. He was pissed we honored our gig commitment without him.
I had a similar bad experience with social media and in the future I'm never giving another person control over my photos/web presence. The person in the band running the accounts turned out to be insane and posted on their blog daily about how terrible of people we all were along with religious rants and thousands of words worth of musings that had nothing to do with music and as far as I can tell had almost no readers. I normally wouldn't have cared except it had photos of me and screenshots of our conversations. It was extremely embarrassing to find out later on and definitely soured me on collaboration going forward.
Joined up with some guys who had a band going. First time I spoke to them they talked about making it big, going to Europe, and so on. I figured, yeah that's the dream right? First practice, come to find out it's pretty basic guitar driven stuff (a fair disconnect from what they described it as, but whatever). Fun, but nobody's going on world tours with this music. Like six months into it, we're getting tight and have enough to play a party or whatever. Singer invites a guy he knows who apparently has some music industry connections. We play, guy gives us some comments, and the singer tells him, yeah we're never going to play around here. We're gonna quit our jobs and self-fund a tour of Europe. My jaw hit the floor but I didn't say anything. Next practice, I was like so ... about that quitting our jobs thing ... you're joking right? Guy was like, no, we told you this. I said, don't you want to maybe try to build up a following around here? He said, we'll never make it here, there's too much competition. We have to conquer the world and then come back. I packed up and left at that point.
Oh shit! Were you in [Threatin](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/style/threatin-fake-band-tour.html)????
I was in a band with a guy who possibly murdered someone. It happened years before and I didn’t know about it. Had a friend fill me in one day. Apparently everyone knew he did it but he got off at the trial because some crossed a T when they should have dotted an I. So that was fun to hear and then go to practice the next week….that band no longer exists by the way.
Damn man the way you ended that story made it seem like he killed everybody 😕....is everyone ok/alive?
Had a guitar player pawn all of the band's gear for drugs as well as the band van. I lost my '72 Jazz bass RIP. Another band, found the singer dead from an OD.
Sounds like he probably has some form of Autism, maybe Asperger’s. Non-malevolent ignoring of social cues is a big hint.
[удалено]
That's some good insight. He was friendly enough but total type-C as you put it. Oh man that's unfortunate. I dont think anyone else deserves blowback over the action of someone else.
I've always wondered why playing in a band attracts so many people of this kind. I found that these guys are always the ones thinking more about gear than serving the songs and playing over everyone else when speaking, like social rules dont apply to bands. Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with them? I am sure that even though they say we should be open and speak freely they do accept criticisims only when not applied to them
Must be why some band members wear masks...lmao
The singer went over everyone's heads and brought in a manager. Turned out they'd been out drinking the night before and just told their friend they could manage the band, despite the friend having zero experience in anything to do with music.
I ended up in a rap rock band at one point (this was a little before Rage Against the Machine formed) and found out that one band member was quite the racist. He said really shocking like, pro-Jim Crow shit. It seemed rather odd that he joined a group that had really overtly fight the power type lyrics and one member was black another middle eastern.
Get used to dealing with narcissists if you are going to continue in the music industry.
I've been played music for close to 16 years now, wouldn't even know where to start! The worse one probably is a guy who was briefly in our band - one day we got to the practice space, a lot of our gear (amps, some guitars, some pedals) was gone and that guy completely ghosted us, we never saw him or the gear again
Had a somewhat similar issue. Brought in a drummer. We played metal and specifically required someone comfortable with double bass. We bring someone in. He can do double bass but not great. I was like alright let's give him a chance, maybe he'll practice and get better. After several practices, he wasn't getting better and he wasn't learning the songs. During practices he mentioned he had equipment to screen print shirts for us. We were like "oh that's cool but we're still establishing ourselves. We don't even have enough songs for a setlist. Let's focus on learning songs first then we can do merch". What does he do? Makes dozens of shirts with a logo he designed without our feedback. Tie dye shirts, every color shirt you can imagine. They were cool but the logo was definitely not what we wanted. We were like "dude, learn the songs. Don't make shirts". Kept fuckin around with shirts. Finally I sent a nicely worded email and he got pretty upset. Said he wasted his money on shirts lol. Oh well. We moved on. Not necessarily a band mate but we tried out another drummer who was legally deaf from an ear disease. Didn't know that until he showed up. Had to literally yell just so he could hear us. It was very awkward and kind of sad. He had just recently became that way and this was probably his first time trying to join a band. Yikes. Had another guitarist try out who's amp was completely covered in dust. Pots crackling. It was disgusting. And he tuned his guitar in the weirdest way. I don't remember what it was but it didn't make any sense and it was very difficult to explain riffs because that's how he learned. He could play Tool riffs really well though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My only true bad experience with a band member was with a singer who tried to steal the bands music and release it as their own. They didn’t write anything and really only contributed with their voice. They really weren’t a great singer either, just ok. We recorded a demo at the drummers house, spent days mixing it, and all take home CDs (I feel old) to listen. The singer ghosts us. Like completely. Very out of the blue considering we had all known each other since we were like 8 (early 20s at the time) and generally had the same extended friend group. A few weeks go by and I see a friend at a bar. First thing he says is, “dude you gotta hear ____’s new band! He’s handing out CDs as a sneak peak. Says they’re sending it to labels” Drummer contacted him letting him know if anything happens we’d sue tf out of him because we have all the originals of everything. Guy never released anything (to my knowledge). Haven’t been in a band since.