Canning a guitar player

KBadd

Silver Member
This is the short version.

I canned our bass player 20 years ago. You ever can a guitar player? I wanna hear the stories!!!
 
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I canned a guitar player once. Small cube sized portions in brine. Tasted good on melba toast.

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Twice.

First time, my then band was playing a showcase, and Sony records was in the audience.
Our then guitar player was an amazing soloist. However, he went behind our backs and got stoned in the bathroom right before we went on. Then on stage, he had trouble working his amp because he was too stoned to remember how his amp worked. Once he got that going, he then decided to veer off the well rehearsed songs and solo over just about everything. Ad given it was the 90s and not the 80's anymore, that didn't go over so well.

We got a letter form Sony "we like the band but hate the Eddie Van Halen wanna-be"

And that was it. He was gone. But our then "manager" did the dirty business. And of course, Sony never came back to see our new "now with less shredding" line up.

In another band, I had asked a buddy who I knew was into similar stuff as ours to come on over and add his touch of guitar skill to our songs. He showed up, he was cool, but it just didn't gel. And then he made the comment that maybe we needed to write better songs. Doh! So after two such rehearsals, I said thanks, but no thanks, this isn't working.
 
KBadd, this begs the question of the hows and whys of your canning of your guitarist.

We had a guitarist can himself after he had a few "episodes". Lovely guy, wonderful player, but had the stability of jelly.
 
I sense a trend here......

Haha we chew 'em up and spit 'em out.

It's Abe's fault for talking about food. I've been trying to reduce my calories lately and his comment must have gotten me thinking about eating ... and now the bugger's trying to push a Gene sandwich on us!

Abe, fresh guitarists shred too much. The canning process will usually beat the Vitamin W(ank) out of them, which we all know is toxic in large quantities ...
 
Once canned a metalhead who thought it'd be kewl to play distorted 80's rock in a backyard blues BBQ setting.........
 
Well, you could always do with some chlorine in the Gene pool. Especially with guitarists.
 
Never canned a guitar player, canned a singer once, that was fun
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We were having trouble with our singer last week (and for many months prior) so as the last one in the band still on speaking terms with him, I called him as suggested that he quit since getting fired was already inevitable. I also told him that he should consider it quickly before one of the other band members (one in particular who both of us have had lots of trouble with) pulls the trigger granting himself forever bragging rights as the guy who fired him.

Singer was on facebook typing his resignation before we got off the phone.
 
i fired our previous guitar player about a month ago. that guy was such a d-bag! he came into the band claiming to be a "pro" who knew how to play every song ever written. the fact was he could barely play anything. he could improvise ok, but he didn't really know any of the songs he claimed to know. he would always say things like "if the audience is having fun and dancing then who cares if we know the songs or not?" i didn't buy that excuse. he would never practice anything on his own and he was always trying to get out of regular scheduled band practice. he felt that as a "pro" if he wasn't getting paid then he wasn't going to do any work. just before one of our practices about a month ago he told me he wasn't coming to practice that night because we weren't gigging enough to make it worth his while. i said "fine. don't come to practice. in fact, don't ever come to practice again." he got real mad, and called me a bunch of poo poo words but i don't care. we replaced him with a much better guitarist who is a good friend of mine and things have never been better!
 
he would never practice anything on his own and he was always trying to get out of regular scheduled band practice. he felt that as a "pro" if he wasn't getting paid then he wasn't going to do any work. just before one of our practices about a month ago he told me he wasn't coming to practice that night because we weren't gigging enough to make it worth his while.

Oh dear, a "pro" who hardly plays and when he does, he's sloppy. The poor, deluded child.

I'd hate to be in his head when he finally meets reality. He sounds like a midlife crisis waiting to happen ... good move to get off the tracks before the train crash.
 
I've been pretty lucky with getting line-ups to gel. I've never been in a situation where a guitarist was fired. Had a few leave becuase it wasn't working out, but never had to sack anyone.

On the flip side though, I have canned myself from a band because the guitarist was a prick. Gave it 4 weeks to see if I was missing something about this guy.....I wasn't. I was right, he was one of life's true arseholes. So the bass player and I bailed.......after the bass player belted him and broke his nose.......Gold!!
 
Oh dear, a "pro" who hardly plays and when he does, he's sloppy. The poor, deluded child.

I'd hate to be in his head when he finally meets reality. He sounds like a midlife crisis waiting to happen ... good move to get off the tracks before the train crash.

i feel sorry for his girlfriend. he doesn't have a job other than playing, but he isn't very good so he makes very little money. he's basically living off her.

to give you an idea of how bad he is, he introduced the aerosmith song "dream on" to the band telling us that was something he's played since he was a kid. he couldn't play it! he'd constantly screw up the intro, as well as the guitar interlude later in the song. you'd think that'd bother him and that he'd want to practice until he could play it. nope! he never worked on it and screwed it up badly at all gigs we played with him. it was such a relief to get rid of him!
 
i feel sorry for his girlfriend. he doesn't have a job other than playing, but he isn't very good so he makes very little money. he's basically living off her.

to give you an idea of how bad he is, he introduced the aerosmith song "dream on" to the band telling us that was something he's played since he was a kid. he couldn't play it! he'd constantly screw up the intro, as well as the guitar interlude later in the song. you'd think that'd bother him and that he'd want to practice until he could play it. nope! he never worked on it and screwed it up badly at all gigs we played with him. it was such a relief to get rid of him!

Tragic. One day that guy is going to wake up and realise that he's been a clown. Poor bastard. Worse still, one day his g/f will really see him for what he is (a guy who's wasting his and her life) and then he'll be in deep doo-doo lol

Cest la vie.

Can't say I'm a fan of the schadenfreude in this thread, although I can understand it when someone's been a jerk.

Never sacked a band member before but in the 80s we should have picked up a new singer (why just can guitarists?).

People would often say after gigs how good and tight the band was but they'd never talk about the singer. He'd turn up late for everything and would sweet-talk everyone and provide free smoke to keep us from throttling him. We were fools to keep him on because he was always dragging the chain, but we were young ...

To be really frank, if the guitarist and bassist picked up a good new singer and drummer they could have done plenty; they were more precise players than I ever was. Bizarrely, when I left they had the chance to upgrade and somehow ended up with a sloppy overplayer who made me sound like Steve Gadd lol. Go figure. They broke up soon afterwards.
 
I had the cream of the crop I was playing with a few years back. The guy was at least 5-6 years older than all of us, but yet acted as if he was still in middleschool. He would constantly come up with stupid excuses of why he couldn't make practice. Things like:

"My wiper blades don't work good enough to drive in the rain."

And my all time favorite..

"I don't have enough gas or money to put gas in my car to make it. My buddy and I drove 2 hours to another city last night to buy a new release video game...sorry."

And there's plenty of more of those. Anywho, after our first show he had another great excuse for missing the next practice. I had finally had enough and told him that we needed to take a little bit of a break until he could get his priorities straight. He said that was fine and that he could use a couple of weeks off. After that very converstaion he called the rest of the band members and told them I fired him. After hearing this, I confronted him and said he could come by and get his stuff and we were done. Instead of manning up and coming by when I was home, he waited until I was at work and broke in my house to get his stuff! I haven't seen him since that day...but I sure hope I do sometime in the future....
 
i have never understood these people who hate coming to band practice. to me, band practice is fun and is one of the main high points of my week! i've always loved playing, and it's hard for me to understand musicians who don't seem to enjoy it. oddly enough, some of these practice haters are really good. did they used to love it and now they hate it? did someone stand over them with a gun and force them to practice when they were young? what happened to them?
 
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