I have a few doozies ... not being called to play gigs with legends (like some) but tough for me
The Audition: I used to see this prog band regularly. The keys player used to live a couple of doors down from me and we'd been friends for years. He'd been trained since he was very young and a fantastic musician. I was shocked when he invited me to go to an audition because I knew they were much better players than me.
So I played it and I knew most of the songs from being a fan so that was cool, although I knew where the weak link was in each tune, just not as precise. The bassist was an eye opener - another classically trained guy - and he had the most fabulous sense of time that I never appreciated when in the audience. I felt like I was riding this big fat wave of silk - best bassist I've played with by a country mile.
They said thanks and that they'd had fun (and probably strangled my keys playing friend afterwards
The jam: Another time was more iffy. I'd been playing fill-ins for this multi-instrumentalist guy (mostly guitar) who was developing a stable of musos to work with. There was a bassist with that Jaco influence every fusion bassist had at the time. My friend was keen to impress him and bring him into the fold. We had this trio jam, running through various fusion standards (I was a much better player then than I am now) and it was going okay.
We had a break and I decided to have a doobie. The others passed it up. So we come back to play Cobham's
Red Baron, and I knew it well from playing along with the record heaps. All's going fine until the second unison riff after which I decided to ape BC's hero fill. Stuffed it up and it took a moment to get back together again.
Well! ... at the end of the jam after the bassist had gone home the guitarist
tore strips off me. He shouted, "I can't believe that you dropped that beat!" grumble yadda yadda. I did a suitably guilty blah blah ... "Ahh ... well ... oops ... sorry, it's a hard fill" (shoulda burst into tears in hindsight
... he never called me again. Bastard lol
The fill-in: The bassist from my first band called and asked if I could come and fill in. We'd been out of touch for years. He was playing guitar now and in serious company - a number of his mates played with a couple of major (ie. gold records on the wall) groups.
This time it was 80s rock and they were workshopping this one song. The bassist had a sound like - you guessed it - Jaco
I'm miles out of my league again. So ... traumatised after my previous experience I made the decision to play it dead straight - no jiggery pokery.
So I patiently lay down the pavement, rendition after rendition. The bassist is doing all sorts of flash stuff and, instead of trying to stay with him (big temptation) I just stayed boring and solid. Meanwhile the main songwriters had screaming matches about whether the B flat minor was wimpy or whatever *rolls eyes*.
At the end of the session the bassist told me how much he liked the way I played and that we ought to get together and play again sometime. I saw this as akin to being told you're a great conversationalist by someone who's talked my ears off for an hour while I smiled and nodded.
I said "Uh yeah" and escaped. I MUCH prefer playing with peers - it's less traumatic
// end trip down memory lane //