I've met the type of guitarist that drive drummers crazy but I've been lucky enough to play with very laid back personalities with a quiet passion for music and who have always been team players. Maybe the overbearing types don't gravitate to bands with women in them? Just guessing ...
wish that were the case but my wife is lead vocalist....
he puts the bipolar in "bipolar barbie". Seriously i dont know what to do with this guy. Let me tell you a little story, this may be a bit long winded and i might be totally unreasonable but here goes
when it comes to my band, I take things seriously, maybe more than I should.
Since I started the band I've had a plan and the first thing on that plan is to be better than the average local cover band, put on a show and not just stare at the floor and play covers. I want people to walk away and say "wow, that was a great show" which mean interacting with the audience and actually entertain them.
Now I'm not saying an all out kiss or alice cooper type theatrical production but keep people involved.
So the rest of the plan was/is to play popular, danceable music from a variety of genres. Mainly rock but also some new country/rock, swing, reggae and punk. I'm talkin the mainstream stuff here, swing (brian setzer, stray cats, voodoo daddy) punk (ramones) you get the idea. Also the songs we play cater to womens tastes, stuff they like to dance too.
Things have been going along pretty well with that plan in mind, but we needed a guitarist after getting rid of the last guy who was an alcoholic, never learned the material and thought practice was a place to bring his friends and party.
So after about 10 auditions we found one . he's a good musician but he makes me crazy. He's our age (mid 30's) but totally hyper and ADD, the guy noodles nonstop. Well be having practice and you cant hold a conversation between songs cause he wont stop screwin around with the guitar.
Now, we already had a list of songs to work on and they may not be the most exciting songs but they are popular and thats why they're on the list.
when i first talked to this guitarist on the phone I thought "wow,finally, this is the guy we've been looking for" he said "oh yeh, I can sing and I'll play pretty much anything" But now things seem to have changed.
when I run down the song list, he says "but why do we have to play that song? why not another song by that group?" everything is like a battle with him now. When I mention another song say Beastie Boys - Fight for your right. He says "Whos gonna sing it, thats like mostly all rap and i'm not doin rap and proceeds to do his hip hop impression"
I gave him our song list before he ever tried out, it's not like I'm throwing out this big surprise. He mentions songs he thinks we should do, Blue Oyster Cult - Burnin for you, Dire Straits - Sultans of swing and honestly I dont like either of those tunes and they really dont fit with our "Party Band" atmosphere.
So when I have an idea or something for the band I send an email to the guys and I sent one with a band business plan which the bassist really liked and the guitarist didnt really say anything but part of that plan said that said "**** is the originator of the band and the band leader however, playlist, gig and rehearsal schedules will be a democratic process, each band member will have a vote and majority rules."
So shortly after that at practice he is talking about a band he went to try out for as a bassist (he's an excellent bassist) but he really just wanted to try and pull their keyboard player for our band (I also wasnt cool with him pulling that) anyway he had asked a question to one of the band members and they said they didnt know, he would have to ask the bandleader since he runs the show. Apparently he had a big issue with this guy being the "band leader" and how that was just stupid and why does this guy have the final say.
Needless to say I took that personally, the reason I am the band leader is that I started the band, I put all the work into song lists, websites, myspace, facebook etc..the band has my name all over it, I've worked very hard on it and as such I am very picky about how things are handled.
So I do really stress that we need to be entertaining and that means movin around on stage and showmanship. Last practice we were workin on a cover of a cover, Bowling for Soup does a cover of Brittney Spears "Hit me Baby"
and we were working on that, all of a sudden this dude goes into headbangin overdrive, jumpin up and down and freakin out and when the song was done he screams "YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH BRITTNEY IS SOOOOOOOO METAL!!!!!!!"
so I'm just lookin at him like what was that all about and he says "hey you said we gotta move around more"
Here is the last email I sent before all of this went down:
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Hey Guys,
So heres some stuff I wanted to go over and get your thoughts on.
First of all, I'd really like to go down our song list and put everything we have right now to a vote.
Now as far as the band goes, You know when you have this idea in your head and you know exactly how you want it to go and you can pretty much see it in your mind?
Thats how it's been with the band. My vision is to have us play and really focus on entertaining the crowd, I mean not only by playing but visually, lots of interaction with the crowd, getting them really involved in the shows. theres too many s****y cover bands who just stand there and play, sometimes you have one where the singer might move around a little but for the most part the majority or bands around here are like watching paint dry. I dont know about you but I dont want us to be one of those bands
I think thats something we also have to work at along with learning the songs.I want people to see us and say WOW! that band was awesome! we gotta see them again!"
heres a list of things that I think we also need to keep in mind when it comes to gigs.
- stage presence, we need to just own the stage, move around on stage, look like we're having fun. people LISTEN to songs but they come to SEE a show
- interaction, keep the crowd involved, have em sing along, have some kind of contests like best air guitarist, wheel of WTF? (a wheel they can spin and win something, free drink, free shirt, etc) . loudest table, best chick dancer...just anything to keep people involved.
- The songs need to be upbeat, popular, danceable, aimed at chicks, which probably means stuff you really dont want to play but I'm pretty sure in no time we'll be at the point where we have to turn down gigs.
- tossing out free stuff, people love free stuff no matter what it is. Tshirts, Glow sticks, glow necklaces, beads, stickers,etc.
- Dress, we need to figure out out what to wear for gigs not just t-shirts and jeans. I guess thats going to really depend on the gig.
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I had to add this to my band business plan
"When discussing potential gigs with clients members should not quote a price until the gig has been discussed between all band members and everyone has come to an agreement. "
that had to be added because the guitarist said he was talking to some guy at work who was thinking about having us play at a party at his place and wanted to know how much we charge, the guitarist tells the guy we'll probably do it for free just for exposure....*facepalm*
Then the other week at practice we had a little situation. our bassist was asking questions to the guitarist and he couldnt hear the bassist so my wife steps up to the mic and starts repeating what the bassist is saying...she was doing it as a joke and the guitarist started bickering with her, in a joking manner.
the bassist,my wife and I were all laughing about it. So the guitarist says "well some bitch keeps talking and i cant hear you" still thinking he's kidding, my wife says "well this bitch has the mic so you're SOL". it was funny and the bassist and i were laughing. Well after practice we get a phone call from the guitarist apologizing for calling my wife a bitch. I was like WTF? he was serious when he said all that? my wife says "apparently he was"
So you tell me am I being overbearing and unreasonable?
before all of this I spoke to the bassist about maybe getting rid of the guitarist and his reaction was "I dont know what you're expecting, you really arent going to find any guitarist that wants to play that stuff, most only want to play rock and stuff with lots of guitar licks"
after I told the bassist that the guitarist was serious when he was saying all that stuff to my wife the bassist was pretty pissed and said "that is so out of line, he has no right to act like that and it pisses me off"
also, we now have a rhythm guitarist that we really like but how we ended up with him is that the lead guitarist had mentioned something about having another guitarist to fill in the gaps where the solos are. That was all fine, he also mentioned that he might know a guy but the guy is real hard to get ahold of. So thats the last we hear of it for a few weeks, suddenly one day the guitarist shows up with this new guy and suddenly he's in the band. it worked out because we all really like the new guitarist but the way it happened was not cool, at this point the lead guitarist had only been in the band a few weeks. I couldnt imagine being the new band member and just going out on my own and finding another band member without first really discussing it with the rest of the band