What are some ridiculous experiences you had with people in your musical career/hobby/business etc. I feel as though there could be a lot. Feel free to vent

I used to be in a small indie band, I played bass and expected to be the rule #2 (glenn fricker fans will know this) in the band at the time.... I was wrong

The guitar player could not tune to save his life and the other one I met once despite the number of practice sessions

His argument for not tuning to drop d and staying in e standard (although I use the term tuned loosely) was "I'm not playing seriously rn so I don't think I should have to tune"

Bad logic but I decided to let it slide. Practicing tho became a drag. When I basically decide to quit, he then tries to be like "He wasn't really that good, he didn't have a big focus and would eat up practice time really quickly" behind my back.

And to top it all off, he then a few months later told me his band broke up and he is starting his rapping career! Took the advantage to sell a beat to him but I still look back at it and laugh

 

@DJ_Volkihar Welcome to the Forum. Great idea for a thread, you have had.
My worst experience was back in the '80s. I was working for Roland's D & R and plus had a part-time job for Polydor's A&R. Those 2 jobs made it possible for me to meet up with lots of movers and shakers in the industry.
One day walking home from work I heard, on a street corner, a guy singing with a friend who was accompanying him on the acoustic guitar. I was so impressed with his performance that I initially decided to bring them over to Polydor... but greed got the best of me. I thought to myself if I handle the duo to Polydor what do I get? A promotion? On the other hand, if I were to become the manager and producer I would be needing a money counting machine, and a cart for all the awards I would be collecting. I was so greedy, and naive, that I didn't even hire an attorney. Why pay a shark? I Xeroxed one of the contracts from Polydor and added my name and the artists' as the parties. After going over to their apartment, and have them signed the contract we were rolling.

Through my contacts within the industry, I arranged to have the album recorded, mixed and mastered in one of New York City's best recording studios at the time, utilizing top engineers, musicians, arrangers. All of it was to be done "on spec."

After 8 months of composing, recording, mixing, mastering, and a bill for $ 237K, I was ready to shop my artists, and become rich and famous. The album got a bidding war going between the 3 biggest record labels at the time. When it was over my artists were going to become part of the Warner Brothers family with a multi-year, super lucrative contract. The world was mine...and then the shit hit the fan.

My artists decided to get greedy themselves. They hired one of the best entertainment lawyers in the country and claimed that the contract they had with me was not enforceable. Firstly, they claimed they did not understand what they signed because they could not read English. Secondly, they claimed that the contract was signed under duress. Finally, they claimed that I was "double-dipping".

As a result of our compounded greed, the record contract with WB never materialized. The artists were blacklisted by the industry. Yours truly was left with a $237 k bill and ridding the filthy NYC subways. I should have known that greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough.

Edit: I am editing this to state the obvious: If you are a producer, before entering negotiations with an artist make sure to employ the services of an entertainment lawyer. If given an opportunity, 99% of the artist you help will try to screw you over. After 45 years of dealing with artists, my view of them has not changed one bit. Moreover, new artists are worst than established ones. Again, greed is a fat demon with a small mouth, and whatever you feed it is never enough.

 

Last edited: May 11, 2021

about 10 years ago i was going with a friend of mine to a gig of the band he was in, when we arrived at the venue, which seemed to be a youth center type of place, the first thing we noticed was a guy screaming on the phone that the cd-players werent connected to the mixer and that he had no idea how to connect them (front of house mixer, the cd-players were for before and after the band, i think the guy had never been a soundtech before and was just instructed on how the mixer worked). i took a look at the mixer and thought 'ok easy enough' so i walk back to the guy who was still going nuts on the phone and try to get his attention.

me: hey dude i can...
stressed out sound guy: SHUT THE FUCK UP I'M ON THE PHONE!

i looked at my friend and his bandmembers and without saying anything they basically asked me to connect the shit up caus time's a wasting and they needed to soundcheck (the multicable was connected) so i go to the mixer and start connecting the cd-players on 2 unused stereo channels.

me: hey dude!
stressed out sound guy: I'M ON THE FUCKING PHONE!

...ok fuck it, i grabbed a CD, threw it in the player and just pressed play and slowly turned the music up.

stressed out sound guy: RABBLERABBLERABBLERA...bble... oh it's working now, someone connected them the right way (he didnt know the difference between normal line in's and phono in's)
me: yeah you were to busy screaming and stressing out so i thought i'd just connect them
band: laughs

from that moment they payed me to come along to every gig just to troubleshoot if anything was wrong. i spend the rest of the gig standing next to the sound'tech' guiding him and adjusting the sound.

me: dude turn the bass up
significantly less stressed out 'soundtech': *turns the bass up 1db*
me: dude more
significantly less stressed out 'soundtech': *turns the bass up a little bit more*
me: dude...
significantly less stressed out 'soundtech': yeah but isnt that too loud and too much bass (he was a metalhead and i think they showed him how to during a metalband, this was an electro-industrial-neofolk band)
me: nope it needs to be loud and you gotta feel that bass
significantly less stressed out 'soundtech': *finally starts to turn the bass way up* holy shit the whole booth is vibrating (and starts smiling)
me: that's what we want, now leave that knob alone.

band satisfied, crowd satisfied, soundtech blown away. he finally got it

 

In the early 2000's as a naive Midwestern dude who just arrived in LA and looking to get into any production work I was recording a bunch of rappers in my tiny efficiency. The booth and sound was clean so they were happy. I learned that some were serious thugs after a session when a ton of people kept pulling in and started talking about there thuggery business. I was already nervous when the loudest one pulled out a giant 44mag and set on my coffee table. I heard the rapper I was recording was a minion of a well known artist at the time (name withheld) but turns out they were just in the same gang. Luckily I didn't get my gear snatched but that was the last recording session at that apartment.

 

@KungPaoFist I would had gone back to the Midwest, leaving all my gear behind.

 

These are already all amazing! So glad I joined this forum haha

I have another from my college days.

I used to work as a trip hop/chillout dj and an integral part of my set was instead of just playing music I'd make beats on the fly using nothing but two cdjs, an sk 5 and an sk 1. So one days one of the knuckleheads decides to say "Hey can I join you?" and me being stupid said yes. He then proceeds to replace my samples which I plan on using to scratch and mix to make smooth jazzy beats with a PLAYLIST of j dilla beats. WITHOUT TELLING ME, so I open up my gear realize my samples are gone ask what's going on and he says "oh yeah I swapped your playlist out, i think it's much cooler this way" thankfully I had a backup plan which was to use the sk 5 and 1 with a loop pedal to make them that way but that guy almost ruined a full set.

 

One day I mixed a gig for a Rock band and the bassist came to me and seemed to be interested in the order of instruments I had on the console. So I explained him my setup when he suddenly grabbed the knob for the 60Hz band of the high tom and turned it fully right with the words 'You need to turn this up'.
I spared him and me the question which frequency I should use for the three lower toms then, just waited until he was gone and turned the 60Hz fully left again. Beyond words.
BTW, nobody complained about a missing low end in the high tom.

 

I have never once heard about a good session with a non-professional rapper.

 

You're the smart one, this captain was going down with the ship

 

i have several more ludicrous stories, this one is from when i had to play in a hippy art village in an abandoned church, brilliant location but not so brilliant...umm i dont want to call him a soundtech cause... well ummm...

so i arrived there around 8pm with the same guy from my previous story, who was still my vj back then, and basically getting a table for the gear was already difficult. so after a while we finally get a table and we start building up our stuff, when finished i ask the soundhippy how we're gonna connect. i dont really remember what he said but he had to look for a cable in the most obscure corners of the church but doesnt find anything, i had a few RCA-cables with me but they're not long enough to even reach the dj-booth which was on the side of the stage, i ended up calling a friend of mine who was coming as well and had to ask him for a rca to rca connector, he asks why and i explain and he laughs and thankfully he doesnt mind but he wouldnt be there before opening, so much for the soundcheck. round 11pm he arrived, gave me the connector and i was finally able to connect to the dj-mixer which was connected to the FoH mixer where the soundhippy was looking if the DJ's werent going to loud or something... honestly i still dont know what he was doing there apart from trying to be in charge.

(slight rewind in the story) the DJ's that had to dj at the beginning of the night had never heard me live before and were like ok so we'll start a bit easy and not to hard so you guys dont fall in a void when you start (basically saying that my stuff cant match the stuff of the established bands in the industrial scene), me thinking to myself 'right...' i say sure and they start with some wave/industrial stuff.

so back to when we were finally connected, we had to start at 11:30pm. so the dj's stop and i turn on the intro, which was followed by 140BPM industrialtechno with a massive bass. i didnt know jaws could drop that low, the 2 dj's were simple blown away, which was cool. but this is were it turned bad.

the soundhippy, for some reason, thought it would be cool if he started to pretend to be DJ tiesto (or something, not to dis tiesto) and to cut the bass every now and then, sort of in sync with the music but fuck him it's my music and my gig, ok basically every 30 secs orso. after about 10 mins of him doing and me getting more and more annoyed and him only paying attention to that knob i signal one of the dj and tell him to ask the soundhippy to either quit fucking around or i'm gonna quit, i was ready to just stop the music midsong and fuck that hippy up, thankfully this guy can be very convincing and finally soundhippy turns the bass about as far up as possible and leaves it there for the remainder of the gig. that church was shaking on it's foundation, crowd was happy, i was happy. after the show i heard from someone that it was so loud and the bass so hard that it was impossible to roll a joint inside, it kept moving around caus of the bass. i have never ever had a soundtech doing something like that, hence why i dont want to call him a soundtech, caus he wasnt.

 

Dead pirates tell no tale

 

I have played with some really great musicians in my time, but the day that I jammed with Delmar Brown and Jaco Pastorius was TOTALLY ridiculous. The crazy thing was that I wasn't nervous. I was playing my friend's 60's cream Telecaster. Jaco started playing this slow, beautiful groove and Delmar started playing chords that were not in any lexicon. I started by playing octaves, and then listening to where Jaco was going became completely unconscious of everything else. Delmar created an alien three dimensional space and Jaco was the air. For the next 20 minutes we jammed and I never ever played any better in my life.