Over the years I’ve run into several types of musicians. Basically, you can lump them into two categories: musicians I’d work with again and musicians I hope get hit by a car. Here are some of the real musicians I’ve encountered in my life and what makes them intolerable to be around.
1) The Lazy-Ass Nobody Who Expects Everyone To Do The Work
Several years ago I was a hired gun in a band: I wasn’t in the band, I didn’t want to be in the band, I didn’t want to write songs for them, I was just around to play keyboards and do backing vocals. I didn’t want to get mixed up in any of the band drama. I had my own thing going on and I thought I’d be a nice guy, help this band out a bit, and pitch in with what they needed out of a keyboardist.
However, there was this one guy in the band that was so god damn annoying I had to have it out with him one day. I won’t get into how he would bitch and complain about something within his control to change during every show, yet do nothing to change it. I won’t get into how he would insist on mastering the albums even when a better person was available to do it for free. I’m not even going to get into how I was loading my gear into the studio space and how he was being an insufferable prick about me wanting to borrow a mic stand to run in-ear monitors. Instead, I’ll just regale you about our conversation during a break at practice.
So we’re outside and we start arguing about the purpose of playing live and how to get more people to come to your shows. It is my belief that the purpose of playing live is to build your fan base. You build a fan base because you want to get more people coming to your shows. You open for bigger bands to try and win over their audience. The more people that come to your shows the more viable you are as a band to get booked in larger venues. The more people that come to your shows means the more money you can pocket as a band. You make more money and you can make more merchandise. You sell more merchandise and you can make more money. You make more money and you can improve your gear or buy some studio time.
It makes no sense to play the same show, at the same venue, with the same opening band, to the same people. You’re not winning any new fans, you’re just having a public rehearsal with the possibility of getting gas money.
It’s all about getting as many people interested in your band as possible. So how do you do that?
Well, there are a lot of ways. I was trying to tell him that their band needed to have a sign-up sheet at the door that fans could leave their email address information so the band can get in touch with them for upcoming shows. Not just their email address but their mailing address. No one wants to get spam emails but it’s pretty cool to actually get snail mail from a band with a little postcard informing them of an upcoming show. You can put it on your fridge – it makes a bigger impact. Also, the band needed a working website. The band needed to put up more flyers for shows a week before the show goes on. The band needed to have a person that would go out and actually market them and get the name out.
He immediately said he wasn’t going to do any of that. I said that he lived in a certain city so he should book shows for that city. He didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to do anything. He felt that the band would just naturally find an audience and that the guitarist or that I should take care of all this stuff because we knew what we were talking about and how to do it.
This guy is the typical lazy-ass do-nothing that expects everyone else to do the work so they can just show up to gigs, play the songs, and look good on stage. This is the type of guy that is going to go NOWHERE in music. He expects things to happen for him and he justifies this belief with zero logic. He’s content on riding coat-tails while doing none of the work, however, accepting the notoriety once recognition comes around the corner.
After this conversation I realized I was wasting my time with him and the band. I was done with them. I was done being a nice guy that was going to pitch in and help out some people I thought were cool. I was living off the Randy Pausch edict that you should help enable your friends of their dreams. Well, while that may be true and a good life lesson to go by, you shouldn’t waste your time and energy on people that don’t want to be helped and you shouldn’t waste your time and energy on people that feel their entitled to your help.
2) The Diva
I encountered The Diva once while working with an ex-American Idol contestant. He had a sickening sense of entitlement that gave him the impression that he could do whatever he wanted no matter how adversely it affected the people around him. Let’s be clear, I think you should be able to do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t affect the other people around you.
The Diva would show up to soundcheck, strap his wireless microphone on, and then go try and souncheck while in the bathroom or the dressing room. Yes, he would actually mic-up and then wander off stage to somewhere else and sing to the music that the band was playing on stage. He was no where to be seen. And he didn’t know that because he was so far away his wireless was not only losing its connection but it was creating a latency in signal. So we’re playing the song and we hear him singing but it’s way off time. Plus, since he wasn’t around to hear himself on stage he’d later complain about not being able to hear himself well on stage. I wonder why?
The Diva wouldn’t learn the lyrics to the songs because he said he didn’t have enough time. So instead of going to his hotel room to practice and memorize his lines he went about his daily life as if he were on vacation. His solution: lip-synching.
Yes, take the vocal track from the previous singer, play that live, and lip-synch to it. That’s a professional thing musicians do, right?
The Diva thinks the world spins around him because he’s the singer and the most important part of the show. It doesn’t matter if there are other singers in the band, other musicians, or other performers, The Diva thinks that everyone paid admission just to see him.
So The Diva started standing in front of me when it came to be my time to sing lead. I’m singing lead on this one song and this gyrating bag-of-shit starts dancing in front of me – completely unaware that he was blocking me. I completely give him the benefit of the doubt in that he wasn’t doing this to be malicious. That’s what makes The Diva so annoying though. You can deal with an intentional asshole, it’s the oblivious assholes that are so tedious to deal with. The Diva has his head so far up his own ass that he’s not even aware of how his antics affect other people.
So I approached him after the show and told him that if he stands in front of me again I’m going to start taking it personally and handle it personally.
Sometimes you have to bitch slap someone back down to Earth. This worked in two ways: one, he never stood in front of me again; two, he was too afraid of me to stay in the dressing room with me – instead, he’d get dressed over by the stage manager.
The Diva was a cunt and he’ll never get booked with that company again. I hope the worst things happen to him and he ends up never working in music again. I hope that he can only find employment at Hardees but I’m sure he’ll end up abusing old people as an orderly in some retirement home.
3) The guy that sits on his hands waiting for good things to come his way
“I thought we’d record some stuff then someone would discover us and then they’d pay for us to go into a real studio and take care of all that for us.”
That’s called watching-too-many-movies. This is what happens when you’ve seen too many movies about Stars being discovered, whisked out of obscurity, and made famous by being at the right place at the right time. This is also the result of watching too much American Idol and thinking that the way to be famous is by showing up at a TV taping and getting through to the next round.
Look, I’m not saying that it’s not possible to go about things this way, I’m just saying it’s extremely unlikely. If you think that your metal band is going to have their demo CD discovered because you gave your disc to Jizzy Pearl and he, in turn, gives it to his manager who, in turn, gives it to the label A&R guy who, in turn, ends up calling you up to say that you’re about to be famous, then good luck to you and best wishes in your deranged assessment of how life really works. The way it really works is you do the very best you can at recording your material to sound the best it can. Then you take that material and work your butt off to get it into as many ears as possible – a discussion to long to be brought up here. If you want something in life you have to come up with a logical set of steps to get there. With that in mind, you have to have a product that will back up the steps you take. You can’t come up with a logical set of steps to get to your goal while completely lacking the talent it takes to sustain the goal. So I’ll say it again, in order to reach your goal you have to come up with a logical set of steps to get there.
Waiting around for happenstance isn’t a viable option.
– Sitting on your hands and waiting for good things to come your way, what a great way to reach success.
I can go on and on and on about all the different types of musicians that have disappointed me or made my life harder over the years. We all know people like this. But what it really comes down to is the fact that you-and you alone-are responsible for your success or failure. Don’t blame other people when you damn well know that you could’ve done something to make things work out better. And don’t surround yourself with losers like I’ve mentioned.
If you hang out with four losers, you’ll seen be the fifth.
