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When the drummer forgets his kit


Happy Jack
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So it's the band leader's 60th birthday, he's been on full-on shielding for over three months, the best we can manage for a birthday gig is to play his back garden in a civically-responsible, socially-distanced sort of way, and Paul The Drums turns up without his cajon.

Solution? Raid the shed, of course ...

 

 

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41 minutes ago, Happy Jack said:

So it's the band leader's 60th birthday, he's been on full-on shielding for over three months, the best we can manage for a birthday gig is to play his back garden in a civically-responsible, socially-distanced sort of way, and Paul The Drums turns up without his cajon.

Solution? Raid the shed, of course ...

 

 

Drummer turning up without his cajon sounds like the best outcome for me Jack.

Edited by Beedster
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Our drummist turned up to a recording session without any sticks. The manager thought it a good idea to go out into the woods and find a solution. I will never forget the moment she stood there, holding up two drumstick length twigs, saying ‘will these do’? To his credit, drummist gave it a go. Four hours later we started the recording having found a local percussionist happy to lend us his sticks.

Why’s it always the drummist?

Or the singer?

Or the guitarist? 

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6 minutes ago, Silvia Bluejay said:

Thing is, we have a spare cajon in our house (two-bassists house: we have EVERY musically-related spare item you can think of). The drummist forgot that too, and so didn't phone us for help before we reached the birthday boy's house. 9_9

I’ll say it again, why’s it always the drummist?

Or the......

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Back in 2014 my band was booked to play a wedding in Brittany. The crossings and gig were organised by the singer and our keyboard player borrowed a large school transit bus and drove us there and back. The drummer was on holiday in France at the time and would meet us at the gig on his way back, we took his kit with us. Driving down the A303 towards Devon and the Plymouth ferry and the singer announces that she hasn’t brought a microphone! It’s not always the drummer.

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I am embarrassed to say that out of the thousands of gigs I've done, I've only ever once turned up to a gig without my bass.....

Long story, but basically the band wasn't in it's usual travelling arrangement, so I hadn't realised it hadn't been loaded.

I played the entire gig on a Strat copy which a punter in the crowd had rushed back to his house to fetch for me, bless him......

No, it didn't sound good.    😧

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36 minutes ago, ezbass said:

Back in 2014 my band was booked to play a wedding in Brittany. The crossings and gig were organised by the singer and our keyboard player borrowed a large school transit bus and drove us there and back. The drummer was on holiday in France at the time and would meet us at the gig on his way back, we took his kit with us. Driving down the A303 towards Devon and the Plymouth ferry and the singer announces that she hasn’t brought a microphone! It’s not always the drummer.

All four non-singers in my band carried an SM58 on account of our singist’s perpetual failure to bring a mic to gigs

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Before I played bass it was the trombone. I was servicing the slide one afternoon and turned up at the evenings gig with half a trombone. I had left the slide on the draining board. Luckily it was a local gig so I just about had time to drive back home and get it. 

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My old band were doing a flash wedding a few years ago, large country house with a massive marquee etc. For some reason I can't remember our singer was unavailable so we had a dep. He was told all he needed to bring was a dinner suit (with a black and a white shirt) and a mic, everything else was provided. Yup you've guessed it - he forgot the mic, claiming it was in the glovebox of his car but as we'd arranged to pick him up he'd not thought of that. We had a spare cheapo mic that we used for speeches etc so he had to use that. On top of this, he was a lousy dep - didn't know some of the tunes he claimed to know to secure the gig, then managed to lose his voice halfway through the evening ( because the band were 'too loud') leaving me to struggle through with the lead vocal. So it's not always drummers......😄

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9 hours ago, Beedster said:

All four non-singers in my band carried an SM58 on account of our singist’s perpetual failure to bring a mic to gigs

I’d be charging the singer for mic hire at every gig, otherwise you’re just enabling them.

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Maybe I've just been lucky with drummers - usually it's them trying to fit enough gear for six drum kits onto the stage

Guitarists though...forever without leads and picks, acting like it's somebody else's fault and if we expect them to play then we're going to have to provide their missing stuff for them...one one occasion when, sick of providing picks for two people, the rhythm guitarist deliberately only brought one pick, so I stumped up a spare and the lead guitarist spend the entire practice complaining about how the pick was too thick and that was the cause of all the mistakes he was making, clearly he wasn't at all to blame

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On 19/07/2020 at 20:39, casapete said:

My old band were doing a flash wedding a few years ago, large country house with a massive marquee etc. For some reason I can't remember our singer was unavailable so we had a dep. He was told all he needed to bring was a dinner suit (with a black and a white shirt) and a mic, everything else was provided. Yup you've guessed it - he forgot the mic, claiming it was in the glovebox of his car but as we'd arranged to pick him up he'd not thought of that. We had a spare cheapo mic that we used for speeches etc so he had to use that. On top of this, he was a lousy dep - didn't know some of the tunes he claimed to know to secure the gig, then managed to lose his voice halfway through the evening ( because the band were 'too loud') leaving me to struggle through with the lead vocal. So it's not always drummers......😄

Funny how the 'pro' scene is so full of amateurs, I've been in too many bands in which the various ex-pro/ex-session/ex-big name band members were by far the least professional; guitarists who'd strop if asked to turn down, singers who couldn't remember lyrics, drummers who despite knowing the band can't set up until they've set up, would arrive 5 minutes before sound check etc. The amateurs always seem to be a whole lot more professional.  

I went to a wedding earlier this year, and the singer of the 'pro' ceilidh band was trying to get us all to dance the way she wanted us to dance,  fair enough given the music, but it wasn't that sort of crowd and she just ended up being rude to everyone because we all wanted to dance the way we wanted to dance. There's a few threads here about the demise of live music, when I look at the way some prats in 'pro' bands go about it, I'm frankly not surprised. 

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11 hours ago, Monkey Steve said:

Maybe I've just been lucky with drummers - usually it's them trying to fit enough gear for six drum kits onto the stage

Guitarists though...forever without leads and picks, acting like it's somebody else's fault and if we expect them to play then we're going to have to provide their missing stuff for them...one one occasion when, sick of providing picks for two people, the rhythm guitarist deliberately only brought one pick, so I stumped up a spare and the lead guitarist spend the entire practice complaining about how the pick was too thick and that was the cause of all the mistakes he was making, clearly he wasn't at all to blame

Fancy lending someone something that was so unsuitable, how do you live with yourself 😂

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On the subject of band members forgetting things, I'd almost completely forgotten what must be the best example ever, our singer forgetting to tell us about a gig he'd booked? A drummer can't forget their drums, a guitarist cant forget their pics etc if they don't even know there's a gig can they :)

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I'm quite looking forward to gigs where drum set=up consists of plugging in the laptop, booting up EZ Drummer, connecting to Focusrite interface/PA and pressing play.

More room for us all on stage, no more drummer only soundchecks, no more sulking cos he's forgotten the most important Turkish Ride though he already has 4 others and hi-hat, no more speeding up (it's never slowing down), no more overcomplicated fills that last 3 beats too long, no more splash cymbal making everyone deaf...

😁😎

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Our old drummer had severe OCD. He would take hours to actually get out of the house (I assume he was checking everything 3 times) and was inevitably late for every gig. At the end of the night he had to go through the ritual of counting all his cymbals, multiple times, to make sure he had them all (he only had 5 including the hi hat), which meant it would take at least an hour for him to get his kit packed away.

Which was a pain, as he was usually giving me a lift back home.

Once I got my own car, I'd be away home 10 mins after the gig and just left him to count his cymbals to his hearts content.

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And yet, whenever @Happy Jack and I have seen a live rock band with a drum machine, we haven't liked it. Yes, the timing is perfect, the volume is suitable to the venue no matter what, and so on, but the gig is, to our eyes, really not live and it feels, even as the audience, more like just playing along to a record than a real gig.

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2 hours ago, Leonard Smalls said:

...no more splash cymbal making everyone deaf...

Just over-long oodles of fuzz-wah-synth bass played at high velocity with no discernable tonality nor timing. Occasional breaks to set the drum machine off again, then more blasts, ignoring whatever EZ-Drummer was beating out. ¬¬

...

:lol: :P

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