RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 (edited) With my 40th birthday gig approaching , tragedy struck as our drummer had to unfortunately pull out ,with very little time to get replacement before the gig in question . Invites sent out etc. At the same period in time , I was leaving my place of employment . A very large organisation , spread over many floors . A sales person who vaguely knew of me , heard about my predicament and volunteeered to come to the audition. . The audition was one of the strangest I've ever encountered . I have a lot of respect for drummers obviously , and good ones are hard to find in my experience . Anyaway , the guy was a miserable , arrogant and untalented tool ! He was calling all the shots as to the way he plays . He put on his gloves . ( yes really ) . He then said ,"I only play standing up!" He p@ssed everyone off with his miserable attitude . Of course my mates / band members were asking where I got him from , who is that tw@t etc. When I phoned the ' drummer' to break the news that the original drummer could make it after all , ( my excuse) the 'drummer' was shouting and snapping at me knowing I was lying . That was painful . The other guy we auditioned was a great laugh, a nice guy ...but obsesssed with sex and Thailand . He had a big house in a desirable area, a nice wife and children, big salary etc . However, he had sex with someone in Thailand and wasn't sure if he caught something . Eventually , the wife was told . Game over ! His dad used to run a brothel in the midlands . He eventually married a Thai bride , and imported family members . He played a gig for the guitarists birthday( same lineup) , which he decided to get drunk before we took to the stage . Playing Black Sabbaths Paranoind faster than the stormtroopers of death , wasn't ideal . Shouting at him to slow down fell on deaf ears. He messed up ufo Rock bottom , which is the fist time I attempted it . I was nervous about doing that , but the guitarist insisted we do it as we both love schenker / ufo etc. He was upset . Bizarrely we got approached for wedding gigs , abd others . I may mention the audition for a vocalist , later in the thread 🙂 Edited March 1 by RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE 1 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killerfridge Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 I had an audition with a band who's singer had come from musical theatre and wanted to branch out into function gigs. I have never met anyone more musically oblivious. Every song required MJ style ad-libs, counted us in with completely arbitrary speeds (and he had to count us in, couldn't possibly let the drummer do it) to the extent he wants Higher Ground at about 250bpm and looked at me funny when I started it at the speed he counted in, and could not learn lyrics to save his life. The cherry on top was playing "Suck My Kiss" where he rattled through the lyrics without taking a breath, somehow finishing the song before the band had gotten through the first chorus! He then proceeded to look at us like "what are you guys doing, the song is over?" as we continued through the rest of the song. Suffice to say I declined to join. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean-Luc Pickguard Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 Years ago I turned up to audition for a newly forming blues band, and rather than jam some Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters or Sonny Boy Willamson classics, the guitarist putting the band together wanted play Jack & Diane by John Meloncamp. 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashborygirl Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 32 minutes ago, solo4652 said: Another band, another drummer audition. Beforehand, guy asked what was provided at rehearsal rooms. "Just a basic kit - you'll need to bring your own cymbals, stands, seat and any other favourite equipment you particularly like". Guy turns up with two drum sticks and nothing else. Turned out he didn't actually own any drums, cymbals, stands, seat - just two drum sticks. When Jim Reilly joined Stiff Little Fingers he sold his kit to get the money to go to the audition. He was offered the job & asked if he had any questions, 'can you fellas lend me a drum kit?'. 5 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jackroadkill Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 12 hours ago, peteb said: However, the best was saved for last. A Welsh girl (who I remember was a nurse) turned up about half an hour late, just as we were about to knock it on the head and go to the pub. It was pretty obvious she wasn't going to get the gig, so we take her for a drink. After a couple of beers, she was still wanting to sing and she obviously wasn't short of confidence, so we head back to the studio. We try to teach her one of our songs, which she just couldn't get. She then reaches into her bag and pulls out a Black Sabbath songbook and decides that she wants us to play Paranoid. We had been taping the auditions, so the guitarist discretely turns the tape off, only for me to flick it back on. She wasn't great, in fact she was awful and singing so flat she was nearly coming back in tune an octave down at times. At this point, her boyfriend comes to pick up her up and she's giving us her details, confident that she's completely nailed it! I must have played that tape to everyone who came down to my gaff for weeks... Was this also in London, circa 20 years ago? I had a girlfriend who did an audition like that, was a mental health nursing student and from mid Wales.... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 Myself and mr drums , decided to keep the covers band we had alive and audition for guitarist and vocalist . We ended up with 2 guitarists . All good . Things going well . We then had a few people lined up for auditions for vocalist . Warning ; possible cultural misrepresentation .. First ' vocalist ' arrives . Mmm.... not our age group. A lot younger . He was Asian . No problem . However, he was trying too hard to assert himself on us at the earliest opportunity. He wasn't relaxed at all, and was saying 'I'm gonna make it ' among other things in his broken English . He named 2 songs from the list we gave him in advance . Obvious he didn't learn any of them . He was very hyper , while treating our band like X factor or the equivalent . so, we asked him to accompany us on ' American idiot ' and 'Teenage Kicks '. That's where the fun started . I say fun , but it was like having Benny Hills mr. Chow mein character with us . We were having great difficulty restraining ourselves with bloated faces about to collapse at any minute . We did turn around at various stages to cackle / cry with laughter hoping not to be seen . Amerrrrican irrriot , and heenage kiss never sounded so bad . Thankfully the last person we saw on that day was our new front man . 1 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteb Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 (edited) 1 hour ago, Jackroadkill said: Was this also in London, circa 20 years ago? I had a girlfriend who did an audition like that, was a mental health nursing student and from mid Wales.... Don't worry, it can't have been her - this was 40 years ago (about 83)...! Edited March 1 by peteb 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lozz196 Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 1 hour ago, Ashborygirl said: When Jim Reilly joined Stiff Little Fingers he sold his kit to get the money to go to the audition. He was offered the job & asked if he had any questions, 'can you fellas lend me a drum kit?'. That is quality, I laughed out loud when I read that in Jake Burns’ book. Having met Jim it doesn’t surprise me at all. I think he was the best drummer for SLF. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muzz Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 Shamelessly copied and pasted from a post of mine years ago, but, I hope, worth a revisit: Manchester...erm, mid-80s... Our drummer (in an originals-with-the-odd-cover 80s Rock Band) was about to become a Dad, and had reluctantly decided he'd have to shelve the rehearsals and gigging for a good while, so he'd stepped down, and we were on the urgent look-out for a replacement. As a thoroughly nice chap, and knowing we had gigs booked we needed to fulfil, he had even left his kit at the rehearsal rooms for new drummers to use, in part or whole, for the auditions. We organised a Sunday afternoon, with an hour slot for each drummer we'd contacted, and it started unremarkably, but then, second to last, was the standout. And not in a good way. He turned up in a six-wheel Transit, immediately earning about a thousand bonus points, but it became terribly clear that all this thing held was his kit...and there was little room for anything else. After refusing to use of any of the already-set-up kit, he began ferrying kit in. And more kit. And more kit. After ten minutes of watching boxes piling up, and with his end of the rehearsal room beginning to look like the dockside of the Queen Mary before a round the world jaunt, we volunteered to help, and then we all spent the next 45 minutes setting up a furry tigerskin-covered double-kick kit, with six raised toms, three floor toms, eight rototoms and so many cymbals we couldn't see him any more. As he tightened up the third china cymbal, I said "No gong, then?", and he froze, looking concerned. "I didn't bring it...should I have done?" I assured him it wouldn't count against him, and eventually, with about five minutes left of his allotted hour, he was ready. The singist had been forced to nip outside to intercept the last auditionee, apologise and ask him to bear with and go for a pint in the local for twenty minutes, and then our hero launched into the first intro, to a then-bog-standard Bon Jovi tune we'd decided would make a good starter audition song. Now, in 40+ years of bands, I've never played in a freeform jazz ensemble, and I certainly hadn't back then, so I was unfamiliar with the five-count intro, and the thirteen-bar drum fill*, but this chap was clearly a master. We couldn't possibly fault him for brio, enthusiasm, and certainly energy...it was his counting which left quite a lot to be desired**. In addition, having taken so long to set up his mahoooosive kit, he was determined to hit every single drum and cymbal as often as he could, with scant regard for the song, or indeed the befuddlement he was creating amongst his prospective fellow band-members. I shall leave to your imagination the meal he made of the drawn-out ending, suffice to say Richard Wagner, had he been hanging around the rehearsal rooms (unlikely) and not dead for about a century (for once, fortunate), would probably have shaken his head and said something unflattering about bombast. In German. He finished by standing, his arms aloft and his eyes shining. Had that thing Usain Bolt does (not the running, the archery-arms thing) been around, he would have been doing that. We shuffled our feet, unable to maintain eye contact with him or each other, for fear of collapsing into hysterics. Eventually the singer thanked him for his time, and we all heaved-to loading his van again, while the singer went to buy the other auditionee another pint. He didn't get the job. * I'm probably doing an enormous disservice to freeform jazz ensembles around the globe here, so apologies if so, but I'm at a loss as to where else to place it musically. Perhaps amongst those gangs of glassy-eyed, saffron-robed enthusiasts one encounters on the city streets, each banging a drum in a random manner with a blissful expression and no regard for hard-pressed shoppers... ** I note that 'dyscalcula' is the numerical equivalent of dyselxia, and apparently A Real Medical Thing. It may have been that he was a secret sufferer; that would explain an awful lot. Edit: I've just spotted that I've spelt 'dyslexia' wrong in the footnote above. Oh, the irony... 4 16 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EliasMooseblaster Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 I don't know if it's strictly an audition, if a guitarist has cobbled together a bunch of mates to hurriedly form his own band, but it was certainly a tedious experience. To be fair, many of us will have joined various "bands" at school which had no plan, and didn't survive beyond a couple of rehearsals, but this one stood out as interesting. Mostly because I'd never realised that the guitarist forming the band could even play the guitar. The singer, I already knew as competent. The drummer was new to me, but he seemed pretty adept, if frighteningly hyperactive. But the guitarist...could only play one song. Given he'd asked me whether I wanted to join his indie/pop-punk group, I think we were all a little surprised to find that the only song he could play was Summer Days. Yep: the song from Grease. I wish I'd been a bit less diplomatic, and suggested we knock it on the head after twenty minutes. But instead, I somehow agreed to come back the next week, by which time he'd managed to learn a Green Day song. Just the one. Made for a less tedious hour than the first session, but it was a long time before I could bring myself to listen to Longview again... 3 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bassybert Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 3 hours ago, EliasMooseblaster said: I wish I'd been a bit less diplomatic, and suggested we knock it on the head after twenty minutes. But instead, I somehow agreed to come back the next week, by which time he'd managed to learn a Green Day song. Just the one. Made for a less tedious hour than the first session, but it was a long time before I could bring myself to listen to Longview again... Should have just bitten your lip and closed your eyes… 😉 1 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thodrik Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 During my time in Glasgow, I once had an initial audition with the guitarist who was so high that he brought an old Boss 8 track recorder as his 'pedal board' and proceeded to try and run the 8 track recorder through a Marshall AVT head and cab so he could access the onboard effects on the recorder. He assured us that he knew what he was doing and that these effects were 'the bees knees man'. He gave up after 20 minutes then just plugged in his guitar in to the amp only to notice that it only had four strings, which was unfortunate as 'those two strings were the ones I really needed.' Another session involved a guitarist who hailed from Yemen, who was actually technically pretty competent. However we really couldn't play in a band with him out of the awkwardness of him insisting to check that none of the other band members were Jewish before we started playing, although in his defence he did also state 'I have no issues with Protestants or Catholics, so I am still more tolerant than many Glaswegians', which admittedly did get a laugh. I mean, when you try to start a stoner rock band, it comes with the territory that sometimes people will turn up entirely stoned or slightly unhinged. It is only now, about 15 years later that I realise just how weird some of those sessions were. 1 12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_bass5 Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 Decades ago i was in a band that was looking for a guitarist. Our drummer was in to Killing Joke etc, and singer was in to alternative stuff. I preferred new wave and pop. We auditioned a few that were good players but the other two thought more about image over ability so kept looking. In walks a punk. Full on 70’s Kings road stuff. He was quite young but seemed nice enough. He had one of those strange angular shaped guitars (when asked where he got it, he said he did a ‘Jonesy’ at a gig 🙄). He had it for a few years but never really got around to playing it. This actually turned out to mean never got around to learning to play it, although for him, whacking all the strings whilst deadening them with his left hand gave him the sound he wanted. He had two distortion boxes to get him his signature ‘dog bark’. Anyway, even the drummer got frustrated at this and tried to get him to play a few chords. The guitar was hopelessly out of tune, and the strings were quite rusty. He offered to tune it up for him and one by one, the strings broke 😂. This left it totally unplayable so the punk said he would come back for the next audition with another guitar, and just walked out, leaving his guitar on the floor. We never saw him again but apparently the drummer took the guitar home and ended up selling it for around £1000. This was back in the very late 70’s. 2 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jackroadkill Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 7 hours ago, peteb said: Don't worry, it can't have been her - this was 40 years ago (about 83)...! Thanks Christ for that; for one thing, if the bloke who pickered her up had been her boyfriend it would have been her other boyfriend, rather than me. Well, it could have been one of several, I suppose. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diskwave Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 A while back. Got a call from a little rock outfit..I wasnt busy so thght Id go along...keep the chops going. Not bad musicians.. all flowed well sounded good but they didnt have a drummer. Q a couple of drummers for an audition...One was no good at all and the other one an older guy, long blonde hair,...ha...played an identical 1-3 on the floor back beat throughout each tune...no fills no nuthin... just bam blat bam blat for 90 mins. Ha ..we all kinda looked at each other... it was funny. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paolo85 Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 (edited) When I was around 18, alongsde my main band I decided to put together a hard rock/glam band with two dear friends. It was 100% to have fun with friends and we were not planning to become an amazing band. We needed a singer though and we put an advert out. A guy calls me, very confident, he says he sings pretty much like early days Bach (the Skid Row guy, at the time possibly my favourite singer). Oh god.. I was just hoping to get somebody with a decent voice who's not tone deaf.. maybe with this guy we we could start thinking a bit bigger? He comes to reharsal, we start with Youth Gone Wild, there's a pretty iconic scream from Bach there just at the beginning. The singer stops headbanging for the scream... ...well, I had to immediately turn my back to him. I could not stop laughing. I spent the full hour (yes, an hour and he had learnt all the songs unfortunately) looking at my drummer and trying not to laugh. Poor guy, it wasn't the bad singing per se. It's the fact that he had no clue he wasn't great Edited March 1 by Paolo85 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean-Luc Pickguard Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 I auditioned for Pete Shelly's band 'Zip' once. It was a few weeks after I'd seen them open for Erasure at the Hammersmith odeon, so when I saw the ad in Melody Maker announcing that Zip were looking for a replacement member I knew exactly who they were. The only problem was that I was a passable bass player but an extremely mediocre guitarist, and they wanted a guitarist. Not to pass up an opportunity though I borrowed my mate's Gibson Les Paul Custom rather than bring my westone and went along. Pete and his bandmate were very gracious, but i don't think they were impressed with my lack of ability on guitar and I didn't get a call back. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tauzero Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 On 29/02/2024 at 22:30, Maude said: Don't feel bad... he joined our band! 😁 Are you sure? I thought he'd joined @snorkie635's. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 Auditioning a guitarist for an original death metal band, guy turns up - seems friendly, have decent gear and plenty of confidence. I realise we're about to waste the entire session when his opening gambit is "what tuning do you guys play in?" His face fell, but not as much as his strings, when I said "drop B" and he had to slacken them right off. Not really knowing what to do as the guy had clearly not learned any of these fairly technical songs, we ran through a couple and said join in when you can, so he strummed along with his valve amp on standby........ 1 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NancyJohnson Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 It's odd how you get thinking about auditions. I'd completely forgot about this east European guitarist we tried out; he was younger than us and was temping in the warehouse where I worked. We decided to not go the route of booking a room, so we tried him out in the extension of my house; stripped down session. He arrived on foot just carrying a guitar (no bag) and a little practice amp. He'd clearly made zero effort to learn any of the material I'd given him and I believe his expectation was that we'd become his backing band. He was also a terrible player and quite terrifying in equal parts. You remember Alexei Sayle's character in The Young Ones? That's what he sounded like when he talked and well, that started the drummer laughing. Every statement ended in 'yes'. He'd go, 'We do one of mine songs now, it's about the Russian Mafia in Stalingrad, yes?' and he'd play a breakneck fast two chord thing with him shouting out sweary vocals about gang members killing each other and disposing of the bodies in furnaces. That was one of the more happy songs. Drummer is laughing. Singer is laughing. I'm trying not to laugh and offer encouragement. He knows exactly where I live. I'm trying to formulate an exit strategy. We stop for coffee. He asks whether I have anything stronger. I watched him down about 1/4 pint of bourbon like it was orange squash on a hot day and then ask if we have vodka. Before long, it was thankfully over. He's going, 'This was great. We must do this again soon, yes? You on the drums, play faster next time, yes?'. Drummer says he's going to be working away for a bit (phew), but singer does not play along however and says it was great and we should do it again soon. B*stard. Thankfully the guy got fired and I never saw him again. 2 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 Threads like this one absolutely make my day. This stuff is comedy gold. Thanks everyone. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Franticsmurf Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 Back in the early 90s I was playing geetar in a band doing primarily originals but going through that difficult period of realising that our original material wasn't going down well with the venues we played. We decided to add more appropriate covers (which meant the more accessible proggy stuff) and to find a dedicated singer, as out keyboard player was currently singing. The drummer and I were in a night club (a rare event but it played mainly the rock end of pop music) and I got talking to this young girl who, when she found out I was in a band looking for a singer, proclaimed that she could sing and wanted to be out new front person. Her first audition was outside the nightclub, where she performed 'Wuthering Heights', complete with rather enticing dance moves. She wasn't bad and both the drummer and I thought she deserved a decent audition with the rest of the band. A couple of weeks later we picked her up from the corner of her street in the band van and headed off to the rehearsal studio where we went through a few covers and while she could keep a tune, her voice wasn't versatile enough. Had we been a Kate Bush tribute act, she may just have scraped through with some work but as it was her voice was quite thin and she didn't seem to have the self confidence needed for a front person. We dropped her back off on the corner of her street with the intention of having a second go with some originals. Imagine my surprise when, on the way to work a couple of days later, I saw our potential singer in her school uniform looking every bit the 14 or 15 year old she actually was. Many things went through my head, mostly involving irate parents, irate policemen and relief that nothing ungentlemanly had happened. Needless to say, we didn't keep in contact. 2 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 Phew, that was close! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul S Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 A couple of incidents spring to mind, none in the same league as the above tales, but this one always makes me grin. One going back a while, my first 'proper' band. After about a year of trouble brewing I'd eventually fallen out with the singer. We had a bit of a nose to nose just before the start of one gig, in fact, whereupon I'd threatened to throw him off the fire escape. Unsurprisingly I got sacked as the singer got all the gigs. A few bass player less months later the singer decided to quit so I was back in and we were auditioning. In my early 50s at the time, I was the youngster in the band (!) and we played pretty pedestrian dad rock in a pretty pedestrian kind of way to pedestrian crowds in pedestrian pubs. We kissed a lot of frogs, never really found our prince but the guy who stood out was like the 'drummer at the wrong gig' video. He strode in and immediately dominated the room - he was in his late 20s and HUGE - 6'5? Quite overweight dressed entirely in black leather - trousers, biker boots, frock coat, bush hat. Some kind of jagged death metal logo T shirt. For sure he could sing and was a totally lovely guy but clearly our expectations didn't match. He'd have terrified our usual crowds 1 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul S Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 1 hour ago, Franticsmurf said: Back in the early 90s I was playing geetar in a band doing primarily originals but going through that difficult period of realising that our original material wasn't going down well with the venues we played. We decided to add more appropriate covers (which meant the more accessible proggy stuff) and to find a dedicated singer, as out keyboard player was currently singing. The drummer and I were in a night club (a rare event but it played mainly the rock end of pop music) and I got talking to this young girl who, when she found out I was in a band looking for a singer, proclaimed that she could sing and wanted to be out new front person. Her first audition was outside the nightclub, where she performed 'Wuthering Heights', complete with rather enticing dance moves. She wasn't bad and both the drummer and I thought she deserved a decent audition with the rest of the band. A couple of weeks later we picked her up from the corner of her street in the band van and headed off to the rehearsal studio where we went through a few covers and while she could keep a tune, her voice wasn't versatile enough. Had we been a Kate Bush tribute act, she may just have scraped through with some work but as it was her voice was quite thin and she didn't seem to have the self confidence needed for a front person. We dropped her back off on the corner of her street with the intention of having a second go with some originals. Imagine my surprise when, on the way to work a couple of days later, I saw our potential singer in her school uniform looking every bit the 14 or 15 year old she actually was. Many things went through my head, mostly involving irate parents, irate policemen and relief that nothing ungentlemanly had happened. Needless to say, we didn't keep in contact. Yikes. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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