I stopped by this old club I used to play at all the time. It has changed owners a few times but my buddy the bartender was still there. I stop there sometimes to pick up a cigar when I’m on the way to a gig.
So I walk in there the other night before a gig and I’m greeted by a gentleman at the door wearing a black bow tie…….wearing ONLY a black bow tie. Slackjawed I looked into the club there were dozens of “men” wearing leather, spikes, and sometimes nothing dancing on the dance floor.
Apparently the club changed formats one more time than I was aware of.
mediaguru Gigs, Random
I recorded this really shitty metal band one time. Their singer was so bad, he would blow his voice out after singing 1 or 2 takes of a song. It wasn’t singing either, it was more like screaming remotely close to the key of the (bad) song.
So we finally get to the mix. We’re tweaking everything when I hear this strange noise. I stop the tape (yes, in the tape years) and I find that the sound is the bass player snoring on the couch. He was really sawing logs. I ran into the sound room and grabbed a great big large diaphragm microphone, placed it 1/4″ from his nose and hit record. Then we pumped his snoring through the main speakers and put a giant reverb on it. He sounded like a giant snoring in the Grand Canyon. He soon woke up.
Days later this bass player was bitching and moaning about how bad his bass sounded in the mix. I could only tell the dude that he might have gotten what he wanted if he was actually conscious during the mix. Typical bullshit we engineers go through. They sleep though the mix and blame you for their sound not being what they wanted.
mediaguru Boneheads, Musicians, Recording
Version 2.5 of my to-do blog list:
*Becoming a Rock Star for Dummies – DONE
*Golf equipment in lieu of payment
*How to get a record deal
*My buddy’s Stolen Keyboard
*The club onwner who thought he could fly – DONE
*Graphic EQ Catalog Setting
*Total Bitch Who Turns Out To Be An Inlaw
*WTF Is A Boing Box?
*Locking Bridge
*Broken Steve Vai Guitar
*Christmas Party Gig
*Shaman Princess
*Guitar Case Sale
*Mouthing off to the club owner
*1 Song & Done
*Chick’s Visa Card
*Phony tubes? – DONE
*Uhh, where did the bass player go?
*Rickenbacker 12 string issue
*The Turf Club is the coolest place
*White to rap conversion
*Are you telling me I torched a $15,000 kit?
*Bag the female singer
*Shocking gig in Sun Valley
*Shocking bathroom incident
*There goes the moose head!
*Speaking of moose: Singer hits moose
*Hole in the stage
*Dumbass Metal Guitar Player
*Opening for The Romantics (power problems)
*Someone had sex on our stage and we didn’t know it?
*Here’s a drum stick in your eye
*Fell off the drum riser
*Surprise beer glass modification
*Contributing to the delinquency of a minor
*Opening for The Fixx
*Opening for Flock Of Seaguls
*Opening for Jerry Lee Lewis
*The freak duplicator?
*The best female singer I recorded is a….zone girl?
*The 2nd best female singer I recorded is a…..stripper?
*The band that wouldn’t get off the stage…voluntarily. (Don’t mess with the golden glove boxer part 2)
*The tour (the radio show with 3 video cameras which don’t broadcast anything?)
*Point that video camera straigt into a spotlight, great dumbass
*Band accomodations & crack house all in one
*Dude steals chair and nearly causes a natural gas explosion
*Wedding gigs: Is anyone really paying attention?
*Late for a crappy gig
*Don’t piss off the golden glove boxer
*To the asshole who stole my hardware case
*X
*When naked ladies are running around, why do they blame me?
*Studio poltergiest that scares the hell out of me…really. The scariest, creepiest studio story ever.
*Two gigs in three hours, 350 miles apart?
*Bam bam
*$5 bounced check (from a client)
*I swear I didn’t know it was a gay bar. – DONE
*”Tonto” The drunk indian – DONE
*Your bass player is too hard to watch – DONE
*High heels, used as a weapon – DONE
*Best sub gig ever (strippers!) – DONE
*Don’t keep your studio masters with your dope – DONE
*A pathetic coke whore – DONE
*Stolen sub – DONE
*Stolen PA – DONE
*Falling asleep in the mix – DONE
*Board mix breaks up band – DONE
mediaguru Random
Doing a gig for the local college one time… All was going as expected when all the sudden a dude came running down the stairs with two women (very attractive) chasing him. They tackled him right on the stage, knocking our guitar player’s rig over. They then took off their high heels and began abusing this guy’s face with them. They bloodied this guy pretty good.
Later we found out one of the two women was this guy’s girlfriend. He apparently wronged her in a bad way.
mediaguru Gigs
A brilliant 18 year old disgruntled Ashlee Simpson fan has created a petition to make her stop. It’s up to close to 200,000 signatures as of this post. My signature is #171427. The site is very slow, surely due to the huge amount of bandwidth of thousands of people signing it, so be patient. If you can’t get through, try it later.
DO US ALL A FAVOR: SIGN THIS PETITION
To: Geffen/DGC Records & JT Simpson Entertainment
We, the undersigned, are disgusted with Ashlee Simpson’s horrible singing and hereby ask her to stop. Stop recording, touring, modeling and performing. We do not wish to see her again.
She cannot match the sound of her voice that can be found on her CDs, when she sings live. She simply yells the words (sometimes the wrong ones) into the mic.
We are so sickened by her “performing” that we are taking this opportunity to demand that she stop.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
mediaguru Boneheads, Rants
I took my kids to the 3D iMax T-rex movie last night. It was quite fun. Imax movies are pretty cool.
But it reminded me of the studio gig I did for imax one time. I did a voice over gig where the two directors of some African Wildlife imax movie did their “director’s commentary.” This was to be an auxiliary audio track for the imax dvd where you select the director’s commentary and they talk about what was going on in their minds when they shot certain scenes.
The directors were fairly cool but a little dry. I set up a video monitor and played the imax movie and they just commented on each scene in real time as it happened. It was a cool gig just by the fact that I hadn’t done one of those before.
When the job was done I gave the directors an invoice. They told me that they weren’t responsible and gave me the number of the movie studio in California to contact for payment. When I contacted them, they gave me the name and number of the production company and told me to get the dough from them. When I called the production company I was given the name and number of the movie studio and told to get the dough from them…..and so on….and so on…
I never did get my dough. I finally gave up after getting jacked around X number of times. Usually studio owners get stiffed by flaky musicians but this time it was the big boys.
mediaguru Rants, Recording
There are times in your life when a small decision makes a huge impact on your future. This may have been one of those times.
I played a gig at a club I’ve played at 100’s of times. The show was over, but I didn’t need to load my gear because we were playing there the next night as well. My car was parked right outside the club on the street. I was walking out the door when I felt a small urge to hit the bathroom. I could have held it until I got home, but I decided to go back into the club and relieve myself first.
When got back out of the bathroom I saw the familiar flashing lights of a cop car outside through the window. I didn’t think much of it as the cops nail people all the time leaving the clubs drunk. When I got outside I saw the nightmare.
The cop was right in front of the club, behind a white 1975 Maverick which had plowed into the back of MY car. My car looked to be about 1/2 a car. This all had to have happened within the last 30-60 seconds. The cop was there so quick I couldn’t believe it. The reason he was there so fast is that he was taking a break to eat a taco, parked in the Taco Time parking lot next door. He watched the driver plow into my car while eating his taco.
The driver was still in the Maverick and the cop was trying to get him out. The driver was too drunk to even stand up. The cop said “come on Tonto let’s go.” The drunk driver was “Tonto” from the indian reservation. I talked to the cop and we did all the usual police report stuff and then the officer gave Tonto the drunk test (which he of course failed).
Tonto was not only driving a very heavy vehicle, he had no driver’s liscence. Apparently you don’t need a liscence on the reservation. Tonto’s car had no auto registration or liscence plate. Apparently you don’t need liscence plates on the reservation. Tonto also had NO auto insurance. Apparently you don’t need auto insurance on the reservation. Tonto had just bought the car. Apparently you can buy a car on the reservation with no driver’s liscence or auto insurance. Tonto had been drinking way too much firewater. Apparently you don’t need a brain on the reservation.
In looking back on this crappy event I originally thought of it as bad luck. Hell my car was trashed. But upon more reflection I’m thinking of it as extremely lucky. Had I not decided to relieve myself I likely would have been killed when Tonto crushed me between his 75 Maveric and my car.
So I look at this as one of those small decisions that greatly impacts your future, or the opportuning to have a future for that matter.
mediaguru Boneheads, Gigs, Rants
Now that I’m on the topic of sub gigs I have to tell this story.
I got a call one afternoon from a guy who was the head of the most popular blues band in town. His drummer broke his hand or something so they needed me to sub for him that night. I was available so he gave me the address and told me when to be there.
I got there in just in time to setup and start playing. I saw the guitar player’s car out behind the venue so I just loaded in the back with him. I didn’t get a chance to even see what the main venue looked like as we were playing in a room in the back of the building.
We started the gig and I was a bit nervous because I hadn’t played a gig with this band before. They were good at giving me directions so I managed ok.
In the middle of the first song something strange happened. Two women jumped up on the stage in front of my kit and started dancing. This has happened to me before thousands of times, but this time was different. This time they took their clothes off….all of them. As it turned out, I was subbing for a blues band in a strip club! There were a few visual cues that I missed because I was watching the women instead of the band leader but I didn’t care much.
There is nothing more fun than playing music, watching women take their clothes off and getting paid for it!
mediaguru Gigs, Random
Sometimes I do studio work and quite often live gigs drumming for bands who either don’t have a drummer or whose drummer can’t make the gig for some reason.
One night I was doing a drum sub gig for a band that played what I’d call cool 70’s music. There’s cool 70’s and not cool 70’s. The guitar player had a “girlfriend” who was quite beautiful. In fact I honestly thought she was on another level than him. I couldn’t quite figure out why she was with this guy even though he seemed cool.
I later figured out later that she was with him because he was her sugar daddy. Turns out he was quite the coke dealer/user. This explained a few of his “mannerisms” that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
I guess (I wouldn’t know) when you have your own personal coke whore that you supply coke to, you have to ration it out. During the gig she kept coming up to the stage and talking in his ear while we were playing. He kept giving her the brush off.
This stage was fairly high and small. The level of the stage was about 5 feet off the ground in this club. After being rejected, the coke whore left the dance floor and sneakingly crawled up the stage stairway. I watched her the whole time but the guitar player couldn’t see her. Keep in mind that at this point I still don’t know she is a coke whore and that he is a coke dealer. She watched him intensely and when he was playing a lead or doing some vocals she’d crawl ever closer to him on the stage. She crawled on hands and knees right behind my kit. I looked down at her and she looked up at me with a “sssshhh” look in her eyes. She finally found a spot behind the backline of the gear. She got right behind the guitar players amp stack completely out of view of the guitar player and the audience, but in my plain view.
She started digging in the back of his open back guitar amp. After throwning a few pairs of extra strings and a tuner on the floor she found what she was looking for….the coke. She opened up the baggie, put it in her hand and snorted the shit out of it. She emptied some more and did it again. Then she just kicked back and leaned against the amp and started to get “that look” on her face. She was high as a kite and pathetic as hell.
I wonder how many bucks worth she snorted there because later the guitar player was very pissed at her. Having already gotten her goods I wonder if the guitar player got his after the gig…
mediaguru Boneheads, Gigs, Musicians
Years ago a rock & roll band I was in took a little trek to Kemmerer Wyoming to do a gig. Playing a gig in the Twilight Zone would be normal compared to this gig.
Our bass player liked to jump around on stage while playing. He would even do the headbanger move and flip his very long hair all around. It was quite entertaining. He also wore his pajamas for the gig. Gee I can’t imagine why these hicks from Kemmerer thought this was out of the ordinary.
The people in the audience just kind of stood against the back wall of the venue and just watched in disbelief. They looked like deer in your headlights. When we went on break they literally came up and asked: “Can you tell your bass player to stop jumping around? He’s too hard to watch.”
mediaguru Gigs, Musicians