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Word of Advice…if you’re a musician don’t do this!

I had something happen the other day that I’ve never experienced before and left me completely bewildered and astonished.  I’m not out to sabotage anyone’s career, (and this person who is involved is obviously doing a fine job on his own anyway) so I’m going to avoid using any names, but this is an interesting enough story that is worth recounting. 

I was in a rehearsal on Friday with this band.  The bass player for the group was a sub for the usual bassist, and he had a little bit of an attitude from the get-go.  He was a good player, he had a nice groove to his playing, and I was thinking while we were rehearsing the first couple of tunes that he’d be a good bassist for my Identity Crisis group when we needed a sub.  The rehearsal wasn’t the most organized I’ve ever been involved with, but we were working on some new material and the leader was trying to workshop the music a little bit.  We got to the third tune about an hour into the rehearsal, and halfway into rehearsing the song, the bass player said “You know what, this isn’t really my thing, I can’t do this.  The music is totally fine but this isn’t my thing.”  He then stood up and proceeded to pack up to leave! The leader said, “You’re leaving me in a tough spot here, the gig is on Monday,” to which the bass player replied, “Well, that’s plenty of time to find someone else.” In my experience it can be hard enough to find a decent bassist 3 weeks in advance, let alone 3 days! Then, the leader pointed out that he was paying $100 for the rehearsal space, and for the bassist to WALK OUT ON THE REHEARSAL was going to make the rehearsal a total waste.  I couldn’t believe it when the bassist said, “Everyone else in the band is here, you’re not rehearsing for just me.” What I find the most ridiculous of all is that the leader send the bassist the music at least 2 days before the rehearsal, and he never even looked at it – he said he was too busy because he was “in the studio.”

Word to the wise – it doesn’t matter how good you are  or think you are, walking out in the middle of a rehearsal is just plain stupid! It really doesn’t take a genius to come to that conclusion.  My only explanation for doing something so rash is that this person must have either been on some medication or suffering from some serious emotional problems.  I thought that maybe this guy was some sort of amazing well known bassist that I had somehow never heard of, but when I went to his website it didn’t look like he was anything that special.  Even if he was, that wouldn’t give him permission to act the way he did toward a bunch of total strangers that were trying to make some music happen.  A true professional musician would never act that way. 

At least now I can say I’ve seen just about everything!!!

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