s&r and Midchuck, you have obviously never had to deal with a band member who wasn't solid on their part, and either couldn't or wouldn't do the work to get where they needed to be.

I played in band that with a couple of folks who were not big on practicing----Someone approached me with a season's worth of work for a small ensemble, just the three of us--the material that we did, plus bunch of similar but new. They both had "other committments" when it came to practice, but kept telling me they were fine on the new stuff.

Comes the first gig, and we fell apart completely--the guy who booked us held me responsible (literally--he held me by the collar, up against the wall) he told me to get the music together fast--went back and told them we needed to do a lot of work fast--They said, "Were the melody instruments, you're just the guitar player. You don't tell us what to do."

Next morning, I took my music folder down to the music department at the local college, asked around, and found two 19 year old kids who'd never heard the music before but were good sight readers. When I auditioned them, they sounded better than the other two, and by the third job, they knew the music cold--

The first two were really mad at me, but the booker loved it.