BS: Nightmare Line Ups

Subject: Nightmare Line Ups
From: Sarah the flute
Date: 03 Mar 01 - 10:33 AM

What's the worst line up of "musicians" you've had the pleasure of playing with ??? I have recently depped with a school recorder, banjo and full drum kit on a 4 hour booking AAAAARRRRGH!!!! My worst dream come true

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmare Line Ups
From: wysiwyg
Date: 03 Mar 01 - 10:53 AM

Two banjos and one electric autoharp are not a good idea, no matter how loud the autoharp, how much I adore the players, or how skilled any of us were. It just isn't effective. Especially to sing with. Hymns.

I think what we were missing was a bodhran player.

Or Dr. Kevorkian.

I could go either way there.

What I did finally was get up and leave them to it.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmare Line Ups
From: Sorcha
Date: 03 Mar 01 - 11:14 AM

Small room with:
2 banjos each with their own mic/amp.
1 gutar with his own mic/amp.
2 fiddles right in front of them, un miced/un amped.

Took me two days to hear out of my Good Ear!!

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmare Line Ups
From: Peter T.
Date: 03 Mar 01 - 11:17 AM

Me by myself. Takes me days to recover!!yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmare Line Ups
From: Mr Red
Date: 03 Mar 01 - 11:39 AM

I once danced to Tiger Moth

Excellent musicians all wanting to be hip. But a dance band was not on their agenda.

Hardened ceilidh dancers were tripping over their own feet to the clever rhythms. :-(

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmare Line Ups
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 03 Mar 01 - 11:39 AM

I've tended to find it is the personel rather than the instruments that cause the problem. The worst nightmare I had was with a 3 piece band we put together for an £80 lunchtime booking in a pub. The line up was me: various strings and melodeon, Alan: a Northumbrian Pipe/ Whistle Player and Dave: a guitar player. We all sing a bit as well.

We knew each others playing and material and we had 1 run through were everything worked and it looked like it was going to be easy. The trouble was on the day, the guitar player turned up blind drunk and his playing was appauling. I'll never forget poor Alan trying to play Bridget O'Malley and trying to keep in time with the guitar - the tune became unrecognisable - ? a rock version?...

We got through but Alan and I spent 2 hours just wishing that the ground would open up and swallow us it was so embarrasing.

Jon

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmare Line Ups
From: GUEST,Dita (at work)
Date: 03 Mar 01 - 12:49 PM

Wasn't a paid gig but worst session I ever encountered was

one fiddle v six guitars (strumed)

My guitar stayed in it's case.

A fiddler I once played with turned up to play a wedding ceilidh with a guitarist he'd met at a session. "Where's the rest of the band" he asked. "Oh, it's just you and me, but I've got some CD's we can play along with .......".

love, john

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmare Line Ups
From: Hollowfox
Date: 03 Mar 01 - 04:04 PM

I was in the congregation at a July wedding, in a very small, urban, solid stone church. The air conditioners were turned off becaust you couldn't hear the priest when they were on. The young couple wanted to do everything in a big way, so they hired a brass quintet. The volume pasted us flat to the pews, man and boy, before the actual wedding even started. By the end of the ceremony it seemed like it was taking forever to get the congregation out of the building. I seriously considered passing each of the musicians a fiver (I wasn't rich then, either) to change the recessional to, say "Tiger Rag", just to get things moving.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmare Line Ups
From: Susan A-R
Date: 03 Mar 01 - 09:54 PM

Ah yes, space is an issue. I started learning to play the pipes in College (Wooster is a good Scots Prres college, complete with pipe band) When they had us learning (four or five of us) in a cement walled gym in the basement, I quit. End of great carer and any hope I had of learning circular breathing. I have also had some amazingly awful singing experiences. warbling/wobbling sopranos, basses like sheep, Aieeeee!

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmare Line Ups
From: SeanM
Date: 04 Mar 01 - 12:24 AM

I'm sorry... I saw this and the first thing that popped into my head was the line-up of Emmylou Harris and Eminem singing the collected works of Air Supply...

Sorry for the drift, and sorry for taking you into a nightmare of different proportions...

M

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmare Line Ups
From: wysiwyg
Date: 04 Mar 01 - 02:14 AM

I'll tellya what else does not work, and God forbid the man join Mudcat and see this, because he is VERY NICE... but an electric lead-type guitar picked like a trilling mandolin for bluegrass, MINUS the ability to count any two measures with the same number of beats.... it's too much even for me, after a very short while.

Oh and it helps us all stay confused that he will say "Do you know this one" and just launch into something sounding ezzackly like the last three things he played, but we have to guess the name, and none of us knows ANY bluegrass ANYWAY.

But he does show promise and I am determined to make it work.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmare Line Ups
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 04 Mar 01 - 04:41 AM

I first walked into the music session at Towersey one year to find 27 melodeons, 2 piano accordions, 7 bodhrains and a proper slide trombone, packed into the main bar, about the size of your average portakabin..... There may have been a fiddle or two in there, I couldn't hear. I found the song sessions in another building altogther, VERY quickly!!

As for singing lineups - don't even get me started!!!!! We have an alto that sings very loudly even if she doesn't know it, sings her own arrangements, regardless that it doesn't fit with what every other alto/instrument is doing and a descant singer who can't get further up than F#..... Oh, and a bass curate, who when pitching songs (we don't always have the organist), pitches them too high for the middle range, because he is paranoid about pitching them too low!!

LTS