Singers suck!

Muad'zin : your summary on bass players sounds amazingly familiar. I like our bands bass player but he's notoriously showing up late to rehearsal, NEVER ever changed his strings, and tries to get along with as little investment in gear as possible. His recollection of the parts he should play is even worse than mine. :rolleyes:

Edit: but he shows up to gigs on time everytime bringing a huge toolbox so that even major changes to the venue design would be possible.
 
unix-guy said:
Seriously, singers for us are like drummers for Spinal Tap!
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They spontaneously combust or have bizarre gardening accidents? SWEET!

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Yes there's nothing worse than a frustrated ex-guitar player picking up bass and playing trillion of notes to 'impress'. Rather than working with the drummer.
 
ksandvik said:
Yes there's nothing worse than a frustrated ex-guitar player picking up bass and playing trillion of notes to 'impress'. Rather than working with the drummer.
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Mmmmm..I reckon there's a few 6 string bass players around that'd could give 'em a run for their money!..
 
Carl said:
Mmmmm..I reckon there's a few 6 string bass players around that'd could give 'em a run for their money!..
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Sure there are but I would not play in such bands.

Me thinks any new bass player should be forced to watch 100+ hours live footage of Pino Palladino playing before they are allowed to go up on the bass playing highway.
 
I'd settle for them just watching 100+ hours of Adam Clayton. You need to be willing to be the absolute bedrock of a band upon which every one else can do their thing. The unsung hero who keeps the band together on stage. If you want to do more then just that, fine, but not until you first lay down that bedrock.
 
People who aren't dependable suck, it pertains to every member of the band.
Over the years:
I've had guitar players want to leave a gig because they 'didn't feel good'.
I've had drummers blow off gigs because they 'forgot they had something to do'.
I've had bass players double book and cancel close to the gig because they 'messed up their schedule'.
All band members can let you down.

I'm a singer/guitar player and the only time I miss a gig is if I absolutely can't sing. Period. It's happened probably 4-5 times over 25 years.
I have a vocal coach that has taught me how to sing with a cold, but not everybody is prepared to deal with that situation.
And nobody 'has it, or they don't'. My vocal coach has many many famous students and lots of them have to cancel gigs if they get sick.
If you've never been a lead vocalist with a busy schedule, then you're just not qualified to give an opinion.

There certainly are plenty of singers just bag out when they don't feel good because it's an easy excuse, and yes that sucks. But any band member can do that (and has).

As ML Sound Lab mentioned, being a singer is hard. That's 100% true. I've been just a guitar player, and I've been just a singer - being a singer takes WAY more discipline in your everyday life.
I am constantly (every day of every week) keeping my distance from sick people, being OCD about washing my hands and sanitizing, ensuring I drink enough water, ensuring I get enough sleep, and ensuring I do proper vocal maintenance. There is a physical requirement to being a singer that you cannot control.
If my guitar plays like sh*t, I change the strings and/or have it set up. If my voice sounds like sh*t, not so easy. I likely will need to do hours of warm us exercises and temper my talking on a gig day, just to squeak through the gig (I'm singing ~3 hours a night).
Singing is VERY physical, and I often think about going back to just being a guitar player because singing adds a level of stress to my everyday life, trying to ensure I'm ready for every gig.

@unix-guy - it does sound like your singer needs to go. Before you give up on a gig (as a singer), you need to sleep, hydrate and warm up...and then assess if you can make it through the gig. It does annoy me when singers 'give up' too easy, as some of us work hard to make it through each and every gig.
 
Easy solution for this problem: Bring back Instrumental Music!

Bach, Beethoven, the Ventures...they didn't need singers...
 
I hope its for the better and that you're not going to regret it later on. Like with Tony Iommi trading in Tony Martin for Dio, only for Dio to say f*** this when it looks like an Ozzy reunion is in the cards, only to have that one fall through as well and Tony Iommi having to bring Tony Martin back into Sabbath. Nothing worse like having to eat humble pie and be forced to beg a diva to come back to the band again. Although in the case of Tony Iommi he was lucky that Tony Martin was such a humble guy.
 
i'm a singer. never missed a gig, never lost my voice and I sing 100% of the show. proper technique is paramount to getting through sick times. it takes dedication to practice and warmups and especially good health habits. if you can't commit, you gotta quit.
 
favance said:
Easy solution for this problem: Bring back Instrumental Music!

Bach, Beethoven, the Ventures...they didn't need singers...
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Ahhhh Frank Zappa said he only used vocalists and wrote words (actually, he called singing 'pitched mouth noises' lol) in order to be more commercially successful, and would have loved nothing more then to compose and produce instrumental music.
 
Singers' biggest enemies:
* drugs
* alcohol
* smoking
* unhealthy food
* no exercise
* no sleep
* no yearly medicals
* not washing their hands
* doing stupid things with their throat such as singing even if it hurts
* singing outside their capacity
* singing while very sick (like a cold)
* sometimes genes
 
I can sympathize with all of the horror stories here about unreliable musicians and have had my share of dealing with them. However, it's been decades since I've had any real problems with lazy, unreliable musicians since, starting long ago; I simply refused to associate with those types of personalities and cannot stand to have my time wasted.

I just cannot deal with those types of musicians...at all.

Fortunately I've been lucky enough to have been involved with many professional musicians who definitely go 'the extra mile' at gigs when they are sick, have unexpected personal issues turn up, etc., particularly one singer I did gigs with for years (she was a combination of Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin :cool:). She sang thru colds, fevers, and she insisted on going through with a long scheduled show last summer a couple of weeks after a major gall-bladder operation (a sudden health issue came out of no-where). We let her know that we'd have no issue cancelling the date, etc. but she insisted on seeing it through. She did awesome.. a little off her game but came through big time.

One gig we did she was clearly very, very sick with the flu and again, insisted on playing. She did say that she 'might have to bail suddenly' and for me to dust off several tunes I sang to cover 'just in case'. Halfway thru the night she said "you're up!" and darted off to get sick in the bathroom. Three songs later and she was back up there wailing away. Certainly not 100%, but fantastic sounding nonetheless.

Last April there was another very nasty flu going around here. Everybody was getting it. The bassist showed up for the Friday night sets and you could tell he was mega-ill but didn't want to bail on the gig. There wasn't a band-room, quiet space, etc. for him to just try to relax between sets so he just lied down in a fetal position on the grungy, hard floor which was curtained off to the side of the stage to conserve his energy and try to settle himself. Respect...!

Kudos to those die-hards...makes me proud to associate with them.
 
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ksandvik said:
Singers' biggest enemies:
* drugs
* alcohol
* smoking
* unhealthy food
* no exercise
* no sleep
* no yearly medicals
* not washing their hands
* doing stupid things with their throat such as singing even if it hurts
* singing outside their capacity
* singing while very sick (like a cold)
* sometimes genes
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Great list, the one that affects me the most is lack of sleep
 
Stratoblaster said:
I can sympathize with all of the horror stories here about unreliable musicians and have had my share of dealing with them. However, it's been decades since I've had any real problems with lazy, unreliable musicians since, starting long ago; I simply refused to associate with those types of personalities and cannot stand to have my time wasted.

I just cannot deal with those types of musicians...at all.

Fortunately I've been lucky enough to have been involved with many professional musicians who definitely go 'the extra mile' at gigs when they are sick, have unexpected personal issues turn up, etc., particularly one singer I did gigs with for years (she was a combination of Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin :cool:). She sang thru colds, fevers, and she insisted on going through with a long scheduled show last summer a couple of weeks after a major gall-bladder operation (a sudden health issue came out of no-where). We let her know that we'd have no issue cancelling the date, etc. but she insisted on seeing it through. She did awesome.. a little off her game but came through big time.

One gig we did she was clearly very, very sick with the flu and again, insisted on playing. She did say that she 'might have to bail suddenly' and for me to dust off several tunes I sang to cover 'just in case'. Halfway thru the night she said "you're up!" and darted off to get sick in the bathroom. Three songs later and she was back up there wailing away. Certainly not 100%, but fantastic sounding nonetheless.

Last April there was another very nasty flu going around here. Everybody was getting it. The bassist showed up for the Friday night sets and you could tell he was mega-ill but didn't want to bail on the gig. There wasn't a band-room, quiet space, etc. for him to just try to relax between sets so he just lied down in a fetal position on the grungy, hard floor which was curtained off to the side of the stage to conserve his energy and try to settle himself. Respect...!

Kudos to those die-hards...makes me proud to associate with them.
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Key word in your post: "professional musicians"
 
Muad'zin said:
I hope its for the better and that you're not going to regret it later on. Like with Tony Iommi trading in Tony Martin for Dio, only for Dio to say f*** this when it looks like an Ozzy reunion is in the cards, only to have that one fall through as well and Tony Iommi having to bring Tony Martin back into Sabbath. Nothing worse like having to eat humble pie and be forced to beg a diva to come back to the band again. Although in the case of Tony Iommi he was lucky that Tony Martin was such a humble guy.
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Tony Martin was great in Sabbath!

I love that band, but I really appreciated how they got a little more "modern" sounding starting with Seventh Star (which was really not a Sabbath record except in name) through Tyr.
 
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