Worst injury I played with was when I fell out of a train* and broke my right pinky. My whole hand was in plaster, except for my thumb. My then band were supposed to do a demo recording so I played with a thumb pick instead. The hospital must have set my pinky wrong because whenever I ball my hand it kinda ducks underneath the ring finger.
Ironic fun fact, 25 years later I fell from my bike and broke my left pinky. That I could not solve so my then band had to postpone a gig.
* I have no recollection how it happened, all I remembered was sitting in the train on a seat next to the door, next thing I woke up in the hospital. I suspect that I got pushed out by someone at a station when they were trying to exit the train.
The only thing worse than singers are guitar players.
I disagree. guitar players can be divas too, but I'd say in most cases we are the most driven bandmembers. We want the thing to succeed, sometimes against better judgment. We push the other bandmembers to the point where they become so annoyed with us that they start sabotaging the band out of spite. We tend to be the most anal about our sound. Where others will cancel things if they feel a little sick, we have be almost dying before we cancel. The only exception to this and actually worse then a singer is the loud obnoxious asshole guitarist, whose 2 4x12 100w stack just has to absof***inglutely be turned up to 11, or else...... His (it's usually a he) counterpart though is the loud obnoxious asshole drummer, who absof***inglutely has to hit the drums like a B-52 bomber has to hit Hanoi, and who forces the other bandmembers to turn their amps up beyond 11 as well. I knew one shining example who was so loud that the guitarists tried constantly to find amps that were louder then the ones they had because they could not match his volume. In vain I might add.
But I reckon the one bandmember that sucks on average the most are bass players. A good bass player is wonderful, he or she creates the bedrock upon which the band can do its magic, words cannot express how much I appreciate a good bass player. Both one who is rock solid and just plays the basics right, vs one who can do more then that and make his or her lines swing. I'm blessed to know a few good bass players like that. Unfortunately most bass players aren't good bass players. They're guitar players who suck at playing guitar and who got stuck with playing bass. Now some of these former guitar players took to the instrument and mastered it, Chris Wolstenhome and Geezer Butler come to mind, but most deep down in their heart still want to play the guitar instead. Or worse, they're people with no talent who just want to be in a band so they got stuck with playing the bass. They don't bother to learn their instrument well, they don't bother to learn their lines, their discipline during soundchecks and shows is atrocious (don't get me started on bass players during soundchecks
), they jump around on stage like crazy and whack their instrument forcing me as a FOH tech to clamp down on their signal with the strongest compressors I got and from a guitar player's POV their worst sin, they don't invest in their gear. They find the cheapest bass they can get, and that's usually it. New strings? Pff, it still has the ones they bought it with. Their own amp? Pff, they just use the one in the rehearsal space and what's available at a gig. Some nice bass pedals or an actual quality bass? Pff, that dips into their tattoo/beer fund. In fact most of their gear is usually borrowed from guitar players.
Good bass players rock! But most bass players suck!
