Bass Diva

I did a fill-in gig last night, where I was a replacement bass player for a band that plays heavy, original music. This genre seems to attract egotistical, self-centred musicians (using that term extremely loosely). Why did I do the gig? I only know of two gigging bass players in town who use five-string basses, and I'm one of them. The other is the regular player for this band, who couldn't make the gig. The singer is a friend of mine, so she asked me to help and I said yes. It's certainly not my genre of choice, but I can appreciate the music and have no problem with being able to play it.

Egotism in musicians is one thing I cannot stand. Arrogance about your chosen genre and your playing just cut you off from the rest of the musical world. That's why these guys form such a clique - they've got nobody else left who wants to talk to them.

I got the CD on Monday night. I asked for charts - why should I go about working something out from a recording when these guys know it already? They wrote it. Okay. So Thursday night is when I get handed a few pages of tablature of the riffs. No rhythms, no form, just a bunch of numbers. To me a chart is a sketch of the chord structure and a form showing the order of sections of the song. So basically the tablatures were handy for what the riffs actually were, but I was still at square one with everything else.

There was a full rehearsal with the band set for Saturday afternoon, with the gig Saturday night. In true last minute form I worked out the songs Saturday morning. I turn up to the rehearsal completely prepared.

I sit there and watch them fart-ass about setting up. [Tick, tick, tick.]

Both guitarists make eye contact with each other, but the only band member to look at me is the singer. Cues, anybody? I asked for them at the start, with specifics of where I'd need them. But no. [Tick, tick.]

The singer stops the band: "Is Vic playing the right bit in this verse?"
The guitarist: "Nuh"
Thanks for letting the singer point that out, asshole. You should have communicated with me there. [and the Bass Diva time bomb is set to explode]

"Oh yeah we do another song. It's really simple. Just follow along."
..."Oh yeah there's a bass solo in it."
So, Bass Diva is right on exploding point. What do you want the solo over? Verse or Chorus as you've got them so far?
"Whatever, man. Just make it up."

I left my explosion until after the rehearsal and the singer copped the full brunt of it. I'll keep it simple here - "arrogant fuckwits" "guitarheads" and "better things to do with my time even though they might not" was the guts of the explosion.

So I did the gig. Did my job, played well. Had fair few comments about how good it was from people in the audience. And did not recieve one thankyou from the band. Not one member. I don't think they even said goodbye when they left.

Was it worth it? I earned a total of fourty fucking dollars for all of the shit. But I know one thing now:

There is no place for arrogant cunts in my life.