The "Stupid Stuff the Audience Says" Thread

[Unleash The Fury]

In that case, the guy seemed really nice, but also something was a little bit off, you know. Like he'd make a joke, and we'd chuckle, and then he'd follow it up with "No seriously...". His musical style was not at all what we were going for with the band, and it became evident pretty much right away, then we were kind of in that classic awkward situation of "how long do we jam with this guy before we break the news?" Usually, I try to get that out of the way as quickly and unambiguously as possible, but this guy was really desperate to join the band, and it just made everything really awkward. When we told him "thanks, you're good, but we just aren't interested," it got really weird when he acted like we were messing with him and refused to leave my house for the next ten minutes.

Last time I went looking for a drummer, I got some really interesting phone messages and a few weird conversations. It's probably too recent to share anything publicly, but one dude assaulted me when I told him he wasn't really what we were looking for. I decided after that point that even though we were no longer doing auditions at my house, I was going to have to vet people a lot more before even meeting face-to-face. I don't care how desperate I get to fill a vacancy, it's not worth having an unstable dude try to bite you.

I know what you mean! I play in a metalcore/deathcore type band currently and we were auditioning drummers. I told the guy over the phone that we were really heavy, so if its something you think you ca........"oh yeah i love heavy shit where do you live ill be right there!!!"

The guy shows up with no sticks. Whatever. We give him sticks and he gets behind the kit and hes holding the sticks the classic way, like one hand to the side and holding that stick through his middle and ring finger. As if hes trying out for a marching band or jazz band. I was cringing so hard and the whole band instantly knew he wasnt the right fit.

I just gave him the usual "alright well we got a few other guys who wanna try out but uhhh..... Well keep in touch!

 

[Unleash The Fury]

In that case, the guy seemed really nice, but also something was a little bit off, you know. Like he'd make a joke, and we'd chuckle, and then he'd follow it up with "No seriously...". His musical style was not at all what we were going for with the band, and it became evident pretty much right away, then we were kind of in that classic awkward situation of "how long do we jam with this guy before we break the news?" Usually, I try to get that out of the way as quickly and unambiguously as possible, but this guy was really desperate to join the band, and it just made everything really awkward. When we told him "thanks, you're good, but we just aren't interested," it got really weird when he acted like we were messing with him and refused to leave my house for the next ten minutes.

Last time I went looking for a drummer, I got some really interesting phone messages and a few weird conversations. It's probably too recent to share anything publicly, but one dude assaulted me when I told him he wasn't really what we were looking for. I decided after that point that even though we were no longer doing auditions at my house, I was going to have to vet people a lot more before even meeting face-to-face. I don't care how desperate I get to fill a vacancy, it's not worth having an unstable dude try to bite you.

I know what you mean! I play in a metalcore/deathcore type band currently and we were auditioning drummers. I told the guy over the phone that we were really heavy, so if its something you think you ca........"oh yeah i love heavy shit where do you live ill be right there!!!"

The guy shows up with no sticks. Whatever. We give him sticks and he gets behind the kit and hes holding the sticks the classic way, like one hand to the side and holding that stick through his middle and ring finger. As if hes trying out for a marching band or jazz band. He attempted to play what sounded like some metallica song. I was cringing so hard and the whole band instantly knew he wasnt the right fit.

I just gave him the usual "alright well we got a few other guys who wanna try out but uhhh..... Well keep in touch!

 

[marcwormjim]

He auditioned twice?!

 

[auntyethel]

The South African metal scene is almost exclusively populated by brutals bands with screamer vocals. We're a lot less heavy with only clean vocals, music more akin to 90's Dream Theater (sort of, kind of, much worse obviously). After a set, a guy comes up to us and tells us we're really good but would be much better with a screamer instead. Can't imagine a better fit.

 

[TedEH]

We recently just found a new drummer too, and the process was definitely painful. I dunno how this turned from stupid stuff the audience says, to stupid things said during drummer auditions, but I'm down.

Lots of "yeah, I normally play jazz, but I'm starting to learn some metal now". Lots of "I can totally learn this" attitudes, which is great, but not what we want right now. Most of the guys who came out didn't know how to play/jam any of the random cover songs we suggested. No Metallica, no Megadeth, nuthin. Had to sit through an awkward System of a Down cover at one point since that was the most metal song the guy could come up with.

Actually had a pretty funny experience while auditioning a guy recently-
He came in to "just hang out" while we jammed 'cause he said he wasn't ready yet- which is fine, we had sent him some songs but he was too busy to really learn them, whatever. I think we figured he'd just know some cover tunes and we could jam out and it'd be fine. I mentioned to him on the way that I had been filling in on drums just to be able to jeep jamming until we find a guy, so when we got the the jam room, he insisted we jam without him first, which I didn't think was a good idea, but he insisted, so we went through a few songs. As soon as we started jamming, his face just sort of dropped - like "ah man, I thought he said he wasn't really a drummer". Completely intimidated the guy I think and put him on edge the whole time once it was his turn, so I dunno if his drumming was off cause he was trying to compete with me, or that his nerves were shot from having to try to match what I just did, when I have something like 9 years experience with these songs. Lesson leaned I guess - always let the new guy go first.

 

[bostjan]

Also, some people just get nervous at an audition, as in they behave like crazy people- but then you find out later that they are okay. I'd say that everyone gets nervous at an audition, actually, but most people act it out by talking too much, talking not enough, fidgeting, etc., but when I lived in Detroit and would run an ad in the alt press looking for musicians, I can honestly say half of the responses were from people who were genuinely "extra." ITKWIM.

One guy introduced himself to each person in the band using a different name- and each name was totally different, as in different nationality. "Hi, I'm Pablo." "Hi, I'm Claude." "Hi, I'm Sigfried." "Hi, I'm Bob." WTF is your name, dude?! At first I thought he was trying to be funny. But then, everything he said was just so over the top, I knew that the whole thing was going to be super funny to talk about later, but that the audition was going to be a waste of everyone's time. The interesting thing was that this dude could really sing impressively, except he had this weird sort of Tommy Wiseau accent that came through strongly in his singing voice.

I'm guilty myself, of not really strictly following my own protocols. If I'm auditioning people for a band, I always start out with "Here's a list of influences/songs we jam to/bands that sound kind of like us, here's what we are trying to go for as a band, here's what we are looking for from you, here's what our schedule is generally like, etc." But after umpteen auditions, I usually devolve into "the information is in the ad," or "here's our youtube/website/whatever," and obviously, the overall quality of communication drops both ways. When I audition for another band, I usually start out too quiet, and come off too timid at first. I feel like I've aced a few auditions, not because of me so much as because the audition was laid out in a very unambiguous way, and that taught me how to set up auditions after that, but man, after being so careful to lay everything out in the most pleasant format I can think of, there's always two or three really rough auditions in a row at some point and it's just so hard to keep it together after that.

I'm sure Jared Dines has a video of how typical auditions go.

I used to play in a pretty fun band, and we often had people invited on stage to jam a song or two, usually people we barely knew. Sometimes the people had a hard time fitting into the groove or whatever, but there were a few people who totally blew me away, like, dude, this random guy can wail!

 

[prlgmnr]

I tried out on drums for a band the other day, and I tell you what, I feel a lot better about it now.

I managed to tell them my actual name and everything.

 

[bostjan]

I wonder if I could do a hidden camera show where I try out for different bands and act like the weirdest dude possible at every one and see if the band members would even react.

I tried out on drums for a band the other day, and I tell you what, I feel a lot better about it now.

I managed to tell them my actual name and everything.

That automatically should place you in the top 50% ... unless you introduced yourself like "Hi, I'm @prlgmnr , former drummer for The Who!" or similar.

 

[LeviathanKiller]

This thread just gets better and better