Originally Posted By: jcspro40
Originally Posted By: Guitarhacker
Talk about politics and drama in the band.... you should play with a church group.


Excuse the saying, but Amen to that! ......In the end it soured me to a lot of things......


Maybe this should have been in the other thread about worst gigs, interesting things that happened, and musical catastrophes thread.... but I'll share it here since it is church related.

The church shall remain nameless for this account and same thing with the players. I was not playing actively with the band at the time. I don't recall the reasons.

However, the bass player was involved in an auto accident and was in very serious condition with shattered bones in his neck. I offered to fill the bass position until he was able to return. It would likely be months because he couldn't stand or speak and had a head brace they screw into your skull to keep your neck from moving.

Things went well for the first few weeks. But shortly lead singer girl didn't want me to have a mic. I was singing harmony in the appropriate places with the other singers and dared to ask for a bit of my voice in the monitors. She said it was "too much"....Then she told me not to sing on stage even without a mic because I looked "unprofessional" lip syncing. Ooooooh kay......that's when I first realized this was going to be "fun". I kept singing along to the music.

moving along....Let me describe the rig for the bass. The bass was plugged into a DI with a split output for the FOH and to a hot spot monitor with a 4" speaker for the player on stage. I could barely hear that 4" speaker so since the hot spot had an amp in it, I found an unused 10" floor wedge and placed it back by me on the floor so I could maybe hear what I was playing. The stage was not excessively loud but it was in the days before the "quiet stage" phenomenon swept the churches.

As a point of reference, I had it just loud enough for me to hear. Well below the level I would normally play it at. After the second week playing with that speaker, lead singer girl confronted me and said "Turn that thing down because it's blowing me away up here. She was 15 feet away at the front of the stage and the speaker was pointing away from her. This was BEFORE the service.... So during the praise & worship part of the service, I did the unthinkable..... I walked up behind her to hear what she was hearing..... and I could NOT hear my bass at all........ not from the monitor speaker I was using, and not from the FOH. She glared at me, I smiled back, and after the service, confronted me about that too....

So... I let it go like water off a duck's back.... and go to the church on Wed nite for the normal P&W band rehearsal. I get there and there's the bass, plugged into the DI, but no hot spot and no floor speaker. I ask.... no one seems to know. Apparently, it just up and vanished on it's own. Glances averted, mumbling about you need to talk to so and so who isn't there.... I talked with the guitarist for a while. He says, "man, I got nothing to do with this crap". his exact words. They start to get ready for the first song, so I get up and go to the spare equipment room and look into the loft.... waaa laaa... there's the gear. I pulled the speaker out and put it on the front of the stage by the girl singer's feet.... after she told me she didn't know where the speaker was or why it was missing....the look on her face was beyond words.... then I turned and walked out without saying a word and never went back.

You can find my music at:
www.herbhartley.com
Add nothing that adds nothing to the music.
You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.

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