Bardagh
Well-known member
Springing off the "Weirdest Gear Deal Ever" thread, I figured lots of guys on here have funny and bizzare stories of the people they've met in band member tryouts or even members of bands they were in.
I will begin.
The late 90's/turn of the millenium was a trying time to be playing death/black metal, especially where I was from in Louisville, KY. My two friends and I, about a year out of high school, were trying to start a real band. At the time we were calling it Vivisection but later decided it sounded like a vegan hardcore band name and changed it to Coronach. We had already started writing songs and had a little repertoire of some covers we could all play through. I played guitar and did vocals, my buddy Mike played guitar, and our friend Adam (a real nut deserving of his own post) played bass.
Everybody knows the hardest thing about forming a real metal band is finding a drummer. There really weren't that many people on the Internet at that point in time. I had been on local BBS's and using AOL, IRC and shit since the early 90's so I already had exhausted those shallow waters. As all the rest of you old bastards know, what you had to do was print out photocopies of flyers with the tear off phone number tabs (with your home phone on it by the way), staple them up in the places where musicians and other miscreants hung out and hope for fate to do you a solid.
Well, we were super stoked to actually get a phone call one day. This guy Jason was also stoked to have found us. He was super excited about all the same shit we were into like Carcass, At the Gates, Death, Dark Tranquility, Amorphis, Emperor and so on. He said his kit was a little rough and he was still developing his skills, but that he was a solid drummer who could grow with us since we were all young and improving. We were all kind of crazy and had sick senses of humor and so on, and he picked up on that and seemed like he was on our wavelength, so we set a time to bring our stuff over to his place and jam.
We showed up and I got kind of a weird vibe off him as soon as he opened the door. He was kind of a weird looking dude but hey, metal is not a beauty contest. He invited us in and took us downstairs. He had the run of a full size basement including an unfinished space that was totally underground where his drums were set up. So far, so good! His drumkit was indeed very rough, but we all had shit gear at the time so we didn't care, we just hoped he could play.
However, it took a while to get to the point of actually playing.
We were happy to shoot the shit a little bit, have a laugh and what not, but he was intent on really dragging things out, pulling all of his tapes out and making us watch videos and it was just getting a little annoying. To make matters worse, he started talking on and off in this weird high pitched voice, especially to try and creep you out with graphic gay "jokes." Our bass player was, up until that point, the gayest acting person in the group so he seemed to take this as a challenge and tried to make this dude more uncomfortable than he was making us. It kept escalating.
Ultimately Mike and I just plugged in and started playing to get the show on the road. I think part of this dude's reticence in jamming was that he really could not fucking play. He couldn't play any of the stuff we told him we knew, and he couldn't pick up on any of our original stuff. He could just kind of dilly dally with sloppy blast beats and inconsistent kick drum rolls until he quickly tired out. We were hardly great musicians, but he was not even on our level. Still, we were so thrilled to just have some percussion we played for a while and told him we'd be happy to jam again.
This apparently really got him excited and he felt that since we accepted him, he could finally "loosen up" around us. So after we were done playing he started going extra hard with the graphically gay stuff and the weird voice. Adam traded more barbs with him until it seemed he had kind of outdone him. Then Jason disappeared into his bedroom and shut the door.
We packed up our gear and came back downstairs to chat before heading home. Dude's door was now open but the lights were off, and just a soft warm glow was coming from within. Then in his creepy gay voice he called out Adam's name, and then came waddling backwards, bare ass naked out of his room with a LIT CANDLE STICKING OUT OF HIS ASSHOLE. The asshole candle was providing the light.
We yelled "What the fuck?!" and ran up and out of the house while he called after us "What's wrong guys???" in that weird voice.
Eventually we actually did meet up with him a few more times because we were so desperate for a drummer. He never got any better at drums though. I wish I could say the candle up the ass was the weirdest thing about this dude. His family was in some kind of weird sect/cult and a few years later we ran into him under kind of disturbing circumstances where I think he may have been keeping some chick in his house against her will.
But I digress! Don't you just love meeting new people?
I will begin.
The late 90's/turn of the millenium was a trying time to be playing death/black metal, especially where I was from in Louisville, KY. My two friends and I, about a year out of high school, were trying to start a real band. At the time we were calling it Vivisection but later decided it sounded like a vegan hardcore band name and changed it to Coronach. We had already started writing songs and had a little repertoire of some covers we could all play through. I played guitar and did vocals, my buddy Mike played guitar, and our friend Adam (a real nut deserving of his own post) played bass.
Everybody knows the hardest thing about forming a real metal band is finding a drummer. There really weren't that many people on the Internet at that point in time. I had been on local BBS's and using AOL, IRC and shit since the early 90's so I already had exhausted those shallow waters. As all the rest of you old bastards know, what you had to do was print out photocopies of flyers with the tear off phone number tabs (with your home phone on it by the way), staple them up in the places where musicians and other miscreants hung out and hope for fate to do you a solid.
Well, we were super stoked to actually get a phone call one day. This guy Jason was also stoked to have found us. He was super excited about all the same shit we were into like Carcass, At the Gates, Death, Dark Tranquility, Amorphis, Emperor and so on. He said his kit was a little rough and he was still developing his skills, but that he was a solid drummer who could grow with us since we were all young and improving. We were all kind of crazy and had sick senses of humor and so on, and he picked up on that and seemed like he was on our wavelength, so we set a time to bring our stuff over to his place and jam.
We showed up and I got kind of a weird vibe off him as soon as he opened the door. He was kind of a weird looking dude but hey, metal is not a beauty contest. He invited us in and took us downstairs. He had the run of a full size basement including an unfinished space that was totally underground where his drums were set up. So far, so good! His drumkit was indeed very rough, but we all had shit gear at the time so we didn't care, we just hoped he could play.
However, it took a while to get to the point of actually playing.
We were happy to shoot the shit a little bit, have a laugh and what not, but he was intent on really dragging things out, pulling all of his tapes out and making us watch videos and it was just getting a little annoying. To make matters worse, he started talking on and off in this weird high pitched voice, especially to try and creep you out with graphic gay "jokes." Our bass player was, up until that point, the gayest acting person in the group so he seemed to take this as a challenge and tried to make this dude more uncomfortable than he was making us. It kept escalating.
Ultimately Mike and I just plugged in and started playing to get the show on the road. I think part of this dude's reticence in jamming was that he really could not fucking play. He couldn't play any of the stuff we told him we knew, and he couldn't pick up on any of our original stuff. He could just kind of dilly dally with sloppy blast beats and inconsistent kick drum rolls until he quickly tired out. We were hardly great musicians, but he was not even on our level. Still, we were so thrilled to just have some percussion we played for a while and told him we'd be happy to jam again.
This apparently really got him excited and he felt that since we accepted him, he could finally "loosen up" around us. So after we were done playing he started going extra hard with the graphically gay stuff and the weird voice. Adam traded more barbs with him until it seemed he had kind of outdone him. Then Jason disappeared into his bedroom and shut the door.
We packed up our gear and came back downstairs to chat before heading home. Dude's door was now open but the lights were off, and just a soft warm glow was coming from within. Then in his creepy gay voice he called out Adam's name, and then came waddling backwards, bare ass naked out of his room with a LIT CANDLE STICKING OUT OF HIS ASSHOLE. The asshole candle was providing the light.
We yelled "What the fuck?!" and ran up and out of the house while he called after us "What's wrong guys???" in that weird voice.
Eventually we actually did meet up with him a few more times because we were so desperate for a drummer. He never got any better at drums though. I wish I could say the candle up the ass was the weirdest thing about this dude. His family was in some kind of weird sect/cult and a few years later we ran into him under kind of disturbing circumstances where I think he may have been keeping some chick in his house against her will.
But I digress! Don't you just love meeting new people?
