Quitting A Gig

[;ivlunsdystf]

Joel P- Your bizarre 'friend' that you described reminds me of Ali G on HBO (or one of his other characters like Borat or Bruno). But you don't say anything about a camera crew following him around, so he must have been a real person. What a tale.

[mertmo]

I did it once. Quit in the middle of the session and informed the band that they
would have to finish their record with someone else. This is after MONTHS of
gruelling work on their album. We had agreed on a bid amount for the whole album project, but they hadn't paid me anything in months (largely my fault for just waiting for them to pay me something and not standing up and asking for it...). Not only had they not paid me anything, they were being extremely difficult to work with and unreasonably demanding of my time and efforts.

The band was led by two girls, one of them was just a textbook virgo - nuerotic
as hell, couldn't let go of ANYTHING. It probably drove me nuts because I'm a
virgo and I trip on the same shit, but she couldn't get past even the tiniest
decision. It made me crazy. What really bothered me, was they wanted me to
produce the record, however when it came to doing the actual work, they would never take any of my direction, going against everything I would suggest. They didn't trust me at all, which was very frustrating because in my humble opinion they needed my help very badly. Also, they kept saying things like "we want a real sounding record, not something built up with a million overdubs. We want to do things in one take, one pass, etc..." But the reality is they were'nt nearly good enough musicians to do that, so we ended up piecing it all together painstakingly.

One night, they just pushed me past my limit, and it took a long time to get there
'cause I'm pretty patient. The nuerotic girl was singing a vocal and she had nailed
this part, but she didn't think so. She wanted to punch in the part, and I just
knew in my soul that she had already nailed it and would never be able to hit it
that good again. I tried to play it for her and convince her that she should just
leave it, but she would not have it. I had no extra tracks, a destructive punch
was the only option. I begged her to defer to my judgement. "isn't this why
you hired me?", etc...

She insisted and when I punched her in, she blew the take....
I snapped. We were working under a nightclub and I just stopped the tape and
turned around and said, "let's go upstairs, we need to talk."
We sat down at a table and I basically told them, "I am done working on this
record right here and now. You owe me X amount of money and when you pay
me in full you can have your tapes."

I have never regretted it, nor have I ever felt guilty. I was getting abused and
it was a good lesson for me about standing up for myself. It's quite cathartic to
write about actually, haven't thought it in a long time.

The only thing I do regret is that we were almost done with the whole thing, like
one vocal performance away from starting to mix. Someone else mixed it and
their mix just wasn't too great. The band took the album to Europe and toured,
sold like 19,000 copies of it. I was not given any production credit, which was
B.S., but what are you gonna do? I'm still glad I did it, although I would probably
not do the same thing today. I'm sure I would finish the session first now.

The happy ending is that I still make music with one of the guys in the band, we
are still good friends. And actually after a couple of years, the whole group and I
were back on good terms. So luckily no bridges were burned.

[joelpatterson]

[stands up on table and cheers] Good for you, Mertmo! WAY TO GO!

Tatertot,

You may be onto something... Does Ali's wife weigh about 400 pounds? One day he brough her in, and swear to God, as I saw her settling onto the couch--the big cool overstuffed couch that everyone has--I thought, if she breaks the thing, that's coming out of the deposit. I honestly thought she would crack the frame.

i'm taking karate. but i pulled a muscle the other day from kicking too hard.

I do have some experience with this. There is a secret, or maybe not a secret but a way to work it. If you think of it as your foot making contact with the object, you're taking the wrong approach. What you need to do is see your foot traveling through space, on its own accord, by its own rules. The fact there's a 2 x 4 in that same space--well, tough tacos for the 2 x 4. It sounds like a mind game, just a whole pretending thing, but in actual practice the 2 x 4 will give way to the momentum of your travelling foot. It sounds ridiculous, I know. You'll just have to trust me on this one. Envision your foot moving through the 2 x 4. Otherwise, kicking a 2 x 4, yes it's gonna hurt!

[cgarges]

I did it once.

Wow. What a story.

So, did they pay you what they owed you?

Man, it's messed up that I feel nostalgic about a story involving a destructive punch.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[mertmo]

So, did they pay you what they owed you?

Yes, they paid me what they owed me and they paid me VERY quickly!
They had some small label ties at the time and I think they leaned on the label
for the money. Good investment for the label, since they turned around and
sold a ton of records in europe. Based on how much instability and infighting
I witnessed, I thought the band would never last long enough to even put the
record out.... boy was I wrong!
Lesson learned: that was the last full length record I produced for anyone with
real potential on which I did not negotiate a producer's cut of the future revenue...

[Brian]

I've done it more than once.
Once I had a tour with three lead singing girls, young, hot, and sisters. The daydreams I used to have! They used to look at me smiling and wonder, anyway, "That Time" came and it was too much for my masculinity to handle. They started talking about bringing a Neve 6pack to rehearsals. That was the straw. I knew a very skilled female engineer and switched her out as my stunt double. They all thanked me.
Thjen there was the "videot band". A band comprised of video people. They wre making a documentary of another famous band. They had videos of their band. Jeeeeez!
OK so, we set up in a Trident 80's series based room, drums first, the drummer asked me to make him sound like Stuart Copeland. Clue #1. I told him to start playing like him first.
The sax player wasn't, clue#2. They suggested highliting him, of course.
Guitar had the absolute worst tone I'd heard to that date for a distorted guitar, so, clue # 3 lets do multiple tracks of that, sure.
Bass should've remained in the lake, had obviously just picked it up but must've had some of Jaco Pastorius genes, NOT! clue #4.
Singer a very sexy young woman with, nevermind. She wanted to "barter" if you know what I mean. Normally, OK, but, this time I'd already been "primed", so, no dice! clue #5 Oh she tried soooo hard to get me to "work with her".
I NEED MONEY!
I got to mixing and it was all well and good after a million punch-ins, and I couldn't take it anymore. I just made quick mixes and stopped. There was either gonna be some real angry sex in the control room and who knows what else would ensue as a repercussion, or, I was gonna duck these clowns.
Wish I'd thought of it sooner, the ducking.
She was HOT though.