[LAU] Anyone have any anecdotal experiences like this to share (horrible singers in the studio)

[Victor A. Stoichita]

On 2 May 2013 22:47, Jostein Chr. Andersen <jostein at vait.se> wrote:

> On 05/02/2013 03:21 AM, Bearcat M. Şándor wrote:
>
>> http://youtu.be/OWoQpzdB5gs
>>
>> Has any of you had experiences like this in the studio? I realize this
>> is exaggerated but i fear it may not be as exaggerated as i hope.
>>
>
> I was guitarist/arranger/composer/**whatever in a backing band for a
> project a record company dude had back in 78-'79 or something, and I was on
> the most terrible gig I have experienced ever. The keyboardist, which
> happens to be my brother, and the drummer was so drunk (nerve medicine)
> that they could not stand properly and the gig ended when the drummer was
> falling forward over the drums, and he took the toms and a cymbal or two
> with him on the way to the public. He did not manage to raise properly and
> ran and fall straight to the first row from the scene. But this was not the
> only scandal that evening. Some shit happened earlier in the gig.
>
> The record company dude insisted that his wife should sing this evening,
> and she was supposed to sing a song in the middle of the gig. It was a very
> easy song (the Credence song, Hello Mary Lou which was renamed Hello Jerry
> Lou for the gig) and we had rehearsed it without her, so this was the first
> time we heard her. When she started, it was no less than terrible. She was
> so off pitch that a human ever can be, so I gave our sound engineer a
> signal and he understood at once that he should just fade her down to
> minimum and let me take over. The record dude was so angry at me that he
> and his wife just disappeared from the gig when we tried to save the rest
> of the song. He also refused to pay us for the gig and i did not see him or
> hear from him before he divorced from his wife a few years later.
>
> Anyway, you already know how the gig ended. I never played with my brother
> and the drummer again in public and I have a strict rule that I never drink
> before a session.
>
> Jostein
>
> ______________________________**_________________
> Linux-audio-user mailing list
> Linux-audio-user at lists.**linuxaudio.org<Linux-audio-user at lists.linuxaudio.org>
> http://lists.linuxaudio.org/**listinfo/linux-audio-user<http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user>
>

Nice stories ! Thanks for sharing !

Do you know Florence Foster Jenkins
(1868-1944)<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Foster_Jenkins>?
Hers is a weird career: the main reason for her success - and for her
making it into posterity - was that she sang so badly with such a great
confidence. Hear for example her rendition of the Queen of the Night:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ubiUIxbWE

Someone pointed it to me while I was researching on musical humor. It
certainly makes many people laugh.
It is unclear however whether F. Jenkins realised *at all* her lack of
talent. This could make things less funny, and even pathetic if her
misjudgement was caused by some psychological trouble (however, nothing
else stands for this hypothesis - she seems to have had a perfectly normal
life otherwise). Some people also hold her as a model of perseverance.
Perseverance characterizes unrecognized geniuses, but it could be even more
heroic when you're no genious at all! Others still say that she had built
up a deliberately parodic character, which she liked to take offstage, into
her social life, etc.

Anyway, if she had sung in the modern studio depicted in Bearcat's video,
things would probably have turned out differently.

Victor
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.linuxaudio.org/pipermail/linux-audio-user/attachments/20130503/dcf1cd30/attachment.html>