In Guildford a few years ago
My band have been going quite a while now, and whilst gigging up and down the country obviously we've played with a great deal of other local bands. Some have been genuinely excellent, some laughably terrible, most somewhere in between.

I think probably the worst was in a pub in Guildford. When they were setting up I noticed they had a fellow sax-player, so naturally I got chatting to him. It didn't take long for him to drop into the conversation that he sometimes found he didn't fit in well with the rest of the band, beacuse, sadly 'you can't tune a saxophone mate'.

When I got my saxophone, the first thing I learned was how to put it together. Then I learned how to make a noise through it. Certainly within the first half hour of owning the thing, the subject of tuning arose. In fact, compared to something like a guitar, tuning a saxophone is laughably easy assuming you have at least one ear and a hand, or reasonable facsimile of one.

Qutie how this chap thought he could play a gig on an instrument he not only couldn't tune, but DIDN'T BELIEVE EVEN COULD BE TUNED, quite frankly eluded me and when the time came around for their set, my breath was a few orders of magnitude less than bated.

What ensued I will never forget. It didn't matter that the saxophone player wasn't in tune, neither was anyone else. The drummer, clearly upset he couldn't compete with the rest of them for discord, made up for it by being twice as much out of time. They were bad, and while my initial instinct was to laugh, I ended up filled more with pity. Either they were so deadpan as to make Flight of the Conchords look like giggling schoolgirls, or they genuinely thought they were making good music.

I generally try not to slag off any bands we play with, goodness out first year or so resulted in some sounds that can only really be described as embarrassing, and anyone willing to get up on stage and risk looking like an idiot to create something that they hope will make people happy deserves encouragement. But in this case, I will make an exception. You shouldn't be performing if you don't even understand even one of the one fundamentals of music. How can you expect people to keep going to gigs if they have to put up with rubbish like that?
(WarneMarsh My priority for frivolity begets quality jollity, Thu 30 Dec 2010, 18:23, Reply)