Frequently at weddings and other simchas, guests will come over and ask to sit in with the band. Most of the time, although not always, they are (or claim to be) drummers. In my experience, they are usually not good. They can't keep time, don't play well, and even in the rare cases where they have some chops, they either rush or drag the beat. What is the point of this exercise? At best, the guest and band manage to get through it without any major trainwrecks, but more often than not, the band simply sounds bad while this is going on.
I'm not talking about the chassan sitting in with the band for a few minutes if he happens to play an instrument. (I have some great stories about those cases too, but not for now.) I'm referring to guests who, whether in the immediate families or not, feel compelled to impose their musical skills --or lack thereof-- on the captive audience.
A few examples:
Recently, I played one wedding where two of the bride's brothers and one of the groom's brothers all played drums. And, of course, they all needed to play during the wedding. One of them, who has had some experience playing with a live band sounded OK. Not great, OK. IOW, no trainwrecks. The other two, who had never before played with a live band were rushing the beat so badly that it was messing up the dancing. Even with relatively quick turns, this ate up 15-20 minutes of the dance set. It wasn't pleasant for the band or the vast majority of the guests who were not watching the brothers play.
At another event, the guest vocalist brought along a yeshiva bachur as his shlepper/sidekick (why he needed a roadie for a microphone is beyond me) and asked if he could sit in. The roadie was terrible. He couldn't keep time and played so loud it was painful to be on stage with him.
A few months back, I attended a wedding where one of the guests took over on drums during the second dance set. The fellow simply couldn't keep the beat. I don't know why the drummer, who was standing next to him, didn't immediately step back in and take over. It was painful to hear. And, everyone who was dancing had to have noticed. The family had spent thousands on the band, but got a sub-par second dance set because one of the guests felt compelled to indulge himself.
There are some bands or bandleaders who allow guests to sit in with them at weddings. Others have (or try to have) a "no sitting in" policy with regard to amateur musicians. I understand both sides. It's hard to say no to someone, especially if they're a family member of the chassan or kallah or if they are persistent. At the same time, no band wants to be in a situation that makes them look/sound bad.
The simplest solution would be if people stopped asking to sit in with bands at simchas. The music will almost always sound better if people would just let the professionals do what they were hired to do. Even if the guest is a good drummer, they should still let the person who was hired play the job. In many cases, the bands have arrangements of the tunes that the amateur simply isn't familiar with, and even when the band isn't playing set arrangements, it will usually sound "tighter" when the regular drummer is behind the drum kit. Obviously, not everyone will listen to this suggestion, but if an awareness helps to mitigate the problem even somewhat, it's an improvement.
I've hedged slightly in the previous 'graph ("usually" and "almost always") because there are occasions where the hired drummer is incompetent and the guest will do a better job. In my experience, this occurs in three different scenarios. The first is when a pickup band is put together for a busy date. Sometimes, the band owner has a hard time finding an available drummer and hires someone who isn't so good because he doesn't feel that he has a choice. (This is mistaken logic. There is always a choice in the NYC area.) This also sometimes occurs with the largest band, when they overextend themselves on a busy date (i.e. Sundays in June).
The second is when the "bad" drummer is the person putting the band together which happens occasionally. I call such gigs "International Date Line gigs" because the drummer is in a different time zone than the rest of the band.
The third is when a singer puts together a pick-up band for a concert. These shows are distinct from the full concerts where the musicians are all either extremely well-rehearsed or reading arrangements off of charts (although the client may not be aware of this). In some cases I've seen, the singers have put unqualified drummers --usually yeshiva kids-- on these shows for a variety of reasons. Often it's because they'll work for less money, sometimes it's because they're friends, and occasionally it's because the drummer's parent/relative is in the booking/promoting business and they're trying to curry favor with them. Needless to say, regardless of the reason, this is unfair to the organization promoting the show and to the people who have purchased tickets to the concert. It's also unfair to the musicians earning a living in the business who have their prices undercut by kids.
At one such concert, the drummer had no idea of how to end a song with a band. As a result, every song ended in a train-wreck as the singer tried to slow the song down to end it and the drummer kept playing at tempo. At the beginning of the show, the singer confessed to me that he knew the drummer wasn't good, but he was hoping that using him would get him preference from the boy's mother who is a concert promoter.
At another concert, the singer as a favor to a friend, put him on drums. I knew it was going to be a rough gig when the sax player pointed out that the bass drum was backwards. The drummer had a rack for his toms, and he'd mounted his kick pedal to the back of the bass drum and had it facing backwards (with the anti-skid spikes pointing towards him). The sax player earned double duty on that gig, in my opinion, because he had to conduct the drummer, who apparently couldn't count to three, throughout the performance.
Incidentally, the problem with guests wanting to sing with the band is also a huge one... perhaps later.
