today, my band and I managed the whole music for a wedding.
It all started when Lukas told us about a wedding planer who needed a band for a wage of 200€. So we agreed- or in latin words: pecunia non olet! (Money doesn't stink)
So we met two times to just practice those 11 church songs a bit and felt well prepared for the church. The names of the songs were sent by email (by the wedding planer) and one song had an alternative text which was sent, too. So we just learned the songs and the single song with the specific text as well.
The wedding started at 1pm so we met at the church at 11am to build up the drum set, the amps and all that stuff. We just played through a couple of songs to make sure the instruments and my voice fit well together.
Exactly 5 minutes before the event started the priest came up to me and told me to organize a "pensive" impro to calm the guys down after the ring part of the wedding.
I told Lukas and Jo, our guitarists, to improvise.It was not too hard for them- i mean, we all improvise a lot when the band meets.
It started: We played our first song when suddendly a girl came from the bench and told me that they all had a different text version of that song. i looked into the small book and realized: they changed the textes of ALL songs!Doesnt seem like a big problem at all, you think: "go and just sing the text as it is written" but the problem is that we arranged the songs different: we had more or less Verses, we had freakin awesome solos to introduce the songs, we had different endings to just give those boring chruch songs a specific note of our taste.
So i just continued singing that song - with the new text.
After that, i told the others quietly that they changed the textes of all songs. So when we tried the next song we realized again: the texts arent just different: whoever wrote those "Verses" down, they didnt fit into the song!
I really tried hard but you cant put 9 syllable in a line of 6 possible syllables. (e.g. try to sing "What a nice Wedding" on the tune of "Ghostbusters"- and good luck! )
Ok. Most of the time the text worked.
Next song: jesus, they even changed the fuckin order!!! I was so close to just grab my neighbors guitar to ram it into the husband! Those bloody bastards!
We wrote down the number of the songs in our book, not the title. so we couldnt just change the order without having a couple of possible numbers until we found the right song. Incredible!
The next two songs .. well, acceptable. with a lot of whispering we could organize the songs in the new way. Soooo, now came a non-churchlike song- chosen by us, accepted by the wedding planer: Nothing Else Matters!
Lukas started with the clean guitar intro, and later my voice part started. As we all know, nothing else matters is not just an awesome song, but a song which needs time to unfold its power. So i sang verse 1 and 2 ... and 3. To shorten the song- at least a bit -we put the first solo (clean one) after the third verse. So when i just got ready to continue after the solo the priest came over to me, tapped on my shoulder from behind (shokin!) and said: "hey guys, finish your song. We dont have that much time" i gave lukas a sign to fade out.
Horrible. a priest just interrupted Metallica.
With a small grin i told myself to not freak out, to stay cool, to not do a pig squel into the micro to let my anger out.
2 Minutes later, the priest came over again. "ok, so could you just play 1-2 verses of that song you played just before?"
I replied "THAT FUCKING SONG HAS A FUCKIN NAME!!! NOTHING ELSE MATTERS by METALLICA!!!!!!"
No, I didnt reply. I told lukas to just fade into verse 4 and the "never cared for what the do" part. When we got interrupted again: guess this is enough Metallica for today.
i sighed.
We continued. The priest held a long speach about what love is and ended like: Love is spelled L for Losing yourself, O for opening for eachother, V for ... what ever and E for eternity.
Eternity is love.
...
..
oh, i guess the priest stopped his speach to show us to play. Well, an "Amen" or "thats all i got to say" or anything better than that ending would really help.
last song: Stairway to Heaven (our choice). This was supposed to give the whole thing a deep, finishing note of strong faith.
We did an awesome work - even if the church was empty right after the solo.
Dont think "omg you guys must freakin suck!" - we had no mistakes no "wrong-tones" in any of songs. Just this bloody organisation messed up all of our sound.
The wedding planer came to give us our wage. She told us that she sent us an email with the new texts and the order- no, madame, you didnt, i replied.
So we split the 200€- 50€ for everyone- and were just happy that it was over. It's like "Are you Scared?" for money.
I put the money quickly away. Money can't balance this feeling of being fucked.
After all, I am happy that we did the best in this situation. Usually the organisation for our bands works better. We showed the people that we can improvise and we showed them a few ideas of our style.
but i was not proud of the money. I never do anything for the sake of money. I do it because of fun, but thats not what i got.
I know that Fucking sucks man because we had a battle of the bands at a youth church function and my band was playing master of puppets the preacher made us cut it short so they could determine the winner for their gay talent show we never got to the bad ass solo because they wanted to determine a fucking winner, then we didn't even place in the contest. So i know what it is like to be cut off at the knees on your favorite song.
Lukas94 wrote on Nov 5th, 2009 at 4:10pm : Thats bad...
I think the priest should get to hell for interrupting Nothing else matters. This song is epic!
I agree completely. He might has well have just unplugged you guys and said you were taking too long.
Funny to play metallica in a church !
you could have played also "sympathy for the devil" or "highway to hell" ...
I have played once in a whorehouse for money, and it was more fun !
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