I recently attended a wedding rehearsal dinner which featured a live
rock band of three young musicians. The event was outdoors (in
August), and was located at an exclusive and expensive B&B, with the
guests in dressy casual garb, befitting the special occasion.

There were several things I noticed about the band immediately. Their
attire was dirty jeans, limp t-shirts, old sneakers. OK, maybe that's
the "image" they desired to project…though certainly nowhere remotely
near the attire of the dinner guests.

All three band members made a bee-line for the bar as soon as their
setup was complete and started ordering beers. Ummm…well, it was
hot…but they continued to do this during their many breaks.

The dinner buffet was brought out, the guests filled their plates and
sat at their tables, as did the band members, sitting at a table near
the stage, that only had a few guests seated at it. After a bit of
time passed, the father of the groom (who was paying for the shindig)
got up to the microphone and asked, "Has anyone seen the band?" An
uncomfortable intermittent laughter flickered across the tent. He
followed that up with, "Can anyone play guitar?" with a muffled
mention along the lines of `that hasn't been drinking'.

The band immediately arose and got back to the business of playing.
For the remainder of the evening, the band breaks were not as frequent
and their path towards the bar, though still included some beer, also
included some water and soda. They did redeem their reputation a bit,
later as they finally did start "rocking" the tent and got the guests
to dancing. They really could play pretty well…but some may say the
guests were feeling pretty good by then (I wouldn't want the father of
the groom's bar bill for this event).

The lead singer did say at one point, close to the microphone, hence
most heard it, "I need a @#$%ing beer, is there an open beer?"

I heard since that the band was an acquaintance of the groom, so I do
not know the arrangements of how this gig was setup. Ultimately
though, out of the 125 or so guests attending the event, plus staff,
the overall impression for this young band was their lack of
professionalism.

You can only hope that they will see the faux pas of their evening and
move forward.

Anyone else have a band story on "what not to do"?

By Artistopia
http://www.artistopia.com