Everybody who has ever been in a band has their own stories and tales about life in the rehearsal room.
Often these rooms are cheap rented, half condemned, premises in some industrial area in the more dodgy part of town. Usually, no one but musicians would even consider entering these buildings. But as an amateur musician, you’re not spoiled with having a lot of choices, so therefore you accept to pay rent for what could basically be described as a “hell hole”. And of course, music is too much fun to let any discomfort from a disgusting and/or potential hazardous environment stop you!
Another common thing is to share the rehearsal room with another band, in order to reduce costs. This raises some potential interesting questions: “Who will rehearse at what time?”, “Who has stolen/borrowed my distortion pedal?” or “Who of you fuckfaces are using my 1000 EUR amplifier without my permission?”
Right now we in dePhaser are very lucky to have found a good rehearsal room in central Malmö, where we are very comfortable. Actually this environment is quite fresh, although Daniel sees it as his job to lower the standard to a more “rock n roll level”, by leaving behind used snuff, half finished glasses of wine and dead spiders (yes – you read correctly – dead spiders!) But apart from this, no spontaneous outburst of asthma or similar diseases is expected. We share this room with another band (we also suspect one or two occasional mice), and this has worked out very well so far. We suppose this is mostly because the other guys are a bit older, and are therefore easier to deal with than snotty 15-year old wanna-be punkrockers, who needs to “borrow” your equipment all the time.
But we in dePhaser have through the years collected some strange and funny stories from our lives in the rehearsal room. Below you can read two of Johan’s stories. We will later fill up with more stories!
“The filthy room” by Johan:
“At one time with an earlier band of mine, we were rehearsing in a building which held maybe 10 other rehearsal rooms. We shared this room with another band, and in order to keep track of which band that should have access to the room at what time, we had a calendar on the wall, where each band wrote down when they intended to use the room. At one time the other band called us and asked if they could use the room at a time which we had already booked. We were not happy about this, since we had serious problems finding times where the whole band was available for rehearsal. So we actually said no to their request – they then called us back and asked if it was OK, if they could see to it that we could use one of the other rooms in the building at this time? Some questions arose from this – why couldn’t they themselves use this other room, for example? But we didn’t want to be too stubborn, so we agreed. It turned out later that the other band had an important rehearsal with a famous Swedish musician (Totta Näslund, R.I.P.), with whom they should also perform with later the same week. When we arrived to rehearse in the other room, we understood why they didn’t want to rehearse with the celebrity in this room… That room was nothing short of a waste container…
Musicians in action?
Have you seen that scene in the old Star Wars movie, where the heroes are almost crushed to death in a garbage compressor? Where Luke Skywalker is pulled into a pool of dirt by some swamp creature? – That is what that room looked like! You COULD NOT see the floor from all the waste! McDonalds paper bags, paper cups, old newspapers, food remainders, toilet papers, unidentified liquids and stains, banana flies, living insects, dead insects… The equipment was also set up totally random. Normally you put the drum kit in a corner, and then set up the amps and PA-speakers along the walls or in the other corners. But here it was like the guitarist had just waded through the waste, a few feet into the room, and the just dropped his amp down. The drum kit sat firmly in the middle, half buried in trash. We did go on with the rehearsal, but to say the least, we were not happy with the other band…”
“The PA Trap” by Johan
STOLEN !!!
“This was with the same band and in the same building as in the earlier story. But at this time we were sharing the room with some young kids, we believe they were some kind of feminist punk rock band, but we’re not to this day sure of what label to put on their music. However, we were sure of that they were using our equipment, because all volume and eq settings were different each time we should rehearse. And what especially irritated us was that the volume and gain was increased to ridiculous levels. We were very annoyed, and since they didn’t care about any angry notes left by us, we planned an alternative method, to “make our point”. At this time we had a PA system which consisted of two active speakers (approx. 300-400 Watts) and a small mixer. We had set it up so that you could just power the mixer up, and then also the speakers were powered. So you basically walked in, flipped the power switch on the mixer, and the whole system was live. Since the other band was using our PA, and with extreme volume/gain settings, what usually happened was that feedback from the mices started almost immediately. We decided to use this against the other band. We took our worst, most feedback friendly mic, and put it INSIDE one of the speaker cabinets (please note that the power was off at this time). The mic was plugged into the mixer, and all gain and volume was maxed. Then we went home… The next time we arrived, there was a big “FUCK YOU” note left on the mixer. The feedback from that mic, must have been like one millions hellhounds howlin in your ear! Ahh – sweet revenge!!! The other band eventually got back at us in the end, because when they left a few weeks later, they also stole the other guitarist’s BOSS OD-1 overdrive pedal which is now considered a bit of a rarity. But that must have been one epic feedback, when they casually walked in, and flipped the switch on OUR PA-system…”
