Oct 242011
It’s Monday morning. Perhaps you don’t feel like going to work today. Think you got it bad? Think about the quartet in this video? Think someone in rock has or has had it even worse than them? I bet someone does. Who might that be? What job is worse than that of the quartet introducing Saturday morning cartoons?
I look forward to your answers.
While this isn’t meant to be a slam against religion, I suspect that touring with a hardcore low to mid-level Christian rock band would be pretty horrible. Just think – all the hard work, endless travel, low pay, greasy spoons, and numbing ennui without even the prospect of crazy sex, booze, drugs, partying, and other rock’n’roll hedonism. That’s hell.
It must be said, the worst job in rock is better than flipping burgers.
That quartet’s tailor.
That guy who vacuums out the portajohn near the little league field can’t be too happy.
I should amend that to the guy who vacuums the portajohns after a concert like Woodstock Umpteen. I suppose they have been documented as not being that unhappy, really though.
The worst job is being the roadie who has to blow coke up Stevie Nick’s arse.
Being the guy who had to clean out the cages on the ZZ Top Worldwide Texas Tour!
Each time the crowd roars when the Boss announces Max Weinberg’s name, the drum tech seethes because he knows that when he accidentally dropped the snare drum down a flight of stairs that one time, the resulting sound had infinitely more soul and swing than Max’s playing.
How large an imaginary shovel would you need to shovel all those pretend cow pies?
Yep, that sounds bad but I bet the ER paramedic who had to pump out Rod Stewart’s stomach didn’t have much fun either.
It seems common that when a band’s guitarist quits/gets fired/dies, his position is often filled by the guitar tech. That means that a guy who is fully capable of playing all the songs spends his life tuning and handing the guitars to someone else. I don’t know that that makes it the worst job, but it can’t be a fun job. I wonder how much those techs get paid.
I’m thinking the cellist who dedicate his/her whole life to endless hours of practice learning the masters like Bach or Elgar, only to end up on stage with Metallica or whatnot suffocating in dry ice smoke.
THAT’S an especially good one among some a pile of good entries!
If rock ‘n roll ever gets into university curricula and actual career paths develop this role may be a well-trod path for aspiring rock stars.
I actually live down the street from a woman who is one of the world’s greatest viola di gamba players — total medieval stringed instrument nerd expert woman. Anyhow, she was visiting my pad a few months ago and we were making small talk, and *somehow* the topic of 70s stadium rock came up. At which point she blithely told me that she toured with Ritchie Blackmore, during the later years of Rainbow, I believe. She told her Ritchie Blackmore stories like you would expect a medieval stringed instrument expert to tell them — which is to say, she seemed completely unaware of who Ritchie Blackmore was. I was dumbfounded. For some reason her reflections seemed like a great unearthed insider Rock story — even though her reflections on Blackmore were mainly along the lines of “he was a giant pain in the neck” and “he never paid me on time,” and that sort of thing. I keep thinking I should interview her for RTH, as part of some kind of “extremely narrow perspectives” series or something.
As the drummer for now-defunct Minnesota band Creation, Nick Andopolis, once said, “I used to picture myself on one of those hydrolic drum risers, but now I’d be lucky to be the guy who pushes the button for the drum riser…”
TB