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I don't have 'em so much anymore, since we now practice in my bandmate's apartment, but I've had plenty in the past. I think the worst was back in college, when we shared a college-managed space (basically the storage room of a dorm) with two other bands. Band X was our friends, and had a PA that they'd let us use. Band Z was a bunch of stoned jerkoffs who used to use both our & Band X's equipment without permission. They'd screw with the volumes on our amps, leave pedals plugged in so batteries would die (yet another reason to use adaptors!), and have unauthorized jam sessions with their friends on our equipment.

The highlight (lowlight?) was a show we played with Band X, our friends. We were all sitting around just before X went on, gettin' our guitars & stuff ready, when the lead guitar player for Band X opened his case to find all of the strings of his guitar broken, and blood splattered across the pickguard. We all did the math, and realized exactly who did the damage... that was when we all stopped leaving our instruments in the practice room. Then there was the time that the guitar player from Band Y broke down the door to the practice room because he wanted to practice, but was too drunk to call anyone and had forgotten his key.

We tried to get the college to intervene, but they had no-place else to put us, and we weren't willing to cave to a bunch of asswipes (in hindsight, a total mistake given the amount of stress it all caused). By the end, Band X had all graduated, so it was just Band Y and us. On the last day that we were in the space, as we were moving our stuff out, we hid the stacks of Penthouse mags that Band Y had taken to leaving around the space, and our guitar player (normally a very quiet & pleasant fellow) broke a bunch of their empty beer bottles around their drumkit. Not satisfied with that, he asked the rest of us to turn around while he peed inside Band Ys bass drum.

Not at all the most mature approach, I admit, but hey... three years of frustration will make people do funny things.

Anyone else got one to share?

The practice space we used in my old band was sort of the same kind of deal - a space shared by a few bands, thankfully all pretty respectful people. But the space was in an old warehouse in a rundown part of the city, miles from anywhere. Now this had it's advantages - it was a HUGE space with thick stone walls, so it had great acoustics and when I recorded us in there on 4 track the results were really nice sounding. However, in winter it was a fucking nightmare. No heating, no insulation, and yeah, we were pretty hardcore and rehearsed every saturday, without fail, taking a few weeks off at Christmas. Kind of difficult to play properly when your fingers are frozen up and you have on several layers of clothing.

Ah...fun times...

One foot of water

Gotta love South Florida.

Amp in parting lot...



...while raining...

Whenever the host of the practice invites women over....and they sit there all bored because I'm trying to teach the band a song.

PumpkinPieces wrote:Whenever the host of the practice invites women over....and they sit there all bored because I'm trying to teach the band a song.

Come on, young blood! You're supposed to flex for em first so they see you're a badass THEN you teach the song. Then their all like "oh what a take charge leady leaderson type!" BOOOOOOOOM.... laid.

Ugh - water horror stories abound. I remember the time (this one in a post-college practice space) that a ceiling pipe developed a slow leak... right above our powered PA mixer. It leaked for at least three days before we noticed... that mixer never worked properly again.

Then there was the time that someone left the practice space window (different space again) open in the winter, and all the pipes froze... and burst... when my bass was leaning against the wall. Shockingly, the bass was all right (let's hear it for old-school P-basses! That thing was built like a log...), but the case was destroyed.

Good times...

Brettski wrote:

PumpkinPieces wrote:Whenever the host of the practice invites women over....and they sit there all bored because I'm trying to teach the band a song.

Come on, young blood! You're supposed to flex for em first so they see you're a badass THEN you teach the song. Then their all like "oh what a take charge leady leaderson type!" BOOOOOOOOM.... laid.

Yeah. That's never worked (well, not for me, anyhow). Only thing worse is when bandmates think it's a good idea to bring their S.O.s (or friends) to a recording session. "Why are you playing it like that? Oh, that sounded cool when the mixing guy pushed that button. Push that button again! What's it do?"

And that's not a crack on girlfriends - that was from when our drummer had his best friend stop by while we were mixing. After a half hour of that, we had to gently (but firmly) ask the guy to leave.

Brettski wrote:

PumpkinPieces wrote:Whenever the host of the practice invites women over....and they sit there all bored because I'm trying to teach the band a song.

Come on, young blood! You're supposed to flex for em first so they see you're a badass THEN you teach the song. Then their all like "oh what a take charge leady leaderson type!" BOOOOOOOOM.... laid.

I was a Senior and high school and these girls were freshmen/sophomore. Usually I would do such things, but during high school we were super pressed for time and only had maybe 1 or 2 practices for each show.

Practice space whore stories.

sorry had to say it.

My horror story would be breaking up with my live-in girlfriend, when we had 6 months left on our lease.
I lived in my very small rehearsal space, on and off, for the next 6 months....and the place didn't have a bathroom.
Sleeping with a hi-hat pedal poking me in the ribs, with my face next to spilled beer stains, pissing off the balcony into some bushes.
Rock and roll.

(This was a long time ago.....long enough to find humor in it now.)

pretty typical - ours was pretty much constantly having it's door kicked in. this happened 2 or 3 times before anything actually got stolen... but when it did happen, they took the PA head, the cymbals, and a david eden bass head from the band we shared the space with. they left all the guitar rigs and our bass player's stuff alone. i guess they knew exactly what they were looking for.

jdavyd wrote:pretty typical - ours was pretty much constantly having it's door kicked in. this happened 2 or 3 times before anything actually got stolen... but when it did happen, they took the PA head, the cymbals, and a david eden bass head from the band we shared the space with. they left all the guitar rigs and our bass player's stuff alone. i guess they knew exactly what they were looking for.

Oof. Well, I guess they had a chance to browse around... d'oh.

FuzzyWuzzy wrote:My horror story would be breaking up with my live-in girlfriend, when we had 6 months left on our lease.
I lived in my very small rehearsal space, on and off, for the next 6 months....and the place didn't have a bathroom.

Ouch. I can't imagine living in any of the practice spaces I've been part of... although I know that there were people who were living there while we were practicing there (the growing pile of clothes and duffel bags was something of a giveaway)...

jrmy wrote:Oof. Well, I guess they had a chance to browse around... d'oh.

or they really didn't like 5150s... i'm really glad i didn't make a habit out of leaving my guitars there.

Bassist left all of my pedals and my amp (tube) in his freezing cold garage for 3 weeks!!! When we practiced at his previous house, his basement would get so cold I could barely play, and the cement floor would flood all the time and grow mold.

1,2,3, Pull Out! wrote:Bassist left all of my pedals and my amp (tube) in his freezing cold garage for 3 weeks!!!

He left everything in there...