Mine:
Back in late 94', I recorded several demos to be brought with me to Taiwan (mostly pop songs, as I knew that market couldn't stomach the industrial/techno stuff I was into at the time), done at my bandmate's home studio. Neither of us had the resourced to do proper vocal recording, so that had to be done at a studio. My bandmate recommends this guy (who we will call "the jerk" from this point on) who fronts this techno band and has a small studio where he also does work as a producer/recording engineer.
So, I gather my guitarist, my vocalist, and another guy who I was writing with, and head on over to the studio. To start things off, the jerk drools all over my vocalist (who is a petite, sexy but demure looking asian girl--and who happened to be my God-sister). He hits on her during the session and she was obviously not interested.
The jerk tells me he really likes my songs and thinks I'm a talented songwriter/musician--which is nice, BUT, this is where things turn sour. . ..
His favorite song of mine, a track titledRainstorm (BTW, this mp3 is HIS mastering--which sounds like complete SHIT. Even though the mp3 was captured from a cassette tape which he had recorded in addition to the master reel, it still sounds like shit for a cassette tape capture. The bass is COMPLETELY overblown--so be careful when you listen to it), contains a lot of key changes, and he disagreed with the chord I used on one of the key changes. And he INSISTED on changing that chord. I told him the chord is fine as it is. So what does he do? He proceeds to throw a FIT! He says, "Your song is too good to be ruined by that one f**king chord. I cannot allow you to make a fatal mistake like that and ruin what is a great song!" And then he SHUTS OFF THE POWER of the entire studio and just sits there sulking, refusing to go on.
Now, if I paid him to produce, I might have considered his point, but I was paying him to just record the f**king vocals and MAYBE master, so he was completely out of line to ask me to change my music.
I said to my bandmate, "Look man, this guy's your friend, and you said he was a pro. So what the f**k is he doing acting like a complete c**t?" My bandmate just shakes his head and said, "Yeah, I'll go talk to him and tell him I'll completely lose respect for him if he insists on being a dick."
So, what did I have to do? I had to SWEET TALK the f**ker and tell him that we'll do 2 versions of that song, one with his chord change, and one of the original. He grudginly accepted the compromise and said, "I know you'll never use my version anyway, but whatever."
Finally we finished the session when the sun came up--it lasted about 8 hours. I owed him about $350 USD for it. I wrote him a check which bounced (it was unintentional though--I was a starving artist/musician and had no idea how much money I really had left in the bank.)
That remains the single worst studio session ever. The only one that comes close to it was when a producer completely rewrote that same song's ending verse and completely f**ked it up--but that's another story. The song was bought by a big production company and used for a huge star at the time though, and I got paid well over a grand (USD) for it. For a first time songwriter, that wasn't bad at all.
How about you?
not sure if her husband would be to happy.
The singer had left the band with the drummer because was convinced the guy was a drumming god.
And lucky me...I was the MIDI-n-synth guy for the sessions.