Kid shows up for his first bass lesson, and the teacher shows him the notes on the E string. Second week, he shows him all the notes on the A string. Third week, the kid doesn't show. Fourth week the teacher says, "Where were you last week?" Kid says, "I had a gig."
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LOL!

I know that kid.

Bapu Am that kid..

And the next week he got fired from the gig for "playing too much".

True story...
 
A bunch of buddies of mine had a band. Kind of a hardcore type outfit but a little more technical than the average hardcore act. So their bass player left for whatever reason and they wanted to hire a good friend of ours. Really good guy (which is why the band wanted him) but he had never played an instrument in his life. Knowing that I had gotten other complete newbies band ready for my own projects and had actually been teaching their guitar player casually for years they asked if I could help. The guy in question was really skeptical and couldn't really understand why they wanted someone who had never played a note in his life but he was willing to give it a shot. I told him that I'd meet him at their rehearsal space before they had practice every week to show him some stuff but warned that we would have to do this for at least a few months.
 
So the first night I just wanted to show him how to hold the bass, pluck the strings and some basic communication stuff so when someone told him to play a specific note he could (basically "These are the frets, each fret has a number. These are the strings. They each have a name. Here are the names. If some one asks you to play at the X fret on the Y string just count up from the nut or the dots".
 
Second night I showed him some exercises. Just some chromatic stuff and a couple simple patterns.
 
Dude didn't need another lesson after that. I encouraged him to let me teach him some theory but we were both busy and he had already learned all their songs. He had his first gig with them the following month and was one of the most rock solid, if not simplistic, bass players in the immediate scene. Played right in time with the drummer and had MEAN power.
 
Astounding.

I had a band with a few friends in high school. No really, I had a few friends. Okay, I had one. Well, I had one that didn't always deny it. Anyway, our bassist had little or no experience and had the hardest time trying to learn the notes. We would show him where to put his fingers instead of telling him the notes to play. On one song, we decided that it was time for a bass solo. Hey, everyone else had played several by that point. I worked with the keyboardist for awhile and we created a bass solo for him that he could pull off. We taught it to him and he practiced it like a madman. He worked hard and rarely ever made a mistake in a gig. I think his aversion to learning just a little theory made his job much harder than it should have been. 
 
On the positive side, his big blond afro was legendary. When people saw that thing, they knew they were being rocked. 

UbiquitousBubba
 
On the positive side, his big blond afro was legendary. When people saw that thing, they knew they were being rocked. 

Bubba's actually a famous musician* that just hangs out with us mere mortals....
below is a pic of his bass player.
 

 
 
*Bubba's real name is Gregg Bissonette

UbiquitousBubba
I had a band with a few friends in high school. No really, I had a few friends. Okay, I had one. Well, I had one that didn't always deny it. Anyway, our bassist had little or no experience and had the hardest time trying to learn the notes. We would show him where to put his fingers instead of telling him the notes to play. On one song, we decided that it was time for a bass solo. Hey, everyone else had played several by that point. I worked with the keyboardist for awhile and we created a bass solo for him that he could pull off. We taught it to him and he practiced it like a madman. He worked hard and rarely ever made a mistake in a gig. I think his aversion to learning just a little theory made his job much harder than it should have been. 
 
On the positive side, his big blond afro was legendary. When people saw that thing, they knew they were being rocked. 

There was a very pervasive attitude amongst the punk/hardcore musicians in my scene that learning theory was something to be mocked or ashamed of. I used to get ragged on all the time for actually trying to acquire and share knowledge yet I also was lauded as one of the top players and songwriters in the city's scene. It was pretty darned twisted especially when people wanted to learn from me but would get sucked into that mentality of rejecting the finer points that would have helped them.
 
They were clinging to the old punk mentality that rejected all the highly polished and orchestrated music of the 70's and thus the theory used to create it. But what they were writing and aspiring to with their own music was a far cry from the original 3 chord, musical mindless noise rock of the early acts. It was basically metal and much more complex. Trying to explain that though to encourage a bit more thoughtfulness toward the music was of course... laughed off as ole Beeps being a fancy froo again.
 
Certainly not everyone was like that but enough were that it had a chilling effect. The largest proponents of that mentality of course were the vocalists and drummers who essentially relied on the other guys that they would make fun of to actually write the damned riffs.
 
lulz... good times for sure but a lot of strange thinking going on.