peteb

Punters go to see bands (or at a push singers or occasionally guitarists). The important thing is that they like the band rather than the bass player or any other individual musician (see above proviso about singers and guitar players). If you stand at the back and play perfect, consise basslines without an unnecessary note then the average punter will probably not notice you. But if that works for the band then it doesn't matter. If you want to get more attention from the audience then make sure that you look the part, move about a bit, interact with the crowd and the rest of the band, maybe even throw in the odd lick where you can get away with it. You will find that a lot more punters will notice you (hopefully in a good way)!

Guitar player / singer / band leader has a band (named after him – he seems to go by the name of Swampy). This band plays plenty of pub gigs and the odd bike rally, has a Facebook page and YouTube clips of them playing live (mostly ZZ Top covers it seems). The drummer then says he’s leaving and the bass player decides to follow. There are still plenty of gigs booked and the band leader wants to carry on with a new rhythm section. Therefore, our hero advertises for a bass player and drummer to play the same material that his band have played live many times to do gigs that have been booked on the strength of his previous live performances. The band will have the same name as that he used to play all these gigs in the past. He is saying that he is asking people to audition for an established band. I wouldn’t disagree…

I was always under the impression that live music (or at least guitar based rock) was more of a thing in Europe than here these days. At least, the pro bands that I know generate most of their income touring on the mainland. There appears to be a better club scene over there than in the UK. Certainly there seems to be a pretty good blues scene in Northern Europe and in Spain from my experience.

Hard to disagree with what Skank says above. FWIW, I don't think that rock will actually die out, nor will it turn into such a minority interest like jazz. There still plenty of youngsters who love rock (not the case with jazz), but not anywhere enough of them to make it the force it once was. And they are wearing G'n'R tee-shirts rather than Rival Sons! I also agree with Beato that kids will still enjoy live rock music when they experience it, but the difficulty is to get them to come in the first place when they have so many choices of what to spend their leisure dollars / time on.

But the thing is that in most towns / markets (or whatever) you are going to struggle to get three paying gigs every weekend. If you are in three different bands then you have a chance! Even if if both of these bands come off, I am still going to look to join / put together another band that plays an extra two or three gigs a month.

I'm currently involved in two start-up projects that specifically looking to gig no more than once a month. This is not because the members don't want to play live, just that they want to do something different but are also in other bands that gig a lot and that is all they can realistically commit to.

First of all, I would say that the Darkness do have a blues influence. What he is saying is that rock music has lost the mainstream because generally it has lost it the blues influence. A great band like Muse, who have hit the mainstream, are an exception but there are not too many around like them. There have always been hit producers and songwriting teams writing to a formula, but they have not had the stranglehold that they seem to have now. Notice how everything on the radio now hits the chorus before the 45 second mark? That was always a thing but no where near as much as now days. Repetition is key rather than creativity! Even the nu-metal stuff that gets out there tends to very much follows the same formulas. As far as your last point goes, if you remember the old greatest hits albums aimed at teenagers that you used to get in supermarkets in the 70s - Strange Kinda Woman and Purple Haze would be on the same compilation album as Wig Wam Bam and Tie A Yellow Ribbon...!

But they are trying to explain why

I think that one of the main points of the video is not that there isn't a vibrant metal scene (and other sub-genres) because there obviously is, but that this has lost the thread (i.e. some sort of blues influence) that linked it to the music that proceeded it and with that, no longer has any relevance to the mainstream. Modern metal has a strong underground following, but does not have crossover appeal to non metalheads in the way that, say AC/DC did with Back In Black nearly 40 years ago. Also, even music that on the face of it seems very radical, is actually rather conservative - using a limited number of the same producers, recording techniques, sounds, etc...

I know that it seems like everyone thinks that music was better when they were young, but do they have a point? Rick Beato is a music producer who has had a few hit records and now has a very interesting YouTube channel, where he explains various aspects of how music works as well as how the industry operates as well as series where he forensically examines how a number of great songs were recorded / written (from Steely Dan to Adele to Nine Inch Nails). Here he has a clip on why he thinks rock music what led to the decline of rock music and why much of today’s popular music (i.e. all Max Martin / Dr Luke and melodic math songwriting that dominates the airways) lacks the depth of that of twenty years or so ago, not to mention the stuff going back to the fifties (and long before). FWIW, I happen to pretty much agree with everything he says but wonder what anybody else who can take the time to watch the video thinks…

I imagine for the same reasons of everyone else who doesn't read - he didn't need to...

This was in a place where we usually get a decent crowd. We played there not so long ago, which may explain why we didn't get so many. Last week we played to a reasonable audience in a town an hours drive away where we have never played before, but the week before that only 15 people turned up...

If you can communicate that feeling to an audience (and I'm sure that you can), then you have one of the reasons why there will always be a demand for live music

You have to remember that you have lived all through the golden age of rock music. Things change - there are other things for people to spend their leisure time / money on these days, whereas in your time (and mine) it was predominantly music and movies. I still think that there is a viable audience for live music, just it will never be the same as it was up to 15 years ago. I've just come back from a local pub gig where we were complaining that we didn't have as big a crowd as we normally get. However, it was still pretty busy - just that there were only 100 or so people there rather than closer to the 150 we would normally expect. It was still by far the busiest pub in that part of town...

Chas was the pianist in Chas & Dave, but before that he was better known as a bass player in Head Hands & Feet and other bands in the 60s and early 70s

Just seen something on Facebook that Chas Hodges of Chas & Dave passed away this morning as a result of suffering organ failure after recently receiving treatment for oesophageal cancer. If remember correctly, Chas was a bass player of some note in the 60s, playing with Richie Blackmore among others (I'm sure that some will have more details or correct me if I'm wrong). My own memories of him was Chas & Dave playing before a band I as in at some corporate function gig at the Cafe Royale in London nearly 20 years ago. We used to joke that Chas & Dave had been our support band! Sad news...

How so?? A lot of the gear has changed, you're less likely to get in a fight with the PA crew and there is the impact of social media, but beyond that things have stayed pretty much the same in many respects.

I saw loads of bands at St George's Hall (a very nice old fashioned concert hall) in my youth. Most were loud with a great sound, some were too loud and sounded awful. It's no surprise that Yngwie fell into the latter category. Let's put it like this - for this type of music : loud = good / too loud = not good If you get a bad sound and turn it up then it sounds terrible. You need to understand your EQ and how everything works in a mix. Just because something is loud doesn't mean it should sound terrible.

Yep, that's pretty much what I was implying...

I think not...! If you don't like loud music then you are unlikely to stick around to watch a loud hard rock band. Similarly, if you don't understand the genre and walk in to a rehearsal room only to sneer at the guitar player's 412, or if you are a drummer who wants to play cymbals with your fingers, then you are going to get laughed out of the room (if you're lucky). This type of music is like any other in that you have to understand the genre if you are going to be able to play it properly...

The only thing I would say about that is you can still get people out to actually watch a band, but it is undoubtedly more difficult than ten / fifteen years ago. Apart from that I think that you are spot on. It seems to me that these days, pubs need to have a USP i.e. offer something other than just be a boozer on the corner of the street. This might be offering decent food, craft beers, a quirky atmosphere or a number of other things, including live music. This seems to have led to a number of pubs putting on bands despite being totally unsuitable or the landlord having no idea about what promoting / hosting a gig actually entails. Established music pubs (in the right area) where the landlord actually has to a clue generally tend to do OK.

Now where to start… I come from a land where valve amps & 412 cabs are standard, not to mention 410 (or 610 / 810) bass cabs and loud drummers. This is playing 70s/80s/90s hard rock and, yes, you do need to be pretty loud to be authentic. You might not like that, but frankly I couldn’t give a care less – you’re not going to come and see any of these bands and you wouldn’t have a hope in hell of getting through an audition to join one (even if you wanted to)! Now this not to say that there is not such a thing as too loud – there is always a compromise between volume and the room you are playing in. Frankly I do want to keep what is left of my hearing (quite a few of us have lost a bit of the top end in the ear nearest the cymbals but very few have tinnitus), so ear protection is a good idea. But the whole point was summed up by a punter who once told me, “you go to a pub and it’s like watching a band at St George’s Hall in the eighties”. A few years back I was in a covers band made up of some very capable players who were well known from the local scene in the 80s. We gigged for over 10 years, generally to pretty decent audiences. Funnily enough, there is one pub that we used to pack out where I also used to play with another band who didn’t get anywhere near the same sized crowd. With the second band, the landlord often used to complain that we were too loud, despite being much quieter than the band who got much more people into his pub. It seems that no matter how loud the first band was, it was never louder than the sound of the cash registers behind the bar. I should also point out that we used to turn plenty of gigs down because we knew that the pub wasn’t big enough, or we had heard that they had noise issues with neighbours. Of course, this is very much genre related. I recently did a load of deps for a R&B band where the guitarist used a small combo on a stand and I used a Class D amp and a couple of 112s. It wasn’t too loud, sounded fine and the band got loads of gigs in smaller pubs. Great fun and the band did well (and continues to do so). Horses for courses…

You don't come across as someone who is unlikable, but it maybe something you need to work on. Being able to get on with people is a big help in being a successful musician (at whatever level), just as it is in all other areas of life. Developing a stage persona is just part of the gig - something most of us develop over time (of course some are naturals). Usually it's just an extension of being yourself, only more so! Often the difference between getting the right gigs or not...

That maybe true, but even more talented musicians tend to be pretty extroverted - some outrageously so...! A mix of personalities can be good, but if someone is too shy they are going to struggle to cut it in a band.