That's great, I am on board with your ethos and aesthetic, it's refreshing and inspiring. We wanna come up, just need a couple months to wrap some new music up.
As for opening for a tribute band, for me it beats being part of a typical LA live venue line up featuring unrelated random bands. Our friends in the tribute band draw an amazing crowd and we're lucky we've been able to capitalize on it in the past. It's not my preferred setting but for an occasional local gig it means playing for a bigger crowd.
Just throwing this out there for discussion. What about a band like Bent Knee? They are trying to do it the old fashioned way by touring touring and more touring. They are travelling across country (and Europe) in a van playing crappy clubs for the most part, but…….they seem to be growing an audience. Whether or not they will “make it” remains to be seen, but this seems to be a model that might work for them. Consider The Source might be another similar example. They tour tour tour, and keep building an audience. Neither band promote themselves as “prog”, but both have played prog festivals and have prog audiences (even if their audiences don’t know it). In the early 00’s bands like Porcupine Tree and Umphrey’s McGee did the same thing. Toured their asses off and eventually built an audience. In the case of Umphrey’s, the first time I saw them was at a local brewery to a crowd of about 20 people. But….each time they came back to town the crowd got bigger and bigger. Porcupine Tree were the same way. The first time I saw them in Chicago, there were maybe 50 people there, but they kept at it and eventually grew a large audience. Of course all of these examples are bands that have a full time commitment and do not have side / day jobs. Curious what people think of these examples?
I think what you are describing is not exactly what Tributary Records has been describing, but rather scenario #3 in my post earlier in the thread. And I happen to think it's a perfectly good way to go - IMO, being a better live band makes any band a better band, period, and you can only improve as a live band by doing shows. Early on, I think bands should take whatever gigs they can get, and play whatever the situation demands, even if it's covers.
What Tributary was describing is the old-school method for bands with original material, of capturing a following in the band's hometown market (by gigging, but also getting recordings out there) and really cultivating a strong local fanbase before branching out.
Also, not for nothing, but PT and Umphreys developed their followings in a different era (late '90s/early 2000s) from what we have now, even though that probably doesn't feel like that long ago for many in here.
Last edited by Facelift; 08-01-2016 at 03:15 AM.
We would love to have Bent Knee come play here if they get out to the west. Any good touring band, art rock, prog, anything good within their genre. In my opinion, cover bands are killing the original live music scene along with electronica. The majority of the youth culture have been mesmerized by the electronica staging, lights, bubbles etc. It's where lots of hot chicks are hanging out and I suspect most are there for the scene and not really the music.
The tribute bands are taking a huge slice of the live music pie, most not realizing it, but it's crushing to original acts. There are just too many of them. I'm not saying they shouldn't exist, but a couple of good ones touring the world would do fine... like The Musical Box or the Pink Floyd tribute guys are good... but I don't see going to something like that more than once a year. I'm talking more about the bar band playing the same stuff over and over, and not even playing it that great. It's giving live music a bad name. It's redundant, un original, lacks creativity, doesn't sound great... and the youth culture is labeling it old folks music... and they see all the money going into electronica and the pretty girls, so they go there.
Jazz is also in bad shape... worse than classical music.
/snip/
Being around Prog for decades, it seems that the challenges of moving a project forward are increasingly difficult as the years go by. I'm referring here to bands that are actually playing out live, touring etc... not just releasing material via the web.
From conversations I have had with many genre musicians, I am hearing the following...
1. Lack of dedication for any number of reasons, other distractions, families, money etc.
2. No audience.... or not enough to justify working on a project for a year, practicing relentlessly to play for
15 people.
3. Lack of appreciation outside of your own appreciation of accomplishment.
4. Venues not usually booking new Prog.
5. A general lack of motivation for all of the above reasons or more.
/endsnip/
I'm on the other side of the pond, but I'd say your original set of reasons are pretty sound. The only thing I'd add to is your point 4. Venues aren't usually booking new ANYTHING - it's not just Prog bands. Audiences are conservative and want to hear what they already know. As audiences for a particular genre get older, they seem to want to hear material that reminds them how they felt when they were younger. I'm not knocking that, BTW, I understand it - but that's why we have so many covers bands and tribute acts getting gigs and attracting audiences, but so little new music. Promoters can't make a living from 15 people per night, so they book conservatively.
It's also harder to get an older audience out to hear new bands. We want to sit down rather than stand. We want to be able to get a drink or eat something. We want to be going home in time to get to bed before midnight.
Artistic worth doesn't come into it. All forms of music that were once popular find themselves being less successful, more niche with the passing of time and less new stuff comes along, because the people who might create it are focused on something else.
That doesn't mean we don't get new stuff. Nor does it mean it's no good - some of it is brilliant - but it's often from people who had financial success in music when there was enough money sloshing around to permit support of experimentation by bands that sometimes evolved into commercially-viable product that then earned income and perpetuated the process. They have a public status that helps them attract an audience for their next venture. Yet they also find their audiences are diminishing, that they play smaller venues and earn less.
I'm in between bands right now, due to temporary illness. I've been using the time to ponder how a 58-year old man might pursue creating and performing new music - to write the material, assemble the musicians, learn how to perform it and get the gigs. It's an interesting challenge. I'm only able to see a path that involves it being done purely on a hobby basis.
On the upside, although there are fewer places to play and smaller audiences out there, there's less competition trying to do it, too!
Change is the natural order of things, and all things must pass.
You talk about building a local audience. I have a guy who works with me whose daughter is a country singer. He manages her and her band. She is actually very talented and has a solid band behind her. She has basically done exactly what you said by building up a local following and can pack clubs in Southwest Michigan pretty much any night of the week. She also occasionally gets to open for some pretty big time country stars in large venues as well. But……she has kind of reached critical mass around here, and has probably gotten about as big as she is going to get unless she makes the big move to Nashville or some other music city. The girl makes a pretty good living locally, but she knows if she wants to make it to the next level she will have to move and basically start all over again. It is a scary proposition to leave her Southwest Michigan comfort zone of being a big fish in a small pond to moving to be a nobody in a big pond. So far she has chosen to stay here. She is still young (early 20’s) so she probably has time, but audiences can be fickle, and sometimes they go away.
What I am suggesting is getting a scene going... not just a hot lone wolf somewhere in Michigan. What needs to happen is multiple bands in a localized area that gains the reputation as a hotbed of talent, interest, and creativity. So in that sense, the move to Nashville might not be a bad idea for her as that is a place where talent goes for singer songwriters etc. For Seattle it was grunge bands, for LA it was Hair Metal. For NYC it was post punk new wave, for London it was 60's psychelelia. For San Francisco it was hippies and Golden Gate park.
I suppose a hot bed for prog might need to happen in Europe, maybe Amsterdam or Stockholm. A club owner who supports it, local radio, fans that can see great stuff on a regular basis so bands don't have to go on the road without support and burn out or get lost trying to swim against the rising tide of dumbed down culture, mediocrity and disinterest.
People do burn out on genres of music do they not? When will they burn out on electronica? How can it last this long? I mean it's been since the late 80's and it sounds basically the same. We are going on 30 years. In prog we got what? 10 good years? 67 to 77?
It can last forever because it largely doesn't depend on vocals (which can instantly date a record), personalities, image, Top 40 radio play, record sales or any of that. Sure, the big festivals that people like Paul van Dyk and Kaskade and so on are hyped as playing at make them a "draw", but it's the whole event that is the biggest draw of all. It also goes in cycles; there was the mid-to-late 90's surge in popularity (that I latched on to) but it went more "underground" after that, there were plenty of "Electronica is dead, it's had its day"-type articles written in the early 2000's. Turns out, the people that were kids during era grew up, liked the style and started the current wave. It'll burn itself out in any number of years and go through the cycle again. Yes, "it sounds basically the same" but that's the good thing because if I hear a band that sounds like any of The Big 5/6/7 they are totally tied in to an early 70's sound, they are de-facto dated. Same as metal bands that use growly vocals and guitarists that play 800 notes a bar, they're instantly dated.People do burn out on genres of music do they not? When will they burn out on electronica? How can it last this long? I mean it's been since the late 80's and it sounds basically the same. We are going on 30 years. In prog we got what? 10 good years? 67 to 77?
...or you could love
You have a sample of basically a kick drum pounding 1/4 notes at 144 beats per minute. Some sampled sound washes working as a slow moving sound current across that.. then any number of sampled ear candy sounds over layered over the top of that.. throw in some sampled female voice singing mystical chants of spiritual bewilderment. The kick drum stops for a few moments while a cascade of bubbles, foam, balloons, cosmic lights reign down, then the kick starts to pound again just like it did in 1989. Every time I find myself in such a situation, club or whatever, I think to myself, this is still going on? I thought you're not supposed to listen to your parents music?
Anyway, it seems to be hypnotizing the youth culture to no end.... and as mentioned, the scene is drawing all the beautiful girls, so the guys attend hoping to get their social media address so they can start the mating hunt by winning them over by texting and facebook posts. Am I that far off?
So how does a great modern prog rock band win over the youth culture of today's electronica mesmerized pokeman searching generation?
What happened to super talented, super creative and theatrical live rock artists? Well, I'm looking to give them a home.
This is the exact formula of the late 80's as described above. Nothing cutting edge, same pounding beat, elongated sound washes... it stops, it starts up again... cosmic voices. This is the absolute opposite of progressive rock. Nothing could be farther from the core of heart felt humans playing instruments with elaborate skill sets and creative composing. Whether it's avant RIO Henry Cow or Gabriel era Genesis, that music is going to take me places electronica never could. Just my opinion. Obviously zillions love the stuff. I don't get it at all.
You really couldn't be more wrong.
You don't have to like it, but you're objectively wrong by stating that electronica hasn't changed much since the '80s. It's changed tremendously (though obviously there are some retro bands going out of there way to emulate the past, like the vast majority of today's "progressive rock."
Let me play devil’s advocate here. Is that so different from disco back in the 70’s? I mean, back then many musical morons were into disco, all the pretty girls loved disco, all the guys trying to hook up with the pretty girls were into disco…….while the grubby guys like me hung out at rock n roll clubs with mostly other grubby guys. It could be argued that electronica has survived a lot longer than disco did, but it could also be argued the electronica is an evolution of what disco was to my generation. Back then a lot of the same arguments were made regarding live music being under attack and being replaced by DJ’s. Is it really all that different today? Just posing the question……
I agree, in many ways it's the same as disco. A beat at about 144 per minute. Constant pulse. Lowest common denominator stuff. Pretty girls, lots of "up" type party drugs.... meaning not contemplative drugs.
But electronica has survived 30 years basically unchanged. Same formula. Disco was what.. 5 years? It morphed into new wave and drum machines that then morphed into electronica because no drummer would want to play 143,000 1/4 notes on a kick drum over 7 hours without a break more than 14 seconds.
Live music is under attack by electronica... and guess who is winning?
I agree about copy cat prog bands. In my opinion, metal is where most of the guitarist followed that formula of spending most of their time shredding chromatic scales... just now over the occasional odd metered time signature. What I don't hear much now are great prog drummers like we had in the past. They are more influenced by Neil Peart than Buddy Rich.
As far as electronica changing so much... please explain. It sounds exactly the same as it did 30 years ago. Sure there are some "new" samples and sounds, but the pounding kick 1/4 note kick beat still remains the same.
I understand where you are coming from. Where I live, in Michigan, there is this big huge electronic music festival every summer called “Electric Forest”. Although there are some “live” bands (String Cheese Incident plays it every year) it is mostly electronic music and it draws a huge crowd of people for 3 days / nights. I know several 20 something’s who attend this every year and after talking to them, I think it is more about the “scene” than the music for them. There is a kind of post hippy vibe to the whole thing and of course drugs designed to enhance the experience, but as you mention, they are not necessarily “contemplative” drugs. As with many people of this generation they don’t seem to really care if live music is being played or not. I will never understand going to see a DJ at a concert, but then again I am an old man so maybe I am not supposed to understand.
Autechre
Boards of Canada
Roni Size/Reprazent
Squarepusher
Sutekh
Ochre
Two Lone Swordsmen
Royksopp
Just off the top of my head, these are a number of bands whose music could not have been made in the '80s. They are products of later developments in the genre.
Furthermore, the placement of the beat is only a small aspect of the music itself. Technology allowed for music in the '90s and '00s that didn't sound anything at all like the electronica of the '80s and literally could not have been made then, yet which closely share rhythmic similarities.
I have a friend who says that all prog sounds the same. I believe his exact description was "long weird songs about elves and hobbits." No amount of explaining is going to change his perception. If you don't like country music, Patsy Cline, Miranda Lambert and Emmylou Harris all sound the same, but to people into country, they are as different as Anthony Phillips is from Magma.
I've been writing/producing music for awhile now and find that it's much more difficult to keep up with changing styles and approaches in contemporary Pop/EDM/Trance/etc. than it ever was with prog. That's my perception anyway
Autechre
Boards of Canada
Roni Size/Reprazent
Squarepusher
Sutekh
Ochre
Two Lone Swordsmen
Royksopp
Ok,
So I can download all this stuff from these electronica artists. I'll put on a pair of giant mouse ears, flash some strobes behind me, and put on a show of this super creative electronica and then I'll be this instant super hip DJ because I know how to rip these from the internet and play them through massive subs and 4000 watt power amps. All pre recorded and I'll pretend I'm actually doing something... turn some knobs, have a couple vinyl records spinning.. push some buttons.
Will anyone call me out on this? Or will they proclaim I'm the hippest cat in town with no questions? What do you think?
I think you're a cranky old prog fan.
Seriously though, it seems you have turned this thread into more of what your first thread was, wanting to book bands for the venue you are at, while at the same time denigrating new music and new methods.
What you want is NOT coming back. The 70s are done. And I think you'll have to change your attitude and demeanor towards a new crop of young musicians if you truly want to help the scene.
WANTED: Sig-worthy quote.
I'm quite sure I am a cranky old progger!
But as far as helping "the scene", there is a difference to me as to the live music scene vs the DJ scene. Live musicians vs playing pre recorded music.
So to help the live music scene, I'm not going to be booking electronica DJ stuff. I'm not going to be putting laptops on stage that substitute bass players and drummers. I'm also not going to be booking cover or tribute bands. So to help "the scene", this will make space for live musicians to perform. There are plenty of other places for EDM parties and electronica to thrive.
I don't think it is off topic to discuss electronica and it's effect on the live music scene and the challenges facing up and coming rock bands, prog bands or jazz groups etc. It's a huge attention distraction as I see it.
Is it ok for me to not be a fan of electronica? Can I have that opinion? Why do I have to like it? I've tried it.... been to raves, dated several EDM girls, I've checked out the scene, the clubs, had long discussions with DJ's about what they are doing. Cutting and pasting sound files on a computer feels lifeless, empty, sterile, too mechanical, too predictable. I don't like it. I just don't. That's probably why I am on a prog forum and not an EDM forum.
The blending of live musicians with EDM has also been going on for decades. It's nothing new. It feels like a tired failing experiment as well.
If I am ok with the 70's being over, can I be ok with EDM being over also? Would love to here the the next wave of human music that is neither Moogs or EDM.
Can someone come up with something new?
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