I have read a few of these sort of blogs of late, largely because a few of my friends have finally lost the plot and started to promote extreme metal gigs, and ultimately lost money on ninety nine percent of them, thus resulting in them getting pissed of and posting comments on social media about apathetic audiences, or posting blogs posts not dissimilar to this one. So here is my two pence worth of hints, advice, insults and facts on the subject.
First of all, in all honesty, I wish your band would split up and fuck off. If I could fast forward your bands career to the part when you sell your equipment to buy a washing machine for your ambitionless baby machine wife then I would. More gigs for me. Or as a compromise you could start a wedding band and play polite quiet gigs of pop crap to knobheads, great. More gigs for me.
One of the reasons that underground gigs are sometimes unattended is that there are too many shit bands out there clogging everything up and giving live music a bad name. Before I ever played a gig, we used to invite pals around to watch us practice, before we had a full band line up, folk used to come around and watch me and my mate practice in the bedroom. I've had more folk watching me play Slayer riffs in my bedroom then an unbelievable amount of bands get to watch them and two other bands play in a city centre venue. As many as five sometimes, once we had three birds!
The point is, some bands play before they are ready. I could pack out my parents loft before we ventured into a proper rehearsal room, by that point we had up to twelve folk. Before we played gigs we hired Woodmansey Hall for £3.00 an hour on a Sunday afternoon and invited pals round to watch us play, by that point we were within reaching point of being good. Once we could hold the attention of our mates for a couple of hours we played a few Battle of the Bands, and promptly ripped the cheeks off the audience. After that we started playing proper venues, supporting more established local acts and very quickly headlining our own shows. Blah Blah Blah.
So, let's assume you are a guitarist and have folk round your house, if you were to pick up the guitar and play, could you entertain them or would they grimace and leave? Better still are you good enough that folk will specifically come around to listen, if not, you need to practice more before you do a gig. Perhaps you are a singer and you find yourself at a karaoke night, if you are too embarrassed to get up then forget being in a proper band. If you get up and do a song and are not better than all the other helmets than you are not good enough to play in a proper band. Also if you think you are above it you are wrong, pop your own ego before someone pops it for you. A few years ago I did a brutal duet with Wattie on James Brown sex machine at a karaoke, he's the best punk frontman in the world and not above getting intense and having a laugh. If you have not done it do it, don't be a precious bighead, you might even learn something.
Get lessons for whatever you do be it guitar, bass, vocals, drums, French horn, midi saxophone or whatever. Remember it's not the audiences fault they were not entertained, unless of course you are in Hull or Glasgow where audiences seem to try to not enjoy the gigs they go to. Honestly though, if no one wants to listen to you, it is most always likely because you are rubbish. So practice practice practice rehearse rehearse rehearse and get some fucking tuition. You don't have to get a degree in musical theory, just a few sessions every now and again will suffice.
Ok so lets assume that you can tear the roof off at any given karaoke night from John O Groats to Landsend. I once got told to fuck off and banned from a karaoke competition in Maghull and denied my winners prize of a bottle of Martini for being a 'Fucking Professional' after I blew the roof off with my own take on Whitesnake's Fool For Your Loving! Did that make me a cunt? Of course it did! Anything less would have made me more of one bearing in mind how good I wanted to be as a vocalist. If you are a singer in a band who thinks he should have a twenty name guestlist but can't even blow pissed fat X-Factor wannabes out of the water then you should be in a rehearsal room practicing more until you start thinking audiences owe you a living. If that is too hard, sell your gear and fuck off. More gigs for me. The point I am getting at is that a lot of musicians have a very unrealistic view of how good they are, go find out for yourself.
The fact is, audiences are the main thing and they have all the power. They will pick the best ones and go see them, if you are not the best, they will not pay to see you. So go get better. THE ENTIRE POINT is to make audiences happy, they want to be entertained, even Weegies and Codheads. Your job as a band is to entertain the audience. It is not their job to applaud you. They have no job in this context, they are customers.
Here are a few stages to think about, if you have problems achieving any of them, go back to stage one...
01. Practice
02. You pick up a guitar at a party and the room does not empty
03. People enjoy coming to see your band rehearse
04. Karaoke / open mic regulars playing Dad rock covers regard you with fear/jealousy when you have your go and get applause for playing original material
05. You play a Battle of the Bands and feel a bit embarrassed that you did it
If you can get to stage five you are now ready to play a proper venue, the chances are that you will be of a higher standard than the average shite that plays there. Remember, perhaps you are good but the rest of your band are shit. Don't be scared to quit or chuck folk out. It is always better to not do your growing up in public. By public I mean in front audiences that enjoy original music, not karaoke/battle of the bands/open mic/wedding bands. Don't turn up at a pro venue and make a knobber out of yourself in front of professional promoters as first impressions count. Do all your out of tune shite in secret before trying to 'make it' in the real world. Don't be afraid, don't rush, hone your craft.
Also, and this is VERY IMPORTANT. Never forget that the karaoke/open mic/wedding band scene is totally different to the world of original bands playing original music in every single way imaginable. If you want to be in an original band playing original music you should check out all the bands in your scene, find out who is good, go see them, support them, talk to them, buy their merch, get to know them, ask advice, ask to watch them at practice, see if any of them give tuition. Don't ask to play gigs with them until you are ready though. Don't kid yourself at any stage. The more you know the better you will be.
Do you have one million guitar pedals? Is one of them a tuner? If not, fuck off and swap one of your vintage quadraphonicthrobnobulators for one. Also use it. After every single song, even at practice. Not everyone is born with perfect pitch and can tune by ear. Those who can are lying.
It may seem like I have digressed from the original theme of this blog, but I haven't, the single main reason that bands have nobody at their gigs is that they are not ready to be on stage, so the next part will deal with what to do when you are ready to be on stage.
OK so you play a gig and are you are some fucking incredible hot shit! Except nobody was there. Why could that be?
1. You are shit
2. You didn't tell anyone you were playing
3. You play a mixture of pornogrind/power violence and all the other bands are twee folk solo artists
4. The last time you played you were out of tune
5. You sound like Black Sabbath and Black Sabbath are playing a free gig down the same street
6. You only advertised the gig online
7. You have no mates
8. Everyone in the world hates your vocalists shite alienating chat
9. You have a reputation for cancelling shows
10. You played three shows in the same town already that month
11. There is no scene in that town for your music
12. The venue is in the middle of nowhere
13. It's a Tuesday
14. You went onstage after the last bus
15. All of the above
Here are the answers...
1. Practice
2. Tell everyone
3. Play appropriate gigs only
4. Buy a tuner
5. Know what is going on
6. Make posters, go out, put them in shops, the venue, party flats, on walls, meet folk, hand out flyers, pay some other cunt to do it
7. Stop being a miserable twat
8. Chuck him/her/it out
9. Stop it
10. Don't play the same town more than once a month
11. Play a different town, move town
12. Don't be stupid
13. Stop being surprised
14. You are stupid
15. Fuck off
Now there are a few things that are NEVER the problem, one of these is the sound engineer, if you are in tune with good equipment and playing tight then even if the engineer is shit you won't sound terrible. If you sound shit it is because you are shit and the pa system just amplified your shitness. It's also never the fault of the people who turned up that not many were there. I remember seeing a fucking brilliant death metal band play an unadvertised album launch on a Sunday night a few years back in Edinburgh, to a small turn out of less than forty folk. Halfway through the gig the bassist slagged the audience off for being a 'typical apathetic fucking shite Edinburgh crowd', it didn't stop me enjoying the show, it did stop me buying a cd and ever going to see them again.
One of the most productive band practices I have ever had in my life contained no playing. We spent the entire practice unpacking our gear, setting it all up, unpacking it, setting it up, unpacking it over and over for three hours. This was way back in 1993 with a band I was in called Cosmic Juggernaut, we had lots of gear and were playing loads of gigs, more than a few times we had been shouted at by sound engineers for pissing about at changeover. So we got better at it. In 2007 Man of the Hour played with Black Label Society at the Glasgow Carling Academy, it was a big gig for us and we had 20 minutes to get all our gear onstage and soundchecked before doors opened, we did it in 16, no bother.
Don't bitch about other bands not watching you, rise above, who gives a fuck, I don't give a fuck if the other bands I play with don't watch my band, so fucking what, get over it. I am old school and like what I like, most of the time nowadays the majority of the bands I play with are influenced by bands that I wouldn't give the steam of my piss to. I wouldn't go see a line up of Clutch & Lamb of God if they were playing not only for free but handing out fucking fivers at the door so no I am not going to watch a band who is a 2nd rate Clutch influenced band. I will and do watch 8th rate Motorhead rip offs because that is my thing and my taste. Similarly, if I play a gig with a bunch of bands all wearing Nirvana shirts I'm not going to lose sleep if they don't watch my band. Sometimes bands get a false sense of how good they are because folk who think they are shit tell them 'Man that was fucking great' when they thought the opposite. Who cares, get over it. I watch mates bands if I want to check them out and give a bit of support, but if they are going to play beatdowns, yelp cathartically, say 'hell yeah', rap, skank or any other thing that I personally dislike I will fuck off. Why should they care what I do? It's always best to give bands a few songs, just in case they are good, it's always more fun to enjoy the bands you play with, but as a musician I do not believe your job is to be an audience member. Networking is key to success in any scene though so judge how you behave in this respect carefully. Don't be a fake cunt though, there is enough of them already. The first gig Man of the Hour played, the guitarist from one of the other bands came up to me backstage and said 'Hey man, that was fucking great' this was funny because we hadn't even played yet, I thanked him anyway. Later on that week they slagged us off on local metal forums. Don't be that dickhead.
Another thing to consider is, how many people does the biggest band in the world of your genre play to? If you play tuba in a psychedelic d-beat n roll co-operative or sing in a death metal barber shop quintet then perhaps you should be happy with four people in the audience on a Monday night in Shilbottle.
Toughen up, practice and prepare to starve, it doesn't get easier, if you don't enjoy it do yourself a favour and quit.
