gig rant (new wave band ending up in black metal scene)

Devo-lution · #1 12-13-2010, 02:52 PM

Hi

Had the worst gig in my life last saturday, so prepare for a rant :/...

My new wave band has been dying for a while. And no cure in sight

... No one is really writing songs and our rehearsals are becoming more and more sporadically. Decission has been made to finish the booked gigs and then call it a quits. A few weeks ago, however, we got invited to do a birthday gig and the birthday boy claimed to be a fan of ours. To cut things short, we accepted without doing any further research

.

Well, things started to get a bit more intense when we arrived at the venue (had never been there before)... Inverted crosses, lots of corsetwearing females and well... dudes with long hair and shirts that have at least 7 skulls depicted on it

... The other band was already unleashing their brand of black metal.

I'm no metal-hater (I played in some metalbands in the past)... But trying to get a "black metal crowd" intense when playing in "soft" new wave band was literally hell. We played as powerful as our music would allow us and still 90% of them looked bored

.

Ok, rant over. Anyone else ever been seriously misbooked?

s_mcsleazy · #2 12-13-2010, 02:58 PM

this made my day mate

*hugs*

Valerus · #3 12-13-2010, 02:59 PM

It's okay, sir.

Devo-lution · #4 12-13-2010, 03:02 PM

Not really gotten to me. We had some laughs about the whole situation afterwards.

At the moment itself, I really hated the fact that none of them was the slightest bit interested and lots of them really had that "go away" attitude

.

puddin tame · #5 12-13-2010, 03:03 PM

should have cranked the distortion and winged some bs

s_mcsleazy · #6 12-13-2010, 03:04 PM

cos the black metal fan only has one word in his vocabulary. well its not really a word..... more grunt

grugh

Devo-lution · #7 12-13-2010, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by puddin tame

should have cranked the distortion and winged some bs

Well, our guitar player did bring his new distortion pedal that night

. And well... He's an absolute noob when it comes to effects

...

He went to a store that only carried boss and asked for a distortion that could really sound shoegazey...

Well, make one guess: what did he bring :')?

Devo-lution · #8 12-13-2010, 03:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by s_mcsleazy

cos the black metal fan only has one word in his vocabulary. well its not really a word..... more grunt

grugh

I personally like black metal... especially Faxed Head and Sigh... Them not liking us seemed to be somewhat more of a problem

.

jnuts1 · #9 12-13-2010, 03:10 PM

we played a local television show at the Cobra lounge. there is nothing worse than a bunch of hippie rockers in a metal club

aledeville · #10 12-13-2010, 03:13 PM

I once played a pretty technical and aggressive hiphop show at a hippie-gathering. It was kind of okay, because we were the only ones that really delivered sound instead of some howling with a acoustic guitar and the lyrics were half "I'm the best" and half "I'll change the world". But we were way out of place.

aaaah, I almost forgot, our background-girl from Africa was dressed up like hell and wearing a shiny shirt with the word "MONEY" on it

Devo-lution · #11 12-13-2010, 03:14 PM

@ aledeville... Seems pretty funny to me

. Great that you managed to make it an "okay" show.

Jazz Ad · #12 12-13-2010, 03:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Devo-lution

no cure in sight

THis is always a bad sign if you play new wave.

BritPicker · #13 12-13-2010, 04:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Devo-lution

Hi

Had the worst gig in my life last saturday, so prepare for a rant :/...

My new wave band has been dying for a while. And no cure in sight

... No one is really writing songs and our rehearsals are becoming more and more sporadically. Decission has been made to finish the booked gigs and then call it a quits. A few weeks ago, however, we got invited to do a birthday gig and the birthday boy claimed to be a fan of ours. To cut things short, we accepted without doing any further research

.

Well, things started to get a bit more intense when we arrived at the venue (had never been there before)... Inverted crosses, lots of corsetwearing females and well... dudes with long hair and shirts that have at least 7 skulls depicted on it

... The other band was already unleashing their brand of black metal.

I'm no metal-hater (I played in some metalbands in the past)... But trying to get a "black metal crowd" intense when playing in "soft" new wave band was literally hell. We played as powerful as our music would allow us and still 90% of them looked bored

.

Ok, rant over. Anyone else ever been seriously misbooked?

Sad that you are giving up on your new-wave efforts. I'm in a new-wave / post-punk act myself.

Look at it this way, there's a rich history of new-wave acts playing to disinterested or uncomprehending audiences. In a way, that's the whole point, haha.

There probably were people there that liked it, but in my experience the metal/death/goth crowd are extremely conformist - they are sheep, not individuals - so it would be very unusual and uncool for any of them to show any kind of response. Looking bored is all part of their thing.

Maybe you could have played some Cure - I guess the blackmetal rulebook might allow them to like that!

Don't let it get you down though mate, they booked you, you did the best you could. It's all experience.

Lecomber · #14 12-14-2010, 10:30 AM

Did you get paid?

jugglingfreak · #15 12-14-2010, 11:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Devo-lution

no cure in sight

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jazz Ad

THis is always a bad sign if you play new wave.

AntekStalich · #16 12-14-2010, 11:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Devo-lution

Well, our guitar player did bring his new distortion pedal that night

. And well... He's an absolute noob when it comes to effects

...

He went to a store that only carried boss and asked for a distortion that could really sound shoegazey...

Well, make one guess: what did he bring :')?

I can only guess he brought the MT-2 (Metal Zone), which is not the most fantastic...

By the way, what guitar, amp and possible effects does your guitarist use?

I<34080 · #17 12-14-2010, 11:40 AM

Check out Ministry's first album.

busmandan · #18 12-14-2010, 11:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Devo-lution

Ok, rant over. Anyone else ever been seriously misbooked?

Many years ago, my hard rock/blues band was booked by an agent at an upscale country club. We were a little wary, but finally decided that the old folks must have set something up for their kids, right?

Wrong. They set something up for themselves - there wasn't a soul under 50 in the place. In an attempt to appease them, we played a couple of token country songs we knew. After the second country song, some lady walks up to me and says, "They need the volume turned down." I didn't quite catch what she said so I asked her to repeat it. "They need the volume turned down", she says again. I responded with, "Who's they?"

Wrong thing to say. She went postal on us, looking around behind our gear with the intent of literally unplugging us. We played a set, got paid, and was told to leave - immediately.

Devo-lution · #19 12-14-2010, 12:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AntekStalich

I can only guess he brought the MT-2 (Metal Zone), which is not the most fantastic...

By the way, what guitar, amp and possible effects does your guitarist use?

Godin shiny silver glitter guitar with three humbucks into a boss chorus TC-electronic delay and... *drum roll*... a metal zone yeah

. His amp is some cheap-o fender digital thingy. He aways buys what the shopdude tells him is best

.

No star material, but he's actually a synth player who also handels guitar duty quite well playingwise.

btw, yeh, we got paid. Five drinks each

...

Not sure whether we'll be quitting or not at the moment. The band seems to be kinda "resurrected". Maybe there was a necromancer in the crowd

.

AntekStalich · #20 12-14-2010, 12:30 PM

Well, let us not make a flame war on guitar effects, I<34080

Guitar forums are full of that sort of rubbish.

Devo-lution, it is clear for me that fans of many genres stick to their own music and are not interested with anything else. (I'm in Punk/New Wave myself; the New Wave -- but not Punk -- audience seems to be more tolerant, since so many genres have been mixed up there...).

By talking with metal guitarists (heavy-metal is very popular in Poland), I see the picture of many of those folks. There is a concept of what gear is considered "trv" and "aryan" in HM:
-- PRS, Jackson, Ibanez guitars. Necessarily with Floyd-Rose tremolo bridge and high-output humbuckers, EMG being the king. Drop tune, baritone and 7-string guitars in fashion.
-- Marshall, Peavey, Rivera, Soldano, Bogner, Diezel, Mesa-Boogie, and trust me, only selected models of these amps. The best with 4x12 cab.
-- ProCo Rat, Ibanez TS-9, and necessarily wah-wah
And of course how you play that kind of music.

Taking into account that HM community is really enclosed inside their own world -- and at the same time fans of black trv pagan Norwegian HM, melodic Swedish HM, death metal, NWOBHM, Numetal, etc, etc, would love to kill one another - don't worry. By playing energetically you won't win the hearts of those ~~blockheads~~ lovers of specific genre. They are very conservative.