IMO
There's a time for songwriting and a time for promotion and gig. I'm more on the songwriting side... but I understand the need of promotion, gigs, networking, band image, stage presence, doing a good show (playing tight and keeping the audience engaged)... We have a record released one year ago and we're promoting it by doing gigs, videoclips, and so on... Meanwhile I write some new songs and I keep them iin my hard disk until the new "songwriting period" begins.
Abotut "taking" the band leadership... For a lot of time I was the easy going dude, the one who doen't wanted arguments.. that caused sometimes lack of respect from some former bandmates.. .I was educated with a belief that being nice and not arguing with people made me a good person..I showed some weakness which made some other people step on me. I was aware of that and I worked on that with a therapist ..now it's a completely different situation..
In a band,like in every social environment,there are some group dynamics because the different personalities of the band members... Some people have a natural tendency to lead people.. and some people have a more passive role... this is human nature , not bad at all... If there's no goal as a band it's a matter of time that the more decided bandmate want to take the leader role... Someone has to take some decissions or, at least, bring ideas to the table to be discussed among the bandmates. If someone gets out of the way of talking about band decissions and says "Whatever you want..." then, this person doesn't have the right to complain about if he doesn't like a decission. In a band context the most important non musical thing I learned is not to keep my mouth closed.. for the good or the bad.. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with your bandmates it everybody talks and exposes the opinions in a respectfull way (this is the difficult part)..
Recently I quitted from a band because as someone said before..priorites change.. I was unconformtable and tired of some attitudes so I decided play the last two booked gigs and move on...
There's a time for songwriting and a time for promotion and gig. I'm more on the songwriting side... but I understand the need of promotion, gigs, networking, band image, stage presence, doing a good show (playing tight and keeping the audience engaged)... We have a record released one year ago and we're promoting it by doing gigs, videoclips, and so on... Meanwhile I write some new songs and I keep them iin my hard disk until the new "songwriting period" begins.
Abotut "taking" the band leadership... For a lot of time I was the easy going dude, the one who doen't wanted arguments.. that caused sometimes lack of respect from some former bandmates.. .I was educated with a belief that being nice and not arguing with people made me a good person..I showed some weakness which made some other people step on me. I was aware of that and I worked on that with a therapist ..now it's a completely different situation..
In a band,like in every social environment,there are some group dynamics because the different personalities of the band members... Some people have a natural tendency to lead people.. and some people have a more passive role... this is human nature , not bad at all... If there's no goal as a band it's a matter of time that the more decided bandmate want to take the leader role... Someone has to take some decissions or, at least, bring ideas to the table to be discussed among the bandmates. If someone gets out of the way of talking about band decissions and says "Whatever you want..." then, this person doesn't have the right to complain about if he doesn't like a decission. In a band context the most important non musical thing I learned is not to keep my mouth closed.. for the good or the bad.. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with your bandmates it everybody talks and exposes the opinions in a respectfull way (this is the difficult part)..
Recently I quitted from a band because as someone said before..priorites change.. I was unconformtable and tired of some attitudes so I decided play the last two booked gigs and move on...
