This is just a vent. Not looking for advise or anything - I know it's in my power to decide that something's not a good fit and act on it. (This is not the case - at least not yet...)
Still rather new to my band (6 full gigs), I'm still trying to figure out the politics and the overall flow. We haven't rehearsed much (don't rehearse the weeks we have a gig), so have just had gigs to figure out the other members. We have about 75 total songs on out playlist, with about 50 being used at any given gig. We do a mixture of real classic rock (60/70s) , 80s rock, "newer" rock and newer country. No real musical identity except we aim for danceable stuff.
Response (ie dancing) at our gigs tend to run very hot or very cold - out last two gigs, the dance floor was packed at least most of the night. The previous gigs never saw more then 6 people dancing at once and the floor was empty most of the time. The audience seems to enjoy us in general - I can see people grooving at their seats or singing along and we usually get a bit more than a polite applause for most tunes.
We have a couple of months with nothing scheduled, so we'll be able to get some rehearsals in. The BL sent out an Email last week with a list of songs he'd like to see us work out during this time. A couple of 70s rock songs, but the rest are all newer stuff. He asked for responses, and I did indicating my preferences and asked if maybe it might be a good idea to have a band meeting to talk about our playlist in general - maybe weed out a few that we don't do well and talk about what direction to go for new songs. I'm not much for politicking, but I have had some brief conversations with individual members at gigs and I'm not convinced that we all want to continue to try to pull off newer songs, when as a rule we don't really do that well. We are mostly a bunch of crusty old folks with our youngest being appx. 45. We tend to shine on the classics and 80s stuff and a couple of the newer songs, yet the BL thinks doing newer songs will attract more people. In my limited time, the dance floor is proving differently.
I got a response from the BL indicating that his experience has been that meetings are pointless. Lead guitarists wants to be more of a hired gun ("just tell me what to do") and the lead vox is resistant to change. According to the BL she is hard pressed to try new songs, but often ends up liking them a lot after pressed to do so. So her in a meeting is just going to be mild confrontation. The guitar/sound guy was amiable to a meeting, but I never heard a peep from the other two. It just seemed to me it would be easier for everyone to talk together rather than him weeding through - and providing edited responses to us all. But I guess he'd rather do it the hard way.
I had actually rather hoped that we'd spend the time going over the songs we don't do much and work on tightening up what we do do - we need a lot of this. But the BL unilaterally decided that we need new songs. My opinion is that we'll have better opportunities if we sound our best on every song - even if that means doing older stuff - rather than trying to pretend we're cool to the kids. I think couple of others agree with me, a least a little. But the BL is my primary point of contact, so all I really get is his story of what "we" all want.
So basically, I'm gong to do my best to just be like the lead guitar and fight my natural instinct to come in and organize things. It's too bad - we have enough talent to be a band I'm proud of, but I don't think we'll ever get there because everybody is afraid to sit down and talk about their preferences.
Vent over, thanks for listening....
Still rather new to my band (6 full gigs), I'm still trying to figure out the politics and the overall flow. We haven't rehearsed much (don't rehearse the weeks we have a gig), so have just had gigs to figure out the other members. We have about 75 total songs on out playlist, with about 50 being used at any given gig. We do a mixture of real classic rock (60/70s) , 80s rock, "newer" rock and newer country. No real musical identity except we aim for danceable stuff.
Response (ie dancing) at our gigs tend to run very hot or very cold - out last two gigs, the dance floor was packed at least most of the night. The previous gigs never saw more then 6 people dancing at once and the floor was empty most of the time. The audience seems to enjoy us in general - I can see people grooving at their seats or singing along and we usually get a bit more than a polite applause for most tunes.
We have a couple of months with nothing scheduled, so we'll be able to get some rehearsals in. The BL sent out an Email last week with a list of songs he'd like to see us work out during this time. A couple of 70s rock songs, but the rest are all newer stuff. He asked for responses, and I did indicating my preferences and asked if maybe it might be a good idea to have a band meeting to talk about our playlist in general - maybe weed out a few that we don't do well and talk about what direction to go for new songs. I'm not much for politicking, but I have had some brief conversations with individual members at gigs and I'm not convinced that we all want to continue to try to pull off newer songs, when as a rule we don't really do that well. We are mostly a bunch of crusty old folks with our youngest being appx. 45. We tend to shine on the classics and 80s stuff and a couple of the newer songs, yet the BL thinks doing newer songs will attract more people. In my limited time, the dance floor is proving differently.
I got a response from the BL indicating that his experience has been that meetings are pointless. Lead guitarists wants to be more of a hired gun ("just tell me what to do") and the lead vox is resistant to change. According to the BL she is hard pressed to try new songs, but often ends up liking them a lot after pressed to do so. So her in a meeting is just going to be mild confrontation. The guitar/sound guy was amiable to a meeting, but I never heard a peep from the other two. It just seemed to me it would be easier for everyone to talk together rather than him weeding through - and providing edited responses to us all. But I guess he'd rather do it the hard way.
I had actually rather hoped that we'd spend the time going over the songs we don't do much and work on tightening up what we do do - we need a lot of this. But the BL unilaterally decided that we need new songs. My opinion is that we'll have better opportunities if we sound our best on every song - even if that means doing older stuff - rather than trying to pretend we're cool to the kids. I think couple of others agree with me, a least a little. But the BL is my primary point of contact, so all I really get is his story of what "we" all want.
So basically, I'm gong to do my best to just be like the lead guitar and fight my natural instinct to come in and organize things. It's too bad - we have enough talent to be a band I'm proud of, but I don't think we'll ever get there because everybody is afraid to sit down and talk about their preferences.
Vent over, thanks for listening....
