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Disdain For Your Audience

#61
klokker said:
It's not either or. Everyone has to balance the amount of effort they put in with many other factors.

For me, if I feel good about our sound and have fun at the show.....and the crowd likes us....that's about all I need.

Perfectionism.....or sloth.........both pretty much suck.
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Right! Glad to see someone get it!
 
#62
JimmyM said:
"Nobody cares about your gear."
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The truth is some of the people don't care about your gear ... but some a very interested in what you play.

JimmyM said:
"Nobody cares that the bass doesn't sound good because nobody hears it anyway."
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Some people don't care about the bass, but the bass and drums are usually what drives a song and what gets people dancing.

JimmyM said:
"The audience is a bunch of drunken idiots who don't know what good sound is."
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Well if you play a bar then probably there will be some people there who are drunk. Hopefull it won't be your band members. But even drunks can tell if the band sucks.


When I see a band I am interested in what they are playing, and I listen a lot to the bass and I don't get drunk and I do care about the overall sound.

Also who wants to see a band with an "I don't care" attitude.
 
#63
JimmyM said:
I guess I have to keep repeating post 43 so guys like you quit misconstruing my point:

From my opening post:

"Sure, nobody will walk out on you if you don't have the finest gear in the world, but that is so not what I'm talking about."

Thank you.
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Yes, yes, and in hammering home your point, you completely missed mine.

Having disdain for your audience and being a realist about their average interest in the nuances of your tone are two independent things. You tend to confuse the two, as I demonstrated above.
 
#65
I have to admit that I've posted on TB things like "it doesn't really matter."

BUT "IT" does matter it's just that very often on TB there are arguments over very detailed and often arbitrary subjective things that are either held up as the be-all-end-all or conversely absolutely unacceptable ANd many times they are things that people hold as definitively better as something else but then couldn't blindly decipher one or the other with 100 hints. It's in those arguments where I've posted "dude, it doesn't matter as long as you like it."

"IT" matters. "IT" is just subjective and often a moving target.
 
#66
JimmyM said:
It all adds up. If you don't care, who will?
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Where did I say that I don't care, Jim? You just keep missing it....... I care quite a bit, and have spent a lot of time and money on my setup. None of that is negated simply because I acknowledge that most people in the audience won't care or notice.

Your response, and you inability to understand my point, if proof of the same.
 
#67
I don't know how you ever got the idea that my post meant "People should buy tube amps," so I will be continue to be bewildered by your insistence on hammering on a point that didn't exist in the first place.
 
#68
Factor88 said:
I respect your choice but to me being a professional implies at least making smart business decisions. My time is worth money, for me I choose to (in terms of music) invest time at the expectation of financial reward. If I am pretty sure the investment of time won't pay off with better or more gigs, the choice is really, really, easy.
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Huh. I would have said if it's about the money, you're in the wrong field.
 
#70
JimmyM said:
I see these kinds of comments all the time on here:

"Nobody cares about your gear."

"Nobody cares that the bass doesn't sound good because nobody hears it anyway."

"The audience is a bunch of drunken idiots who don't know what good sound is."

I hate that kind of attitude. It's a copout of the highest order, and it's 100% untrue. Why even do it if that's how you feel? People who say stuff like that need to get the hell out of playing music.

And what's worse is they try to poison the minds of people who do care and make them feel stupid for caring. Screw that...I have nothing but respect and love for the people who took time out of their busy day to come see me play, and I will always give them my best sound and my best playing.

Imagine if restaurants operated like that: "So our food's lousy...they'll eat it."

Or hospitals: "It doesn't matter what kind of medicine you put in their IV."

Or banks: "So you put in $500 and we gave you a receipt for $50. You're too stupid to know the difference anyway."

For God's sake, if you're going to do a job, do it well. There was a short period in my life where I let people beat me down into thinking nobody cared, and I was miserable onstage, and the band I was in absolutely sucked and was treated accordingly. Then I got with people who really cared, and the band was a lot better and much more well-received, and it really made me step up my game because I enjoyed how much they cared and respected their audience.

Hate to break it to you "nobody cares" types, but your lack of caring plus your negativity about your audience is what's holding you and your band back. If they don't care, it's because you didn't make them care. Sure, nobody will walk out on you if you don't have the finest gear in the world, but that is so not what I'm talking about.

You don't have to have the finest gear in the world to sound good or present yourself well. But you do have to care about being an engaging presence onstage, you do have to care about your FOH sounding right, and you do have to actually like and respect the people who come to your gigs. And if audiences don't care, how come I see so many bands who phone it in get booed off the stage?

You don't have to be dead-on 100% perfect with everything, but you do need to care. If you don't, how can you expect others to care?
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+1
 
#76
JimmyM said:
I see these kinds of comments all the time on here:

"Nobody cares about your gear."

"Nobody cares that the bass doesn't sound good because nobody hears it anyway."

"The audience is a bunch of drunken idiots who don't know what good sound is."
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Here's what I believe. Nobody cares about your gear. Nobody cares that the bass doesn't sound good because nobody hears it anyway. The audience is a bunch of non-musicians who don't know what good sound is.

However, I always take pro-level gear to gigs, I always try to get the best tone out of my gear, and I always try to play my best and entertain the crowd. But believing as I do, when I show up at a gig with "backline provided" and it turns out to be a Carvin BR600 15-inch combo, I do my best to squeeze a decent sound out of it, and comfort myself believing the first three statements to be true.
 
#77
Do you think electrical engineers and computer scientists feel disdain for the pro musicians who lack the sophistication to understand how the equipment they use functions at an electronic level? I mean, how many musicians who record to their hard drives understand EXACTLY all the processes involved in getting the oscillation of their strings encoded as digital data on a platter spinning at 10,000 rpm.


It's exactly the same.

End result.


Most of the audience are there, paying to enjoy themselves, not to have a masterclass on the finer points of "bassery", similarly most bass players buy their cabs/amps/effects/recording equipment not for the science behind their equipment, but for the tone/reliability/feel of it.


It's horses for courses and as such something that every school kid should be aware of.
 
#78
Munjibunga said:
Here's what I believe. Nobody cares about your gear. Nobody cares that the bass doesn't sound good because nobody hears it anyway. The audience is a bunch of non-musicians who don't know what good sound is.

However, I always take pro-level gear to gigs, I always try to get the best tone out of my gear, and I always try to play my best and entertain the crowd. But believing as I do, when I show up at a gig with "backline provided" and it turns out to be a Carvin BR600 15-inch combo, I do my best to squeeze a decent sound out of it, and comfort myself believing the first three statements to be true.
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So you're saying your life is basically a sham.

:D
 

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