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First Time Being Told "YOUR BAND SUCKS"
- Thread starter BayStateBass
- Start date
You'd think that, wouldn't you? Yet here I am. Feels like I still ain't learnt a thing ...
Fabulous thread!
A few years ago we played a club and worked super hard promoting the night. Truly above and beyond the call of duty to the extent of leaflet drops and various other things.
Come the night of the gig and the place was packed. People drinking, people ordering meals, easily ten times the normal number of clients (I know this because I'd checked the place out on previous weekends). People having a fine night out.
At the end of the night it was "meh, our regulars were kinda so-so about you guys". I pointed out that they're probably made thrice their weekly budget in a single night and received "yeah but tomorrow you guys are gone, but our regulars will still be here".
Fast forward several months and due to heroic acts of eating sh*t we played the same place again. After the previous time I simply didn't bother with the (unsustainable) promo efforts of the first time. The result .... almost empty club, a dozen or so jaded regular barflies trying to ignore us.
I still really don't understand the situation with that place. Admittedly our first night there was not sustainable, but for sure they could have had us back regularly and even if numbers had leveled off, the place would have been doing better than their regular crowd of zombies.
I guess we lost that one, and you just have to try and win more than you lose. But it was weird.
Mike
A few years ago we played a club and worked super hard promoting the night. Truly above and beyond the call of duty to the extent of leaflet drops and various other things.
Come the night of the gig and the place was packed. People drinking, people ordering meals, easily ten times the normal number of clients (I know this because I'd checked the place out on previous weekends). People having a fine night out.
At the end of the night it was "meh, our regulars were kinda so-so about you guys". I pointed out that they're probably made thrice their weekly budget in a single night and received "yeah but tomorrow you guys are gone, but our regulars will still be here".
Fast forward several months and due to heroic acts of eating sh*t we played the same place again. After the previous time I simply didn't bother with the (unsustainable) promo efforts of the first time. The result .... almost empty club, a dozen or so jaded regular barflies trying to ignore us.
I still really don't understand the situation with that place. Admittedly our first night there was not sustainable, but for sure they could have had us back regularly and even if numbers had leveled off, the place would have been doing better than their regular crowd of zombies.
I guess we lost that one, and you just have to try and win more than you lose. But it was weird.
Mike
Different strokes for different folks.
If Mamma Cass had shared her sandwich with Karen,
Both might be alive today.
Agreed. But that also requires the ability of someone to be critical of themselves. What I've seen far too often with many musicians is a refusal to deal with criticism. And many blame their failures on someone else, rather than taking some responsibility for their own role and turning it into a learning experience.
Meh, you didn't lose anything. When it comes to stories like yours I think of that country AND western bar in The Blues Brothers. This place was not the right venue for you. You didn't lose anything. You gained the knowledge that the place did not want the kind of music you enjoy playing. You get to cross it off your list, thereby improving the quality of your list.
Yes, I would agree with that caveat. Perhaps it should have been: " You can learn more..." .
I tend to be my own worst critic. We record all of our rehearsals and I go back over them during the week and deconstuct them, note what worked well on new material, check for timing, cadence and transition issues, tone, dropped clams. Then change, or fix stuff for the next session and refine the stuff that does work. While the process makes me a better musician, there is this constant dissatisfaction of not feeling or being good enough which is a negative that drives a need for constant self-improvement, which is a positive. If you (or in this case, I) am satisfied with where I am at, I won't get any better.
I keep thinking that everyone else feels that way musically. Well, until I end up listening to some horribly crappy bar cover band and feel like either poking myself in the ear with a pencil or going up and ripping the bass from the player's hands and beating him to a pulp with it because of all the stupid mistakes being made. I usually just leave after muttering to myself, "Wow, you are actually getting paid for that!".
I don't bother going to tell the band, or any member how bad they ****ed, if they know, or if they don't know or if they don't even care, it is a pointless conversation any way you approach it.
I do the same. But I've considered not doing it anymore in my current group: the drummer's become obsessed with our timing (which is pretty good considering we're a 7-piece band) but he'd prefer metronomic accuracy over groove. Whilst I welcome tight timing, I like the songs to actually sound like they're swinging, too ... And one of the singers (who - ironically - just quit) said that everytime she heard herself she'd "only focus on the mistakes and it made her want to quit." Yeah well, try working on it!
Sounds like you have been to one of my old rockabilly band's shows. Sorry 'bout that!
Ours did. I had to be the singer in our last band, and believe me, I truly did suck. I asked to be replaced pretty much every week.
Always a tough one. As a fairly well known music blogger in the city, sometimes I get asked my opinion of a band. I usually try to say something nice first regardless, there's always something good about a band you can find, then gently tell them the truth. Turns out more often than not, that if someone's asking, they usually know the band has some issues and already has thought exactly what I tell them. Doesn't mean the band should give it up, they might just have to head in a slightly different direction.
Thanks for all the input, everyone! Great responses and lots to chew on.
The woman who normally does our promo called down to the club owner and smoothed things over. We still won't be playing there again, at least not anytime soon, but the situation is at least calm.
Through her conversation she was also able to get some information about why we wouldn't be asked back. According to her, the owner complained he had three (and only three) people who complained to him that they didn't like the band, specifically the singer. Okay no problem. But I guess there was a bigger problem. When our drummer booked the gig, he explained to the owner that we are fairly loud, kinda brash, etc, and shared our song list. He did stress that we were not a quiet, intimate band. At the time, the owner's response was "Great. That's exactly what my customers would love."
Evidently, the customers may have loved it (well, some of them anyway), but the neighbors.......not so much. The bar is located in an area where there are some residences, out on a country road. How the story goes, I guess, is that the neighbors have been complaining that the bar is too loud and the bands are too loud. Ours was no exception, and we probably were the loudest ones yet, but due to timing and maybe our luck, we were the straw that broke the camel's back. After our performance the bar owner was notified that the local Board Of Selectmen were going to review his entertainment license and possibly suspend or revoke it for noise violations and general neighborhood discontent. So, in his mind, we are possibly the ones who may cost him his license. So I think that's probably a lot of what's driving the situation.
On a positive note, this situation has caused us to look at what we're doing. Somebody asked, earlier, or maybe seemed surprised, that we hadn't been told we sucked before. No, we hadn't. This version of this band has been out gigging regularly for about a year and we've never gotten that. In fact, it's not unusual for us to either get asked to stay/play longer, or even get paid extra over our agreed amount. But overall the whole situation has caused us to take a look at what we are doing and has reminded us that we can't go into any gig and not give it 110% and pay attention to every detail, and play the best we are capable of, and be adaptable to the crowd.
Thanks, everyone!
The woman who normally does our promo called down to the club owner and smoothed things over. We still won't be playing there again, at least not anytime soon, but the situation is at least calm.
Through her conversation she was also able to get some information about why we wouldn't be asked back. According to her, the owner complained he had three (and only three) people who complained to him that they didn't like the band, specifically the singer. Okay no problem. But I guess there was a bigger problem. When our drummer booked the gig, he explained to the owner that we are fairly loud, kinda brash, etc, and shared our song list. He did stress that we were not a quiet, intimate band. At the time, the owner's response was "Great. That's exactly what my customers would love."
Evidently, the customers may have loved it (well, some of them anyway), but the neighbors.......not so much. The bar is located in an area where there are some residences, out on a country road. How the story goes, I guess, is that the neighbors have been complaining that the bar is too loud and the bands are too loud. Ours was no exception, and we probably were the loudest ones yet, but due to timing and maybe our luck, we were the straw that broke the camel's back. After our performance the bar owner was notified that the local Board Of Selectmen were going to review his entertainment license and possibly suspend or revoke it for noise violations and general neighborhood discontent. So, in his mind, we are possibly the ones who may cost him his license. So I think that's probably a lot of what's driving the situation.
On a positive note, this situation has caused us to look at what we're doing. Somebody asked, earlier, or maybe seemed surprised, that we hadn't been told we sucked before. No, we hadn't. This version of this band has been out gigging regularly for about a year and we've never gotten that. In fact, it's not unusual for us to either get asked to stay/play longer, or even get paid extra over our agreed amount. But overall the whole situation has caused us to take a look at what we are doing and has reminded us that we can't go into any gig and not give it 110% and pay attention to every detail, and play the best we are capable of, and be adaptable to the crowd.
Thanks, everyone!
Clearly that bar needs to invest in some soundproofing. It's a cost of doing business. Maybe your drummer caught this bar owner after he had gotten an estimate for however many thousands of dollars this might cost him to be able to get the place soundproofed to the point where his neighbors would stop complaining.
So why would you even bother trying to play there? I would have told him to suckit after the first gig when he got pissed about the monitors. I'm not hard up enough to schmooze a d bag to play some place. I have to ask mellow....I haven't read a ton of your posts, but the ones I have, you seem to always mention about how someone gushes how great your band is. Have you ever played anywhere where you didnt go over well? I think most musicians have.
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No. We've always gone over huge, which is why we are rich and famous, and have a crew of roadies transporting our gear.
That's why we try to play a rathole in a small Indiana town.
I'm impressed at your luck in finding posts where someone gushes about how great we are. What do you suppose the odds of something like that are? You'd probably need Mr. Spock to calculate something like that. And even then, it would probably only be approximate.
Fringes? You seem to know a lot more about me than I do about you. Have a lovely day, and keep rocking!
Sometimes a venue is just not a good fit. A lot of it has to do with how busy the night was and how much money the bar made. Surprisingly .....a band that can consistently zoo the dance floor with pretty ladies and fill up the cash registers will never be told they suck no matter what songs they perform or how they sound.
Its a what it is kind of deal. Music is very subjective after all. I have seen bands kill it and people also say ...they suck. Although I have never had a owner say we suck we have been asked to not come back thru the years for other issues like guitar player ticking off the sound man who told the owner and for not bringing a crowd. Funny thing the places that did not want us back for not bringing a crowd loved us but we did not bring them business. Those places were already dead and the people who came to see us filled what was a normally dead bar...go figure. Don't sweat it just move on and jam on.
