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Time Warp

S

Sneakypete

Jul 22, 2009
360
161
#1
I've been musing lately on how the rest of the world has changed almost beyond recognition since I started in my first proper gigging band (late 60's) yet in the strange mini-ecosystem of pub/club band life little has altered. The only really noticeable change is that bass amps and PA systems have become massively more powerful and cheap, accurate tuners are commonplace but what else?
First band; lead guitar Gretsch Country Gent, Vox AC30, rhythm guitar Gibson SG, Fender twin reverb, drums Ludwig (IIRC). Current band; lead plays Strat and Telecaster through Matchless 30W 1x12 combo, rhythm uses a Strat through a Fender 2x12 50W combo and drums are a basic Pearl set. We still sing through Shure SM58's and although I have ten times as many watts as I had then I still only ever use a passive 4-stringer. The equipment list for the half-dozen intervening bands would have been very similar the only real difference being PA-type. Even a lot of the songs are the same! In my experience the personality types, politics, highs and lows remain exactly the same. There aren't many human activities where a time traveller could step back and forth through forty years or more and hardly see a difference but it seems to be true with bands doesn't it? So my question is; did the common or garden rock band stop evolving around 1970?
 
#2
Even the pay is about the same!

It's a good point in general. There are still the same egos balanced by the truly wonderful people. There are still the guys shooting for the top and the guys who just like to play and make some dough. If you look around when you play, you'll probably still see the same people in the bar. They're not the exact same people in most cases, but they are the same types we've all seen and talked to a million times.

Maybe it's the people. We stopped evolving around 1970. It's just the clothes and the gadgets that change. (For me it's still the same clothes really.)
 
#3
You go back further than I do, but I'd say the money's worse now for bar/club gigs.

Live bar bands now have to compete against a wider set of late-night entertainment options. On top of that, the bump in drinking age helped take a lot of the cushion out of the U.S. bar business. More quietly, the role of bars and clubs as meeting places was eroded first by cell phones, and then even more so by texting and smartphones.
 
#4
As for pay, back in the day there were fewer bands to deal with. Nowadays, every angsty teenager buys a guitar and calls himself a musician. Competing against those guys is impossible because they just want enough pay to buy their weed for the weekend.
 
#5
I have noticed this too, especially the pay. Every once in a while, I will see a band using technology in a cool way that makes me say, "How did they do that?"
I saw a 3-piece band in San Clemente last year, and they had a click track in the drummer's ear, and keyboard parts sequenced, and they nailed it. Including "solo section" parts where the keyboards looped for however many bars the guitarist wanted to solo, then went back to the verse/chorus as seamless as any seasoned KB player.
Compare that to The Who lugging their multi-track machines and still failing to pull off the "Who's Next" stuff at numerous gigs.
 

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