What's wrong with 2023 audiences?

[Bass Viking]

As a 20 something, I've heard and read that "don't know how to react to real life" stuff a lot, and trust me I know it's at least partly in jest, but there is still a huge scene of 20s people going out in general and socializing, as well as going to see music. It's just not the same music anymore/the music you are playing. That is in one sense a type of rebellion that is indeed happening amongst younger people. They simply do not want to go out to see cover bands of guys playing the same songs they've been playing for 40ish years.

I'm in my 60s and I feel the same way! And it's all backed up with the excuse "it's what the audience wants to hear".

 

[Bass Viking]

Best advice in the entire thread! I salute you. I am a double cancer survivor. Sometimes I'm surprised I'm alive.

Thanks and I'm glad to hear you beat cancer.

I'm sure I've seen comments on TB where the shabbiest treatment was at freebie gigs.

 

[Katoosie]

Try it, it's fun. You know what's funny tho? I'm 17 years old in my mind. I'm close to 57 in my arthritic body. You know how to hit 57 years old?
Don't die™

Hah, if I wanted to have fun, I would just create a thread to bash on fender or something to that effect.

Don't worry, most of my life I was very badly mentally messed up - now every year feels like a gift of time from some higher force

 

[LBS-bass]

I'm in my 60s and I feel the same way! And it's all backed up with the excuse "it's what the audience wants to hear".

Yep. This ties in with the points I've been making. If you don't do anything to differentiate yourself from everyone else, it's not going to get anyone's positive attention. But yes, the excuses I hear from other people playing music are always along the lines of "but these are the tried and true songs that everyone wants to hear."

According to whom? The list of about 45 cover songs that most bands play is just a list of songs that people of a certain age group most likely learned several decades back. It's the list of songs that, when someone put an ad up on Craigslist looking for players, they already knew, and odds were good that the players who answered the ads knew them too. So it's a quick and dirty playlist that never required any work, and when you start off lazy like that, and everyone else comes in lazy too, it becomes your business model.

You can get drunk people up to dance to just about anything. The "butts on the floor" bar, if that's your measure of success, is not very high. That doesn't mean that they're going to care who you are or bother to seek you out for the same experience when they can get that experience from any band, anywhere. But that's what people point to when they want to tell you these songs are the right songs.

There are songs I do that fit this definition. I don't do them because I want to, I do them because I know them and I need the material. I drop them one by one as the band learns more. I might keep one or two of the ones that do go over fairly well, because they're not my whole night or my whole image and therefore they don't hurt me all that much, but they do hurt me. The person who walks into the room while I'm singing "Brass in Pocket" is going to think they're in for another bland night of overdone stuff, and I know that. My job is to erase that notion as quickly as I can with the rest of my set.

 

[Bass Viking]

I was in a band for a while that did a lot of this to stretch out their songlist because they didn't initially have enough material to cover a full three sets. It was (to me) agonizing to watch their videos.

After I joined them, they added enough material to play their full commitment and the shows for a while were a lot tighter. Bear in mind that, in spite of the lack of material, this band had a fairly big following due to one of the members being very popular. They cut down the banter and we played a few shows that way. One night at a rehearsal the BL announces that he's going to start doing that banter thing again because ONE PERSON told him that she missed the little stupid jokes they were making all night.

ONE PERSON. The vast majority are there for the music, but one person gets to dictate that this should continue on as amateur comedy hour.

The salient point for this thread is that there are a large variety of things that can be wrong, but common sense should tell you that you don't change up everything you do because of one audience member complaining. If the crowd is responsive (and they were) then you keep doing what is working. If it isn't, you start looking for things you can change.

Maybe the band leader liked doing banter and that one person was the excuse he needed?

 

[LBS-bass]

Maybe the band leader liked doing banter and that one person was the excuse he needed?

He liked being the center of attention. A bit of a narcissist.

 

[Lance Bunyon]

Not that I need to justify myself or my trio, but we hardly do only oldy moldies.
Here's a few of the tunes we mix in:
Hotline Bling- Drake
Halo- Beyonce
Tennessee Whisky-chris Stapleton.

We do at least 50% of our material from the last 10 years of pop/rock/country etc.
But yeah we mix in a fair amount of classics.

 

[51PRI]

Do cover bands need to become tribute bands to find a receptive audience? I ask this sincerely. The audience would know exactly what they were going to hear. Because we have a decent variety, and maybe it's a detriment. Does the same crowd that wants to hear Alice In Chains also want to hear Dave Matthews?

No, I don't think so. The BL and I were discussing this after that dismalish sports bar gig. "I"think that, if the band isn't the only or maybe even primary source of entertainment in the bar, that frees the band up to play a more diverse mix of songs. They're not dancing anyway so why bother trying to play dance songs? But they ARE listening, I think, even if they don't dance or applaud, so why not play some B-sides or deep cuts to engage those ears?

 

[Pocket Dave]

I agree. I'd love to have some higher-level challenges in the jam scene here but I feel like if that's going to happen I'm going to have to create it. I don't live in the same universe as the music-program kids and they are very good players but that's just not my hang. I appreciate it, though.

I've been hosting jams for a while and you're right, you have to help make it happen, or at least help set the pace.

I've been lucky. That's helped draw at one super-talented 20-something over the past 6-7 years, who in turn, has been bringing players from his network of younger, talented players, who in turn, bring out others. We try to make them feel welcome. It's good to see the torch getting passed.

 

[Lance Bunyon]

No, I don't think so. The BL and I were discussing this after that dismalish sports bar gig. "I"think that, if the band isn't the only or maybe even primary source of entertainment in the bar, that frees the band up to play a more diverse mix of songs. They're not dancing anyway so why bother trying to play dance songs? But they ARE listening, I think, even if they don't dance or applaud, so why not play some B-sides or deep cuts to engage those ears?

You just covered another issue. Most of the places we play have at least 6 wife screen TVs broadcasting sports.
Last month the BL and I did a duo show in south Carolina during the Final four. It was women's Clemson playing. Talk about crickets lol!
They were there for basketball and only basketball (well maybe beer...)

 

[Pocket Dave]

You just covered another issue. Most of the places we play have at least 6 wife screen TVs broadcasting sports.
Last month the BL and I did a duo show in south Carolina during the Final four. It was women's Clemson playing. Talk about crickets lol!
They were there for basketball and only basketball (well maybe beer...)

Here's the thing about games on TV at sports bars. Sometimes spouses and significant others who tag along to the bar for the game don't really care about the game. Other times, the team everyone's rooting for plays so badly that the fair weather fans get bored quickly.

We did a gig once where a bunch of out-of-state, relocated college football fans and alumni showed up for a big game they'd all been looking forward to. There were flat screens everywhere, the largest being directly behind the band stand. Before starting, I grabbed the remote in one hand and the mic in the other, and announced, "Hey, can I address everyone here for just a sec? We know a lot of you are here to watch (college team) kick some ass tonight, right?" (hoots and hollers).

"We just want to let you know we support you and your team, and hope they do just that. We ALSO want to let you know that the game will continue on every flat screen in the place except this one behind us, because WE plan on kicking some ass tonight too, and we welcome every one of you to join us anytime you feel the spirit move you."

Then I clicked off the TV behind us and counted off downbeat.

We had spouses and significant others on the dance floor the first song. By the end of the game's first half as their home team had a dismal showing, we had everyone else up there.

My two take-aways:

1. You don't know 'til you know.
2. No one else knows the plan 'til you share it.

 

[MynameisMe]

This should cover the former.

I went to print this coupon to discover it had expired.....

 

[Jason Sypher]

My best friend (keyboardist) has a childhood buddy who's in a Journey tribute act which is also a tribute act for two other similar bands (which escape me at the moment).
The thing that gets me the most about this thread I started in a fit of ennui is the almost pathological 2023 distain for cover bands. When did this happen and why? To me it seems like class warfare. Let me explain. Cover band is the most working class thing four or five musicians can put together. "Let's learn a bunch of popular tunes and see if we can make a few bucks on Friday and Saturday night!". Don't get me wrong, in the past 40 years I've been in a fair number of original bands (including the original iteration of the one I'm in now).
The reason for steering away from the original act model is twofold:
1) most locals walking into a bar don't care about your original intellectual property.
2) most club owners won't or can't pay for starving artists to bring their work to the masses before it's become popular.
I've had some extreme bad luck in the past 20 years financially. I won't harp on it because it's not Germaine. But the reason I bring it up is I actually need the money I make on weekends. Due to my bad luck (technological disruption) I am not in a great place financially.

Original acts need financial backing of some type for a few years to Forever.
Whether it's a record label (which doesn't really exist anymore) or Mommydaddy...I sense the current distain for cover bands is covert class snobbery...

Dare I see this is a fairly loaded post?! I’ve never framed music or musicians in a class, working-class in your description. What do you mean by “the most working class” thing you can do is play on a cover band? Why would that be considered a good thing? Do you mean the nobility of doing a simple task well, with pride and dignity? Im with you there. But I’m kind of a classless )) guy I guess. I do think cover bands in bars have fallen out of favor but no one is thinking about the social class structure by any means. Todays music is not band based anymore. Hip hop and pop music has ruled for the last twenty years. Hard to cover most of that material! Back in the day you could learn a Fleetwood Mac song pretty much note for note. Pink is going to be tougher and Kendrick Lamar would be ridiculous. I play more traditional folk derived music where getting older can actually give you more cred than less. Folk music is supposed to be working class but it’s not by any stretch of the word. Bringing class into this question of why people are not adoring your band is not useful. While good solid work is worthy of respect, audiences are not in that headspace. You have 30 seconds to grab a listener. Have you ever tried busking? Have you ever tried going completely acoustic? Remember Nirvana played unplugged and it became their most popular album. This world your ranting at, we’re all in it, competing for listeners just like you. A gig is a gig and that is the same across the board…our job is to show people something that we love, something we feel is worth checking out, something of value to US that we hope they might value as well. After that point it’s out of our hands. Age, weight, class, even talent in some cases, are not the defining points why people stop and listen to us. It’s more of a magical (Doug Henning in the house) exchange. I’ve busked a ton in my life in New Orleans. Busking is a pure exchange. When you busk no one has to listen, no one has to stop. In a way, talking class, you've lowered yourself to near street beggar status. Yet I’ve made all levels of society stop, listen, feel the music and reach into their pockets and give me money. Sometimes even vibe can make a huge difference. Do we look like we’re having fun? Are we RELATABLE? I see you looking out and pointing fingers at just about everything but I don’t see you looking inward and coming up with ways to change yourself, change your act, change your attitude. It’s not the world my friend, it’s you. Cover bands still exist but now they are called party or event bands and they are massive groups of pure pros that sound as good or BETTER than the originals. They have horns and backup singers, you wouldn’t believe it, they are stunning. Cover bands went corporate, and they charge $10,000.00 per event. The players don’t love it, but they make $1000 a night. Consider going all the way back to when you were a kid and started playing music. What moved you? What do you love? Stop playing the same songs with this band and invite one guy over with an acoustic guitar and play some songs you LOVE. Sit on the porch and play for joy. When I lose touch with the world the first thing I do is make sure I haven’t lost touch with MYSELF. Strip it down to the basics and rebuild from there.

 

[Lance Bunyon]

Dare I see this is a fairly loaded post?! I’ve never framed music or musicians in a class, working-class in your description. What do you mean by “the most working class” thing you can do is play on a cover band? Why would that be considered a good thing? Do you mean the nobility of doing a simple task well, with pride and dignity? Im with you there. But I’m kind of a classless )) guy I guess. I do think cover bands in bars have fallen out of favor but no one is thinking about the social class structure by any means. Todays music is not band based anymore. Hip hop and pop music has ruled for the last twenty years. Hard to cover most of that material! Back in the day you could learn a Fleetwood Mac song pretty much note for note. Pink is going to be tougher and Kendrick Lamar would be ridiculous. I play more traditional folk derived music where getting older can actually give you more cred than less. Folk music is supposed to be working class but it’s not by any stretch of the word. Bringing class into this question of why people are not adoring your band is not useful. While good solid work is worthy of respect, audiences are not in that headspace. You have 30 seconds to grab a listener. Have you ever tried busking? Have you ever tried going completely acoustic? Remember Nirvana played unplugged and it became their most popular album. This world your ranting at, we’re all in it, competing for listeners just like you. A gig is a gig and that is the same across the board…our job is to show people something that we love, something we feel is worth checking out, something of value to US that we hope they might value as well. After that point it’s out of our hands. Age, weight, class, even talent in some cases, are not the defining points why people stop and listen to us. It’s more of a magical (Doug Henning in the house) exchange. I’ve busked a ton in my life in New Orleans. Busking is a pure exchange. When you busk no one has to listen, no one has to stop. In a way, talking class, you've lowered yourself to near street beggar status. Yet I’ve made all levels of society stop, listen, feel the music and reach into their pockets and give me money. Sometimes even vibe can make a huge difference. Do we look like we’re having fun? Are we RELATABLE? I see you looking out and pointing fingers at just about everything but I don’t see you looking inward and coming up with ways to change yourself, change your act, change your attitude. It’s not the world my friend, it’s you. Cover bands still exist but now they are called party or event bands and they are massive groups of pure pros that sound as good or BETTER than the originals. They have horns and backup singers, you wouldn’t believe it, they are stunning. Cover bands went corporate, and they charge $10,000.00 per event. The players don’t love it, but they make $1000 a night. Consider going all the way back to when you were a kid and started playing music. What moved you? What do you love? Stop playing the same songs with this band and invite one guy over with an acoustic guitar and play some songs you LOVE. Sit on the porch and play for joy. When I lose touch with the world the first thing I do is make sure I haven’t lost touch with MYSELF. Strip it down to the basics and rebuild from there.

Well then...I'm not going to unpack this vitriolic rant. I'm not your enemy. You seem to feel attacked by an observation regarding class structure. This isn't Yale debate team (thank God). Yes of course I've busked and played purely acoustic. I'd venture to bet my musical resume is pretty impressive for a weekender.
That was a fairly angry post. Show us on the mannequin where I hurt you?
P.S. I've spent about 6 hours today "playing purely for pleasure".
Possibly I remind you of your father. Sorry you had it so tough.
I don't really enjoy posts with that much angst- as I age I change. I find accusations and conflict unpleasant.
I wish you luck in all your future endeavors

 

[Tanner5382]

Was at a busy outlet mall near me earlier today checking out some Memorial Day weekend sales. Right in the middle was a stage setup with a three piece cover band going at it. Nobody was paying them one lick of attention. Walking right by. When they were done they were just silently packing up their gear, nobody saying anything or going up to them or clapping or anything. I felt bad for them. Made me think of this thread. Hopefully they got paid decently. Bass player had good tone with one of those 2014ish Gibson EBs though.

 

[LBS-bass]

Was at a busy outlet mall near me earlier today checking out some Memorial Day weekend sales. Right in the middle was a stage setup with a three piece cover band going at it. Nobody was paying them one lick of attention. Walking right by. When they were done they were just silently packing up their gear, nobody saying anything or going up to them or clapping or anything. I felt bad for them. Made me think of this thread. Hopefully they got paid decently. Bass player had good tone with one of those 2014ish Gibson EBs though.

I HATED these kinds of gigs when I was young, and I took a lot of flak for refusing to do them. They usually pay well, though.

 

[Grahams Groove]

Well then...I'm not going to unpack this vitriolic rant. I'm not your enemy. You seem to feel attacked by an observation regarding class structure. This isn't Yale debate team (thank God). Yes of course I've busked and played purely acoustic. I'd venture to bet my musical resume is pretty impressive for a weekender.
That was a fairly angry post. Show us on the mannequin where I hurt you?
P.S. I've spent about 6 hours today "playing purely for pleasure".
Possibly I remind you of your father. Sorry you had it so tough.
I don't really enjoy posts with that much angst- as I age I change. I find accusations and conflict unpleasant.
I wish you luck in all your future endeavors

There's nothing vitriolic in it. You're just dismissing people's criticisms and questions about your unfounded assertions regarding what's wrong with everything except your own approach to your band. You started a thread complaining about audiences and have been shifting your blame around the horn since. If you start making claims about class, audiences, generational shortcomings, etc. perhaps you should be able to back those up or at least explain your reasoning. This isn't ivy league debate level stuff - it's a basic way of developing an argument when conversing with other humans.

 

[Jason Sypher]

Well then...I'm not going to unpack this vitriolic rant. I'm not your enemy. You seem to feel attacked by an observation regarding class structure. This isn't Yale debate team (thank God). Yes of course I've busked and played purely acoustic. I'd venture to bet my musical resume is pretty impressive for a weekender.
That was a fairly angry post. Show us on the mannequin where I hurt you?
P.S. I've spent about 6 hours today "playing purely for pleasure".
Possibly I remind you of your father. Sorry you had it so tough.
I don't really enjoy posts with that much angst- as I age I change. I find accusations and conflict unpleasant.
I wish you luck in all your future endeavors

Whoa Daddy! Not the slightest bit angry! Sorry if it came across in the wrong way. You definitely don’t remind me of my father! Hahaha! Let me buy you a virtual beer and apologize! My suggestions might be bogus here, wouldn’t be the first time! But I’ll stand by this part of my post, we often point fingers when we should look in the mirror…at least I find that for myself a lot. Yale huh? I wish I don’t feel attacked that you being up class structure, it’s an interesting point of view, just not one I’ve ever seen brought up on TB. Your posts are interesting and in no way threatening to me. The comment “covert class snobbery” really stands out. That could be read many different ways. I have to say that that is definitely not in play and should be scratched off your list. Every reply I make on TB should be taken as two old friends talking over a beer. Debate? Well, perhaps in the way friends challenge assertions made, to try to break new ground. Minus the vitriol aspect why not unpack some of this? My first thought is: what are you going to change to improve your situation and marketability? Another avenue short of an originals band (something I think is likely a bad idea for anyone over 25) is an interpretive band. I play in a band who mostly re-interprets existing songs, folk-based or otherwise, and that seems to be an ageless endeavor with less constraints than straight covering material.

 

[pepj]

Here, the jam, open mic scene has to be supportive and get bedroom players up there. If those people actually come to play in the first place.
You deal with the quality level at that point.
Noted that the younger guys that show generally are networking and can play.

On general band issues, older seasoned players wont play with the younger guys as they just do not know the deal. Plenty of older guys don't either but the kids get this flack

The problem with bands not finding a market is largely a problem with those bands and its not the material so much as the way they play it. imv.
(Weed out inappropriate gigs or be desperate to do them chasing the money)

I think a pretty decent band will get repeat bookings because they successfully do what they need to.
You can wow them or just play crowd bangers and the latter can elevate an average band to get the better gigs.
Conversely, having world class musicians might be wasted at the local hip joint on people who arent there to listen.

When I take booking, or find them for my mates band, the criteria is;
Is this a nice venue.
Do I like the owners and their vision?
What are they looking for..
and then I tell the venue and the band what to expect.
This match up is critical, imv.

And if I won't do the gig myself, I'm not stitching my mates up with it.

 

[hrodbert696]

Do cover bands need to become tribute bands to find a receptive audience? I ask this sincerely. The audience would know exactly what they were going to hear. Because we have a decent variety, and maybe it's a detriment. Does the same crowd that wants to hear Alice In Chains also want to hear Dave Matthews?

The short answer is no, they don't, but it's also that the audiences are different.

I play in both a cover band (Mugshot Monday) and a tribute band (Blues Brothers: The Next Generation, or BBNG). Both are pretty successful, get gigs and draw audiences. But it's very different. The thing about a tribute band is that you get built-in branding because of the brand already built by the original. In our case, not only do we have the black suits and sunglasses, but also a Bluesmobile to park outside of the venue and do photo ops with. But I think only twice have I ever had a BBNG gig in a bar, and those were generally special occasions for the bar. With three singers, a horn section and the surcharge for bringing the Bluesmobile, it's a relatively expensive act to book. We mostly get civic and library summer concert series, a bunch of parades in the warm season, and theater gigs. We could probably have more of the latter if we actually went on tour, but the band is still basically weekend warriors with day jobs so we only play locally or in neighboring states.

Mugshot Monday, on the other hand, is the kind of typical rock-and-roll cover band that plays bars and backyard parties. The setlist has a variety but you'll hear a fair number of the "standards" from us. The core is classic rock - lots of Zeppelin, Aerosmith, AC/DC - but also some pop and some country sprinkled in. Here's the thing about the Alice in Chains/Dave Matthews question: it depends on the audience. There are people out there who DO definitely like hearing both. There are also people who don't, and most cover bands I've been in died the death of incoherence by trying to play a bunch of random stuff. What makes Mugshot work is that our singer/booker knows the venues, knows the audiences, is very much a creature of their world, and has a good sense of the variety they want to hear.

My best friend (keyboardist) has a childhood buddy who's in a Journey tribute act which is also a tribute act for two other similar bands (which escape me at the moment).
The thing that gets me the most about this thread I started in a fit of ennui is the almost pathological 2023 distain for cover bands. When did this happen and why? To me it seems like class warfare. Let me explain. Cover band is the most working class thing four or five musicians can put together. "Let's learn a bunch of popular tunes and see if we can make a few bucks on Friday and Saturday night!". Don't get me wrong, in the past 40 years I've been in a fair number of original bands (including the original iteration of the one I'm in now).
The reason for steering away from the original act model is twofold:
1) most locals walking into a bar don't care about your original intellectual property.
2) most club owners won't or can't pay for starving artists to bring their work to the masses before it's become popular.
I've had some extreme bad luck in the past 20 years financially. I won't harp on it because it's not Germaine. But the reason I bring it up is I actually need the money I make on weekends. Due to my bad luck (technological disruption) I am not in a great place financially.

Original acts need financial backing of some type for a few years to Forever.
Whether it's a record label (which doesn't really exist anymore) or Mommydaddy...I sense the current distain for cover bands is covert class snobbery...

Ummm... wow.

I can grant you a little bit - there is some class association with cover bands... some. There was a documentary about cover bands a few years ago where they were introduced as a "classic form of blue-collar entertainment," which struck me because I had never thought of it that way before. To reference my comparison of the tribute band and cover band above, the cover band definitely has more of a blue-collar circuit. I am not very blue-collar and I find it very difficult to get my friends and colleagues from other areas of my life to come down to a bar for a Mugshot Monday gig. Those venues are just not their scene.

That doesn't make it "class warfare," though. I haven't seen a new "pathological disdain" for cover bands - they were never the main choice of weekend fun for doctors, lawyers, or college professors. Our crowds, though, have been as good as ever. I think this is very much "in the eye of the beholder" - you're in a place where you need a lot more from cover band gigs, which makes it easier to be disappointed by the reality of things.