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What's wrong with 2023 audiences?
- Thread starter Lance Bunyon
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I don't think anyone is expecting players in your life position to put on a Kiss-worthy live show. And I don't doubt that you and your bandmates love playing. But most hobby bands just aren't going to be as good as the ones who have more time and resources to put into it. And that difference will be to their advantage in the gig market. That applies to pretty much everything in life.
- Apr 1, 2000
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- Endorsing Artist: Roscoe Guitars, DR Strings, Aguilar Amplification
Last night, one of my bands played a weekly jazz festival. We were told don't be too offended at the audience's reaction - they're typically stoic, and while they enjoy the music being presented, won't typically show it.
The audience:
I'm thinking there's nothing wrong with audiences in 2023. You just have to entertain them.
The audience:
I'm thinking there's nothing wrong with audiences in 2023. You just have to entertain them.
I'm curious what jazz tune those people were dancing like that to.
Forgive my lack of knowledge on all types of jazz.
Passinwind
I know nothing.
- Dec 3, 2003
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- Designer/Toaster Tech @ Passinwind Electronics
I'm curious what jazz tune those people were dancing like that to.
Forgive my lack of knowledge on all types of jazz.
Could be almost any swing tune from the big band era, for starters. Look up the Lindy Hop, my friend. I've seen young hipsters doing somersaults between booths in a dive bar at jazz gigs my geezer bands used to play. Now, those people...
I worded it carefully so as to not appear to be challenging the honesty of the OP.Could be almost any swing tune from the big band era, for starters. Look up the Lindy Hop, my friend. I've seen young hipsters doing somersaults between booths in a dive bar at jazz gigs my geezer bands used to play. Now, those people...
Maybe that didn't get through to some.
But thanks for answering my question.
It was a jazz festival in 2023, which means they could have been playing pretty much any musical style.I'm curious what jazz tune those people were dancing like that to.
Forgive my lack of knowledge on all types of jazz.
Passinwind
I know nothing.
- Dec 3, 2003
- 23,045
- 45,909
- Disclosures
- Designer/Toaster Tech @ Passinwind Electronics
I worded it carefully to not appear to be challenging the honesty of the OP.
Maybe that didn't get through to some.
I know, and we've long since established that our mileage may vary, which is certainly cool by me! I'd phrase it just like you did if the context was DOOM, or maybe even hair metal. See what it says under my avatar?
That's great. I wish we had dancing crowds like that. I'll ask you this directly (and only Pacman answer, please): do you remember what song you were playing when this pic was taken?
The other side of this coin is that people used to play music at informal gatherings, and clubs used to make the real decisions about who was entertaining enough to play for an audience. I think it's lovely that people play music, and everyone has to learn. There used to be more outlets for those sorts of things - informal jams, etc. We need more of those.
The thought that every player at every level is going to be entertaining enough to a crowd of strangers to hold them in a club setting is a bit of a stretch though. The results of this are self-evident in the posts here. Nobody's saying you can't do it but what is being said is that if you want better results as you move out toward better venues, you will have to work for those. I seriously can't imagine how or why this is an offensive idea.
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This is also where people come to learn. What are they learning if nobody talks about playing in any context other than what most people already do? We're all learners - there's always something that somebody doesn't know yet.Are you suggesting “if you can’t think of something nice to say don’t say anything”? There may be a time and a place for that but not on a forum IMO. This is where we come to vent and complain. It feels good to get it off your chest!
I feel like there are people here who would rather shame those who would like to improve. It's very odd. In most areas of life, striving for excellence is considered a laudable goal. But here we have people shaming others for wanting to be good players or suggesting that improving your skills is a reasonable way to move forward.
Precisely how I ended up on here. I wanted to find info about playing bass from people who'd been doing it. This isn't my original account but I got on TB when the app was still around and I was in college. I picked up my roomies bass because I was frustrated to still be absolutely awful at guitar even after years of playing. Shortly after I learned 2112 and a handful of Arctic Monkeys tunes and spent the next 8-10 years gigging in Dallas. I learned about Darren Huff, vintage Fenders, and innumerable other things on here. Catharsis is an element of posting here too, but defeatism about "the state of things" these days just ain't it. It's different, some things are better, some things are worse, but none of it's gonna get better or change as fast as you want it too and it's not always easy either.
I think that comes from trying to internally justify the “don’t want to work” ethos. Have you ever met a musician that will admit that they’re lazy or untalented? I haven’t. But they still want to play and be in bands, and they do with no real barrier.
Yes, and there's a place for that. Nobody ever said there isn't. But in a thread like this, which is about a band not getting a response at a professional live performance, it's instructive to look at reasons that might be the case.
When I was young, we didn't have the proliferation of hobby players in clubs; people who were good enough to perform considered themselves entertainers, and people who were still learning were playing for fun in their garages.
Things changed when clubs started to realize they could pull in small but steady crowds of friends and family if they hired hobbyists once every three months. For those people, having a gig - any gig - was a big deal. So they'd work for a lot less, and they'd rally everyone they knew to come out because it was a special event, and it didn't matter so much whether they were good or not because Aunt Melba would come out to support you and order a couple of gin and tonics. Nothing wrong with that - it's fun for everyone.
I'm not saying that's wrong, and I think that's the part people don't want to hear. It's fine, as long as it works, but the problem is that this became the low bar by which bands could gain access to stages, and so there's now a proliferation of bands out there that are all pretty much doing the same thing, at the same quality level, because they've all seen what all the other bands do and they think that's what works. And Aunt Melba is tired; she's done her familial favor, and she doesn't want to come out and see you every month.
If you study marketing, you know that market saturation is a thing. When a product is a certain quality and there's a lot of it out there, people start commodifying that product and, perceptually speaking, one Kleenex is as good as any other. That's where we are with local bands in clubs right now.
What I'm saying - which people are free to resist if they want to - is that this makes it really easy to rise above the sea of sameness out there. You actually don't have to work that hard. You just have to work smart. It's a free lesson in marketing that some folks might take heed of, if they want to improve their following. But there's nothing saying you have to do that. If what you're doing is working, keep doing it, but on the other hand I don't really want to hear you whining about your audience response when you won't listen to people who have done this longer than you have and don't have those problems.
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Just ran the numbers- I have just under 10,000 hours of stage time under my belt. I've NEVER been full time, but I'm hardly a hobbyist. In my "golden era" I opened for:
Davy Jones
Charlie Daniels
The Beatlemania cast (NYC)
A 1996 version of Mountain
Whatever passed for the Rascals that year
Paul Revere and the Raiders
The Grass Roots
And a host of others.
I'm high functioning autistic so after 20 pages felt a strong need to sideline myself from my own thread.
I appreciate some of the advice, and take the rest for what it's worth.
Chances are I've gigged SUCCESSFULLY more than 90% of the people posting here.
I had glory days and remember them well.
Am I perfect or without fault? Absolutely not. Can my current band do better? Without question.
I don't do well on the "hot seat" for more than a day or so. I had a short conversation with a mod about this, and afterwards decided that I'm a GrownAss man and should be able to handle the responsibility to avoid a thread that triggers my spectrum issues on my own recognizance.
I started this thread on a bad day after an unattractive gig. I'm not half the things people say I am here. There's always room for improvement.
I'll still likely not participate much in this thread. I have no general interest in having to perform a moment by moment reality check on what beatings I deserve and which ones I do not.
Peace and love peace and love. I may or may not be back in this thread from time to time.
Meanwhile, I'm on a one month asian sabbatical! Whoo hoo.
Hello from Tokyo.
Davy Jones
Charlie Daniels
The Beatlemania cast (NYC)
A 1996 version of Mountain
Whatever passed for the Rascals that year
Paul Revere and the Raiders
The Grass Roots
And a host of others.
I'm high functioning autistic so after 20 pages felt a strong need to sideline myself from my own thread.
I appreciate some of the advice, and take the rest for what it's worth.
Chances are I've gigged SUCCESSFULLY more than 90% of the people posting here.
I had glory days and remember them well.
Am I perfect or without fault? Absolutely not. Can my current band do better? Without question.
I don't do well on the "hot seat" for more than a day or so. I had a short conversation with a mod about this, and afterwards decided that I'm a GrownAss man and should be able to handle the responsibility to avoid a thread that triggers my spectrum issues on my own recognizance.
I started this thread on a bad day after an unattractive gig. I'm not half the things people say I am here. There's always room for improvement.
I'll still likely not participate much in this thread. I have no general interest in having to perform a moment by moment reality check on what beatings I deserve and which ones I do not.
Peace and love peace and love. I may or may not be back in this thread from time to time.
Meanwhile, I'm on a one month asian sabbatical! Whoo hoo.
Hello from Tokyo.
I think that - for you - this is a one off.
Topics here morph. Your original post is about a wallpaper gig, but that led to some discussion of what, in general, bands could do better. Wallpaper gigs are always about tempering expectations, but club gigs are about other things. Don't take what I've said here personally.
Relax. We've already forgotten all about any character flaws you think you might have and moved on to finding fault with each other.
I don't. You've been tough but kind. Others? Not so much. It's cool. I did open myself up to a lot of up and coming genZers and read an entirely different perspective on how you and I came up in performance.
It's also helped me to re-think whatever our mission statement is as a band. I think we play too often in venues which are dying by no fault of their own.
The place that instantly.comes to mind is a little state line venue which can't decide what it wants to be. The owner likely spent around a hundred grand renovating the outside into three professional volleyball courts. And although I'm not a sporto at all, I appreciate the athleticism involved. But the volleyball peeps aren't there to hear music.
When I return from Asia in July I plan to have a sit-down with my mates. I think we need to establish where we're going to try and play, for which crowds, and for what minimum pay.
My BL is an interesting guy. He works in finance but seems too frightened to ask for a living wage...
I don't pretend to know what sort of problems everyone here might be facing, but what I see around me in this town is lots of people who will just take any gig to have a gig, without thinking about whether that gig is going to work for them.
That's not a new thing; I quit a band back in the 80's because they hired on with an agency that was placing them in conventions outside booths as background music and doing other equally lame things that were useless to the band but putting dollars in the agent's pockets, and I wasn't down with any of it. So yes, sometimes it makes sense to have a bit of strategy to what you'll agree to do, but there will be people around you who "just want to play" and they will make it difficult for you to implement that strategy. At least that's been my experience.
Exactly. I quit a really successful band in the late 90s because I had the following conversation with the BL:
"We play too much for any reason at any venue. Why are we doing this?"
BL: "don't you remember our mission statement? 'we will play anywhere anytime for any reason ' ".
I hadn't remembered our mission statement. It was stupid and unwise.
I gave my notice a week later.
There were other reasons, the front man and I were like oil and water - he wanted his buddy to take my place and he'd been trying to fire me for over a year.
If we look at the history of electrified modern music there's obviously far more disasters than success stories.
We're in a field populated by creatives. Many of us (myself included) have social coping issues to put it mildly lol.
I recently read a quote by someone huge who was asked in an interview would he do it all by himself if he could...his answer?
"Of course. The opportunity to do all this without three to five manic depressive business partners? Absolutely!".
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