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What's your local music scene like?

#121
Tampa has some pretty good bands of different genres, but looking for a bass gig on craigslist means usually two choices:

1. Death metal
2. Christian praise/worship

What's an old punk rocker to do?
I'm originally from Minneapolis/St. Paul, which has a really amazing music scene, so I guess I was a little disappointed. At least I don't have to scrape sunshine off my windshield!
 
#124
Wow... after reading all these depressing music scene comments, I feel almost bad saying what it's like in my area. I live near Athens Ohio, which is a college town, and is constantly bringing in people from all over the place. Amongst this, dozens, maybe hundreds of bands have popped up and have consistently found an audience. Indie Rock is the most common, but there's a huge market in pop, metal, jazz, latin, reggae, ska, etc. This is partly due to how many different nationalities there are here. And it's not aimed at an age group because a lot if the students are middle-aged and coming for mid-life education. Plus an abundance of professors and staff of all ages. So here, the music scene is thriving. Enough so that recently the members of Fall Out Boy said "This looks like a cool place", and booked a concert in a 200-seat bar basement. The smallest gig of their tour. Just a cool side point.
Unfortunately, my band has never booked a gig in the county. Nearby ones, but not this one.
 
#125
I'm in Minneapolis/St Paul
And bow howdy, I have been taking this place for granted...The music scene here is nice and diverse. There's definitely plenty of metal/hardcore/whathaveyou but there is a also huge indie scene and if you go out in the burbs or sticks there are plenty of country and cover band places. There are some punks about, a few jazz clubs and some venues play some prog rock/math rock stuff too. We have a few arena size venues too, so we get some big names from time to time. There are also more than a few festivals [out of town mostly] that cater to the hippie crowd. I am fairly certain there are some Christian bands about, but I would really have no idea.

I saw Sunn O))) on sunday (which was AWESOME) and this week I have two gigs with my "vaudecore" band. So I guess we Minnesotans have it pretty sweet. Reading through this thread has made me appreciate what a most righteous music scene I've got here.
 
#126
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

The economy has hit hard. Not many people go to bars anymore, drinks are too expensive, 3 beers and you are out 20 bucks. There are many more bands than venues and a few venues have closed down. There are many musicians that want to play - getting into a band is easy - but few people want to go out and watch a band. If you are established you can get 2-3 gigs a week but you have to drive all over southern Ontario to get them. Everyone else is lucky to gig once a month, many get less than that. Musicians lose patience and bands break up because of the lack of gigs.

New original bands have several places to play but they have to share the bill with 3-5 other original bands. They get one set and that's it. Even if you "make it" and get radio play, endorsements and all that, you still play small venues for small money.

Small venues where a good cover band might hope to play tend to book touring acts first (like The Trews), then old washed-up bands playing out their retirement (Trooper, Kim Mitchell, Goddo, former members of Blue Rodeo, I could go on and on) then tribute bands (there must be 3 or 4 AC/DC tributes that play out all the time). Regular cover bands that play a variety are very low in the pecking order unless they have a gimmick going for them like a hot chick singer or someone semi-famous in the band. If you don't have something that brings people out the venue isn't interested. I don't blame them for that, but most places do nothing to promote themselves so they have no built-in crowd. They want the band to do all the promotional work and bring all the people in. An established band with a following can do that but for a new band it's tough.
 
#128
Gothenburg, Sweden: I'm a new transplant (from Vancouver, Canada) and still trying to learn the ‘scene’, but what I've seen the club scene looks pretty good. There's a decent amount of bands in the original scene (either pop-rock or hardcore metal), a cover band and a danseband scene (more about that later).
The original scene has a ‘pay to play’ system. The Bands are given a time slot and a handful of tickets. They then have to pay for them by sound check time or they don’t play….OMG! I remember having to do that in the 80’s and early 90’s in LA, and I thought that went out with the hairmetal bands along the strip!?!!

Most of the musicians play in the cover and/or a Swedish danseband scene. Dansebands are these strange pseudo country style bands. The dress up in strange costumes and play to drunk middle aged Swedes. A drummer buddy (and long time Gothenburg resident) once told me all his friends play in cover and dansebands. They're always playing, but never seen them play. Seems that most of these gigs are private and/or corporate gigs.

Some more info on dansebands:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danseband
Link Removed

Man I miss the Vancouver scene
 
#129
Birmingham USED to have a good hardcore punk scene. but the city passed a stricter cerfew so a lot of the fan base can't come out to watch usually.
which sucks for my band because we're pop punk and have the same crowd base and a lot of venues has been forced to shut down because of it too...

but usually now a days you'll find cover bands/bar band modern rock
(gross).
 
#130
This is a very interesting thread. Thanks for posting the question.
Where I come from, a couple of years ago there was no realy local music scene. Music basically consisted of commercial oriental popstars.
In the late 80's some metal bands started emerging and concerts were organized and sponsored by companies. Then, unfortunately mid-90's there was the satanic incident, where the government decided that all metal heads are satanists and had to be arrested. Things went low after that.

Early 2000's a culture club opened in Cairo that hosted shows for local bands. This gave people a chance to start doing music again. Bands started doing western music with oriental and arabic influences and/or arabic lyrics.
We have a few (2-3) major "oriental"-Jazz bands, several metal bands and many genre-less groups that basically just listen to western music and try to implement an eastern version of it.

Unfortunately we only have around 4 or 5 places in Cairo that host live bands, so you don't get to see that much of a variety...

Whenever I am out of the country, I try to see as many shows as possible, because we simply don't have that much alternative music in the area (jazz is an example of alternative music over here).
 
#131
In Detroit it seems the music scene is dying like everything else. Wasn't unusual back 5 years ago to have 100+ people at a show, now no one wants to come out and spend money at bars, so not only do bars not allow certain types of music some nolonger even have live music anymore.

I've only been to metal shows lately (as I'm feeling the pinch too) but usually when we play a show it's for the other bands and their girlfriends.
Sure there are alot of bands in detroit almost too many so setting up a show isn't a problem getting people to come out is.
 
#132
Harrisonburg, VA

Pretty much, on craigslist, you can fit a whole month and more on one page. I look at seattle and they can fit less than 2 days it seems. I put up ads for rock bands and it seems like there's people that want to get out there and play but they don't seem dedicated to keep contact and do our first jam. :(
 
#133
Just moved from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati. Pittsburgh music scene is pretty good for jazz, and really good for metal and punk.
Cincinnati has CCM (university of cincinnati music school) which is full of musicians and there are quite a few places to find around the tri state area. its not a dying scene, in fact i think it is growing quite rapidly
 
#135
Hi there, very interresting thread!

I live in southern wide suburbs of Paris, about 35km away from the "most beautiful town in the world" (as they say), it's at least 1.5 hour away by car.
Well, making music here is not that difficult, found lots of local structures to help newer bands practicing (unfortunately authorities are closing some of them) but hosting places environment is different.
In my area, I can count like 3 bars that host bands, I have yet no idea if/how much they get paid.
Most cover (mostly rock) bands move to bars in Paris making the area deserted from them.

In my area, I can found lots of original bands mixing with different influences including reggae, ska, electronic dub rock fusion, metal (a LOT of metal or related bands), some rap music trying to get in the mix and "chanson française" (french songs, it is kind of a style of music here...).
Most of the original bands plays in local, cities-managed scene.

All tours stop in Paris and sometimes nearby so we get to see internationnal bands there.

I don't know if it's only in France, but we have a LOT of festivals (2 to 3 days events) all over the country featuring different styles of music.

What else? Well, live music is not that popular here, people prefer to go to night clubs with a DJ :( (I have never seen a wedding band for instance).

Take care
Guillaume
 
#138
Orlando scene is very diverse. I am only really into the rock/metal, though, so thats all I can tell you about. I do stumble into this cool blues bar every now and then...

Orlando and the surrounding smaller cities is spread out pretty big so a band doing the local bar circuit could have about 100 miles to cover from one to the next. There are a lot of cover bands around and the bars seem to weed out the bad ones pretty well. The good bands mostly play classic/southern rock, though. Not to many that I have seen play that many newer tunes. As far as the original acts, there are a lot fewer venues for them to play at than there was in the last 10 or 15 years. Most bands venture out to surrounding major cities such as Jacksonville, Tampa, and Melbourne/Palm Bay area. So overall there is a lot to offer.
 

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