Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Your Look On Stage
- Thread starter bluewine
- Start date
- Status
i don't know, man. although in reality all of what you older guys are saying makes ALOT of sense..for cover bands.Doesn't creating your own music also give you the right to create your own style? whether it be ripped jeans, soccer shoes, cowboy hats or tank tops, EVERYONE has the right to their own style... so why critique it if someone thinks you look equally goofy?
now if all your seeing are dollar signs, then by all means, think REALLY hard about what your going to wear. But if the talent is real, you have nothing to worry about.
Everyone has that right, cover bands included. But I'd say looking good is even more important for originals bands - to the audience the music is even more of window into your soul. People are more interested in the souls of people who look like they're someone they could identify with, but somehow superior - a better version of themselves.
So, looking like an average guy is holding yourself back. Looking goofy is fine in a lot of contexts, though. I look absolutely ridiculous a lot of time time, looking at some video from gigs with a band I recently quit I look like a pro wrestler among a bunch of art students. It worked.
Doesn't creating your own music also give you the right to create your own style? whether it be ripped jeans, soccer shoes, cowboy hats or tank tops, EVERYONE has the right to their own style... so why critique it if someone thinks you look equally goofy?
now if all your seeing are dollar signs, then by all means, think REALLY hard about what your going to wear. But if the talent is real, you have nothing to worry about.
Yes, it does give you the right, key word style.As long as there is a well thought out idea of what your style is and how you pull it off.
People have the RIGHT to do whatever they want. I think the point that the "older" guys seem to be making is that there are some consequences that go along with image, whether anyone likes it or not. It's a key factor. If you choose to be "above" it or if you just don't care it's totally cool and you aren't "wrong" but to deny that it has an affect is just, well, wrong...
Simple short sleeved shirt and jeans
Hmmm, well your young, that always helps with image. Great hair and you look like your into it. You look like a rock guy. Are the other guys singing from the crowd or are they with the band?
I'm a big guy as well (over 300 lbs) and generally the antithesis of fashion in general. So I usually stick with blue jeans and black tshirts or longsleeves. Granted, almost all of the bands I have gigged with for a long time are punk, metal, hardcore or noise rock, so there's a very utilitarian/urban barbarian aesthetic there. I typically have close cropped hair and a long beard too. If I were gigging in a different type of band I might go a different route. I totally understand the opinions expressed about showmanship and whatnot, to me it just depends on the band and the setting. I have played gigs in a suit or nice button down shirt and vest or whatnot, but that was many years (and lbs) ago.
nope, not in ANY denial at all, i fully understand the way the music industry works, and how image is pretty much the only way to get attention these days, so yeah, your right.
my main point is that in 2010, people should worried more about making good music, because hell, how do you get people to come SEE you if you can't get them to listen to it?
and before anyone says anything about screamo, thats not a music genre, its a plague.
That made me realize something. I suspect stage presence is more important today than it was 30 years ago, but no more important than 300 years ago.
300 years ago there were no recordings, so people couldn't hear you without seeing you at the same time. There was no amplification, instruments were generally quieter than those in today's orchestras, and we didn't even have modern concert halls, so they couldn't see you from too big a distance, either. I'm sure what you looked like was very important, whether you were in an archduke's orchestra or fiddling at a village dance. You had to look good relative to the audience, though people back then were much poorer and sicklier so you didn't have to look all that good by today's standards. Even in the realm of serious art music there were guys famous for being eye-catching and hamming it up on stage - Paderewski and Paganini come to mind.
It's only during the recent few decades when recording audio was feasible but recording video more difficult and expensive that stage presence declined in relative importance. That was a weird exception. Those times are now over and we're getting back to normal.
hmmm don't think I agree with this too much. 300 years ago what musicians wore on stage was basically whatever counted as formal wear for the time. There wasn't too much concern about "look" other than whatever the fashion of the time was, not that I'm aware of anyway. I mean you're probably right that musicians tried to dress their best, whether for village dance or royal court, but only in the same way that everyone else at the dance or the court did.
When you get to the mid-nineteenth century you get larger audiences coming to music halls and more celebrity musicians - the great piano concert tours of Franz Liszt and so forth - and the growth of a romanticizing "bohemian" culture. In the 20s and 30s you get the zoot suit and all that, jazz culture really crystallizing the idea of a musician's "image" as something that normal people don't wear on the street.
In the 60s, yes there were recordings of course, but as far as I understand most bands made their name and their money on live performance. You put out albums to promote your tour rather than vice versa. The Beatles, of course, were the grand exception to that. In the seventies bands started to become more record-driven than tour-driven, but then MTV came along. So no matter whether it was clean-cut hair and matching suits, or ragged locks and tie-dyes, or spandex and hairspray, "look" has been pretty important throughout the rock and roll era.
Oh, and a clarifying remark on the jeans-and-t-shirt comment I made earlier: I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. I'd rather people pay attention to musicians for their music than for their fashion sense. I just don't get presenting this as a "stage look." To me that phrase would mean something you wear to perform that is different from your street clothes.
Thanks man
my hairs actually really curly but I straighten it for shows cause it looks better when I head bang.The singers are in the band, one screams and the other sings (although the bands broken up now).
Ok, just to fess up to how un-hip I am, somoene earlier mentioned wearing a beanie and seriously I thought to myself "With the propeller and everything?" Now that takes balls of steel but if you can pull it off you pretty much win the the "crazy headgear contest" and all the cool points that are currently on the table
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
I totally didn't realize that was what those stocking caps were called, even though I have one (not that I am fashionable, it just gets cold here in the winter)
nope, not in ANY denial at all, i fully understand the way the music industry works, and how image is pretty much the only way to get attention these days, so yeah, your right.
my main point is that in 2010, people should worried more about making good music, because hell, how do you get people to come SEE you if you can't get them to listen to it?
and before anyone says anything about screamo, thats not a music genre, its a plague.
I completely agree with you, I was really speaking to the idea that some guys seem to have where they can make that aspect of it irrelevant by declaring it so lol. Just because you (the guys who think that, not YOU lol) are too enlightened to
rolleyes care about image doesn't mean it isn't a factor. Shouting from the rooftops that the music is the only thing that matters doesn't make it so. 
So you're saying that If you were there in the 80's to hear Jaco play, you wouldn't have listened because he had no shirt on? Are you just going to dismiss Victor Wooten for coming onstage wearing sweats a long sleeve shirt and some black Nikes? I think the attitude and energy as a bassist comes not from the clothes, but the bass playing- we're bassists, and playing (IMO) comes before anything and everything else.
I didn't know I was supposed to think about how I dress on stage....
I used to play in a live electronica/drum'n'bass band and we played raves all the time. Talk about people dressing in weird stuff. Fairy wings, big fuzzy boots, viking helemets....very odd.
Now we play nu-jazz/prog rock stuff so it is a lot older mellow crowd. In either case I usually just wore whatever I had on that day.
I do think the importance of "a look" depends on what kind of band your in though. Marlin Manson/ Gwar the look is very important. Pat Metheny/ MMW not so much
I used to play in a live electronica/drum'n'bass band and we played raves all the time. Talk about people dressing in weird stuff. Fairy wings, big fuzzy boots, viking helemets....very odd.
Now we play nu-jazz/prog rock stuff so it is a lot older mellow crowd. In either case I usually just wore whatever I had on that day.
I do think the importance of "a look" depends on what kind of band your in though. Marlin Manson/ Gwar the look is very important. Pat Metheny/ MMW not so much
My point exactly. If you can't tell the band from the crowd, why in heck am I paying to see you?
And 99.999999% of the people who listen to music STILL don't know who either of these guys are. OTOH, most of them know who Gene Simmons is...
How do you get people to listen to you if you don't catch their attention first? We live in a visual world. Posters, album covers, websites, avatars...none of those make a sound, but they're what draws people into shows.
I completely agree with you, I was really speaking to the idea that some guys seem to have where they can make that aspect of it irrelevant by declaring it so lol. Just because you (the guys who think that, not YOU lol) are too enlightened to
oh i COMPLETELY agree as well!
i dont think im ever going to say image is completely irrelevant, i mean who would we be kidding? we've all seen what this latest crop of young bands are capable of, and its not really much..BUT.. there soooo pretty, so thats got to count for something right?
I think its my own admittedly naive ideals about what should be more important that everyone seems to be misunderstanding, ive just seen WAY to many bands play music for the wrong reasons yet have a "look" and get popular, albeit for 15 minutes, while most of the amazing musicians iv'e heard just look like normal people and they wouldn't even get a second glance.
but im not going to say thats unfair though, because thats just how things work i guess.
yeah, that precisely correct.
unfortunately, when you follow that logic down the rabbit hole, it only means your a dime a dozen among everyone else who over-promotes themselves on the internet, i.e. the millions of bands that look like you(NOT YOU haha), and frankly i think people are getting over-inundated with that stuff or they'll move on. So i'd think that it would all come back to what you SOUND like in the long run, 'cause the sound is what really sets us apart, right?
- Status
