Backstage With the Band

[salislore]

So I’m in the shower listening to a local radio station when a spot comes on for an area club. The announcer is talking about how it’s a hot club with a big dance floor and about all the drink specials going on that night (a Saturday night) and then he says “and no band!!! DJ so and so will be spinning the hottest club hits all night long” This gives you a great insight into how the live music scene is in my area.

[RoadRanger]

[guido61]

I'd facepalm if I could.

[RoadRanger]

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guido61 wrote:
I'd facepalm if I could.

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http://www.harmonycentral.com/t5/Feedback/Smilies-are-back/m-p/34697771#M2067

[guido61]

A). That's waaaay too much work for MY lazy ass

B). I'm posting from an iPhone I don't think that works in the mobile version.

:facepalm:

[nobodyknows]

Wow - that's chilling - and people are happy with that?

[heath_eld]

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nobodyknows wrote:

Wow - that's chilling - and people are happy with that?

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Many would be... 

As much as its sad - here there have been very few "clubs" that have had bands as long as i've been old enough to go out - I always just assumed club = DJ. 

[n9ne]

Not to be a debbie-downer here....but take a typical member of the 21-30 year old nightclub demographic, which tagline would be more likely to pique his/her interest:

"DJ so and so will be spinning the hottest club hits all night long”

or
"Such and such band will be playing your favorite hits from 60's, 70's 80's and 90's"

I can only speak for my own area....but the fact is, where it used to be that virtually every cover band stayed reasonably current and always kept at least a few recent hits in their repertoire,  the overwhelming majority of cover bands in my area largely ignore the past 10-15 years, and are playing the same standard fare that my old bands played in the 1990's, back when it was top 40.

Heck,  just look at the musicians who are playing the music.  In the 1990's, cover bands were primarily guys in their 20's and 30's.   Nowadays, the majority of bar-band musicians are well into their 30s and 40s, and 50+ year olds are more common than 20-somethings.  (In many cases, it's the exact same guys who were in their 20's and 30's in the 1990's....and they're still playing the exact same songs they played 15-20 years ago).

I know that when I was in my twenties, I wasn't particularly interested in seeing a bunch of older guys playing music from my parents' generation. 

I suspect today's 21-30 year-old nightclub demographic feels pretty much the same.

[sweatpat]

You make a good point about the dated nature of a lot of coverband setlists, but in my experience it is not simply the age of the songs but also the fact that cover bands tend to ignore the genre that most young people want to dance to: Hip Hop.

My band has been able to get an incredible ROI from adding half or dozen or so "classic" Hip Hop tunes from Sugar Hill Gang, Snoop Dogg, Dre, Jay Z, Cypress Hill, Tupac, and Beastie Boys. Some of these songs are 25 years old (or more!) but feel fresh to the crowd because no one else does them. Most of these tunes either used real instrumentation or samples of classic funk tunes so they are doable within a standard 2 guitar, drum, bass arrangement, even better with a keyboard. The trouble with the new stuff for me is that I have no idea how to pull it off without crazy synths. Weve had lots of requests for Harlem Shake but I have no idea how to pull that tune off without a keyboard player...Ditto Gagnam Style and anything with a dubstep influence.

[Kramerguy]

There's a huge difference between clubs and local bars.  Bar patrons (and managers) don't seem to understand that club bands won't play at those places, considering most of them pay crap or door only.  There's a huge disconnect going on right now that I fear will only get worse.  Club bands are also suffering because clubs are either dying, or getting DJ's.

[Mutha Goose]

Because I do sound and lighting, I "get" to see a lot of different cover bands in my area -both club and bar level. Funny enough, most of the 20-somethings I see are playing classic rock with the occasional original thrown in. I see more young kids playing classic rock than the older bands.

As a guitarist in a hard-rock cover band: I find it really frustrating looking for new tunes that have some sort of radio play. Some chance that our audience would have even heard the song, let alone being familiar with it. We add a minimum of 1 new song to every show (it keeps it interesting for us as well as for our regular fans). The problem is that none of the local radio stations are playing anything new. We would love to add more current material to our sets. There is a lot of great material out there. A ton of cool releases. But no one is hearing them.  From listening to local radio, you would think that Appetite For Destruction, Back in Black, Licensed to Ill and 40 Oz. To Freedom were just released. Every third song you hear will be from one of these albums.

[jeff42]

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sweatpat wrote:

You make a good point about the dated nature of a lot of coverband setlists, but in my experience it is not simply the age of the songs but also the fact that cover bands tend to ignore the genre that most young people want to dance to: Hip Hop.

My band has been able to get an incredible ROI from adding half or dozen or so "classic" Hip Hop tunes from Sugar Hill Gang, Snoop Dogg, Dre, Jay Z, Cypress Hill, Tupac, and Beastie Boys. Some of these songs are 25 years old (or more!) but feel fresh to the crowd because no one else does them. Most of these tunes either used real instrumentation or samples of classic funk tunes so they are doable within a standard 2 guitar, drum, bass arrangement, even better with a keyboard. The trouble with the new stuff for me is that I have no idea how to pull it off without crazy synths. Weve had lots of requests for Harlem Shake but I have no idea how to pull that tune off without a keyboard player...Ditto Gagnam Style and anything with a dubstep influence.

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This is why we tossed into our show these songs:

Dynamite- Taio Cruz
Calle Ocho- Pitbull
Give Me Everything- Pitbull
Good Feeling- Flo Rida
Get Busy- Sean Paul
Gettin' Jiggy Wit It- Will Smith

This Is How We Do It- Montel Jordan

California Love- Tupac
Lose Yourself- Eminem
It Wasn’t Me- Shaggy
Here Comes The Hotstepper- Ini Kamoze
Bust A Move- Young MC
Jump Around- House of Pain
Ride Wit Me- Nelly
Return Of The Mack- Mark Morrison
Thong Song- Sisqo
Whistle- Flo Rida
Low- Flo Rida

No one else in my hometown is touching these and we are doing them our own way with drums bass and guitar. The crowd is eating them up! YMMV

it is not a be all end all but we saw something no one was doing so we did it and it works for us. We also do some classic stuff too which works just as well. See my video post so see the wide range we cover during a gig.

We have enuff stuff now that we can turn on a dime if the crowd is more "rock" also.

[StratGuy22]

In my town most of the live music is either 2 - 3 original bands playing 1 set each, or 1 band with a CD of originals and covers for the rest. They seem to play things like Volbeat, buckcherry, weezer, foo fighters, more current stuff.

They are all younger guys/girls as well. At 43 and the youngest in my band (oldest turned 50) we are way too old for bars and clubs full of 18 - 25 year olds,, that's why we moved into the private/corporate scene.

[guido61]

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n9ne wrote:

Not to be a debbie-downer here....but take a typical member of the 21-30 year old nightclub demographic, which tagline would be more likely to pique his/her interest:

"DJ so and so will be spinning the hottest club hits all night long”

or
"Such and such band will be playing your favorite hits from 60's, 70's 80's and 90's"

I can only speak for my own area....but the fact is, where it used to be that virtually every cover band stayed reasonably current and always kept at least a few recent hits in their repertoire,  the overwhelming majority of cover bands in my area largely ignore the past 10-15 years, and are playing the same standard fare that my old bands played in the 1990's, back when it was top 40.

Heck,  just look at the musicians who are playing the music.  In the 1990's, cover bands were primarily guys in their 20's and 30's.   Nowadays, the majority of bar-band musicians are well into their 30s and 40s, and 50+ year olds are more common than 20-somethings.  (In many cases, it's the exact same guys who were in their 20's and 30's in the 1990's....and they're still playing the exact same songs they played 15-20 years ago).

I know that when I was in my twenties, I wasn't particularly interested in seeing a bunch of older guys playing music from my parents' generation. 

I suspect today's 21-30 year-old nightclub demographic feels pretty much the same.

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All this.

A lot of people here bemoan how much 'worse' the live music scene is today when compared to years ago, and that IS largely true, of course.  But it's also true that when I was playing the large, hot live music clubs in the 80s, there wasn't much in the way of bands with members over the age of 30.  Not that such bands didn't exist or weren't very good at whatever it was they did, but nobody going out to those clubs would want to see them.

So many bands are older guys playing older music and then they wonder why they can't fill up a club with 20-somethings like they used to? 

[Kevin T]

When i was in HS we had 10 bands from beginers to pros. There was an appretice system to learn from and bands not djs fought for the HS dance gigs. Today no such system exhists unless u include ROCKBAND. Bands form in college now I guess? Lots of mancave Dad bands are forming. These are the 20-30 bands round here that play for little or nothing.

[guido61]

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Mutha Goose wrote:

Because I do sound and lighting, I "get" to see a lot of different cover bands in my area -both club and bar level. Funny enough, most of the 20-somethings I see are playing classic rock with the occasional original thrown in. I see more young kids playing classic rock than the older bands.

I think part of the problem is there has become a cultural disconnect between rock/guitar music and youth. The 20-something guitar players may want to play classic rock songs, but the 20-something club-goers don't necessarily want to listen to it. When I was young, the musicians and the audiences were on the same wave-length. Not so much anymore, it seems. Used to be guitars and rock music were the domain of young guys. Now it's thought of mostly as an "old guy" thing. How cool is it to be dating the guitar player when your dad and his friends are downstairs in the basement doing to the same songs?

As a guitarist in a hard-rock cover band: I find it really frustrating looking for new tunes that have some sort of radio play. Some chance that our audience would have even heard the song, let alone being familiar with it. We add a minimum of 1 new song to every show (it keeps it interesting for us as well as for our regular fans). The problem is that none of the local radio stations are playing anything new. We would love to add more current material to our sets. There is a lot of great material out there. A ton of cool releases. But no one is hearing them.  From listening to local radio, you would think that Appetite For Destruction, Back in Black, Licensed to Ill and 40 Oz. To Freedom were just released. Every third song you hear will be from one of these albums.

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There are radio stations that play nothing BUT new stuff. Just that most of it doesn't involve guitars or "hard rock" music. One of the reasons it's frustrating to find anything new that anyone wants to hear is because the genre of "hard rock" itself is decades old.

[salislore]

I find that most crowds around here want to hear a certain genre of music and only that genre. We have a lot of smaller clubs that have metal fans and all they want to hear is metal. Same thing with classic rock. Same thing with funk. And then you have the 20 somethings crowd that just wants to hear the latest dance/hip hop. There is one really good club that my various bands have played numerous times over the years that has a nice mixture of 20, 30, and 40+ year olds that go there. You can play a variety of genres, but you still need to include some of the new stuff to keep the kids there. There used to be more of those around, but many have closed. Those types of venues are far and few between now.

I agree it's very hard to play the newer stuff out there, because of all the crazy synth parts. Not only do you need to have a keyboard player, but they need to be top notch to duplicate all the various sounds.

[guido61]

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salislore wrote:

I find that most crowds around here want to hear a certain genre of music and only that genre.

It's always been that way.  The rock clubs I played in during the 80s?  Most bands wouldn't be caught dead playing Madonna or Prince in them.  That was stuff for the non-band discos.  And then there were heavy metal and punk clubs as well.   Club and bar scenes have always been much more about genres and sub-cultures than almost any other aspect of music and entertainment.

There just don't seem to be many younger people into rock music.  It's a dated genre and until somebody(s) find a way to update it and make it relevent it's only going to exist as a subculture.  All one has to do is compare the top album charts from today and 20 years ago.  Where's the rock albums today?  Almost non-existant but for a few exceptions mostly limited to older classic artists selling some product to old fans.  That "great new stuff" that Mutha speaks of?  I'm sure it's out there.  but nobody is buying it.  And if they aren't buying it, they aren't going to want to hear it played live.

And yeah...some kids dig classic rock.  It's not at all hard to find young kids telling you how much they love AC/DC or Zeppelin.  But that's become a different thing.  It's not a relevant part of their youth and is the soundtrack to their lives the way it was for those of us that grew up with it.   They dig Zeppelin the same way you or I might dig a '57 Chevy.  It's a cool thing, and who wouldn't want to drive one, but it's not the same cultural experience for us that it is for the people who grew up with them.

So yeah...if you get a bunch of kids in a room and you bust out some AC/DC, they will almost certainly dig it.  It's getting a bunch of them into the room that is the trick.  And simply "we're a band who plays AC/DC" isn't the trick that's going to be enough anymore.

[sweatpat]

The kids are buying Black Keys, Mumford & Sons, Lumineers, Jack White, Alabama Shakes but I don't think they want to hear it in "The Club". The ladies go out to shake their asses, not to bang their heads or think about their feelings

[salislore]

Guido61,

I think we are probably close in age. I started playing out in the early 80's (at a very young age ). Only rock & roll back then for me. I wouldn't be caught dead playing anything else then either. 

Of course there has always been certain bars/clubs for certain types of music. But, I found in the 2000's, at least where I am, that there were a number of venues that would have a diverse lineup of bands and I'm talking on weekends. Some nights classic rock, some nights a funk band, some nights a band playing all newer stuff, some nights a very diverse band, I was pointing out that a lot of those types of clubs are falling by the wayside around here.