I've got it (reason for the loss of the live music scene)

[tlbonehead]

Yeah, bars are full of people that go out to drink soda, especially the 20 something majority there. I don't know what your guitar amps have to do with needing a 5Kwatt PA power amp to put sound in a mid-size club?

The point was that you CAN have a good time w/o drinking whether its a popular thing or not. As for the PA thing, your comments were that there is something wrong with a 5000 watt PA if the user CHOOSES to operate it at the proper volume for the room and not automatically throttle it to its max just because the capability is there. That's why I added the onstage amps as well. To show that you can use equipment BELOW its maximum volume capacity to get the proper volume needs for the situation.

[tlbonehead]

Yeah if you say so (I don't remember meeting you), maybe you get that impression because I'm not interested in going after your gigs in the sticks.

You had some negative post a few months back about having to drive farther than across town to get a paying gig.

[ggm1960]

You had some negative post a few months back about having to drink farther than across town to get a paying gig.

 

 

Actually you're right. I really do need a break from it yet I managed to get myself into a couple more bands because I'm to weak willed to say no.

[axepilot]

Yesterday's free range live music scene died not because of the musicians, but for fiscal reality and big crackdown on the part of law enforcement.

Who wants to go to a bar / club to raise hell and drink all night when you might get popped driving home to the the tune of thousands of dollars and loss of your license?

The cops circle bars these days like sharks on a blood trail and people know that.

Sometimes I wonder just how bars stay in business.........................

[Lee Knight]

Yesterday's free range live music scene died not because of the musicians, but for fiscal reality and big crackdown on the part of law enforcement. Who wants to go to a bar / club to raise hell and drink all night when you might get popped driving home to the the tune of thousands of dollars and loss of your license? The cops circle bars these days like sharks on a blood trail and people know that. Sometimes I wonder just how bars stay in business.........................

You're right of course. I watched it start around 1990... but, it seems to breed a certain complacency in players. Gone are the days of playing for keeps it seems. When a band, even today starts getting people talking about them, people go. They still will, but you got to be even better than the hey days, and unfortunately the talent pool seems to have gotten worse. Lesser talent because so many settle for mediocrity... bleh.

And of course it's not about the gear, but gear directly reflects what you feel about your music. If programing some Line 6 box is your idea of gear, and plugging some pointy head stock whammy bar joke of a guitar into it is your idea of bringing it... I think we can agree we have dissimilar taste.
Now turn that up to gig level and... oh boy. That's rock!

[axepilot]

You're right of course. I watched it start around 1990... but, it seems to breed a certain complacency in players. Gone are the days of playing for keeps it seems. When a band, even today starts getting people talking about them, people go. They still will, but you got to be even better than the hey days, and unfortunately the talent pool seems to have gotten worse. Lesser talent because so many settle for mediocrity... bleh. And of course it's not about the gear, but gear directly reflects what you feel about your music. If programing some Line 6 box is your idea of gear, and plugging some pointy head stock whammy bar joke of a guitar into it is your idea of bringing it... I think we can agree we have dissimilar taste. Now turn that up to gig level and... oh boy. That's rock!

The dearth in demand has commanded the dearth in supply........................?

[bigjd]

Yeah talk about cops like sharks,last night and Friday night there were about6 both nights patroling the strip to my house out in the sticks and both nights they had at least 4 people pulled over.
Thats Staters,Countys and City.
Sharks is a little bit of an understatement, and where were they when the fight broke out last night? (yes again same bar as my other post)

[souldonor]

Lazy yes. Good gear does help, but just shutup and play your guitar. I had to drop the half stack, because I was always too loud. I have a 30 watt class A now that helps me stay in check. You don't have to wear crazy clothes, or play a certain guitar, or have fancy lights. Just entertain... at all costs, entertain.

[tlbonehead]

Lazy yes. Good gear does help, but just shutup and play your guitar. I had to drop the half stack, because I was always too loud. I have a 30 watt class A now that helps me stay in check. You don't have to wear crazy clothes, or play a certain guitar, or have fancy lights. Just entertain... at all costs, entertain.

I use two halfstacks in my full band and I'm pretty sure that most combo players are louder onstage than I am. Never understood the idea that a 4x12 and head must be loud, but something like a Twin or an AC30. Either can be way too loud and neither one has to be.

[bigjd]

I like my half-stack way better, my bass player has hearing loss (so he says) because of my Twin. I can keep my half stack in check easier than I can my Twin. The pre-amp power-amp rack set up is easy to get alot of variety out of for me. I'm sure some guys prefer something lighter and more transportable. But I' responsible for the lights and PA set-up too so heavy or not it works best for me.

[6StringSling]

 

And of course it's not about the gear, but gear directly reflects what you feel about your music. If programing some Line 6 box is your idea of gear, and plugging some pointy head stock whammy bar joke of a guitar into it is your idea of bringing it... I think we can agree we have dissimilar taste. Now turn that up to gig level and... oh boy. That's rock!

 

That's what I do and it kicks ass. Now if I could choose between using the PA and using my Marshall, I'd rather plug the Line 6 into the Marshall.

[toddkuen]

More reasons live music is hurting...

Bars in our area are getting hit with big taxes on drinks (10% or more)- so happy hour's not so happy any more.

Attention spans as long as it takes to twirl the iPod wheel to a new song.

New smoking laws (also I see that getting divorced shortens your life about as much as smoking... go figure).

The only real big draw around here is dancing - funk is popular - and a good local band can still draw 300-500 on a good night. But I suppose some new Wii / Twister / Internet hookup will let you dance with your friends at home.

With all that's been mentioned plus house-call making drug dealers and internet porn its hard to imagine the music scene doing as well as it is...

[arf-boy]

Yesterday's free range live music scene died not because of the musicians, but for fiscal reality and big crackdown on the part of law enforcement. Who wants to go to a bar / club to raise hell and drink all night when you might get popped driving home to the the tune of thousands of dollars and loss of your license? The cops circle bars these days like sharks on a blood trail and people know that. Sometimes I wonder just how bars stay in business.........................

 

 

 

Cops came in the bar I played Saturday and grabbed a guy off the dance floor. Later, during load-out, they circled again. The door guy at the club had warned us against "hippie shenanagans" because a band once got busted smoking pot in their van on the street. We had a brake light out on one of the band vehicles, but that escaped the notice of Johnny Law; patrons are a better target for drunken-driving patrols than the bands are.

 

The bummer about the gig is that we were asked to wrap up early because the venue staff had to get the drunk owner to his bed behind the stage.

[BlueStrat]

More reasons live music is hurting... Bars in our area are getting hit with big taxes on drinks (10% or more)- so happy hour's not so happy any more. Attention spans as long as it takes to twirl the iPod wheel to a new song. New smoking laws (also I see that getting divorced shortens your life about as much as smoking... go figure). The only real big draw around here is dancing - funk is popular - and a good local band can still draw 300-500 on a good night. But I suppose some new Wii / Twister / Internet hookup will let you dance with your friends at home. With all that's been mentioned plus house-call making drug dealers and internet porn its hard to imagine the music scene doing as well as it is...

 

One of the bar owners I play for told me he'd like to pay more but he just can't. Why? Because as you pointed out taxes have gone up. But not just that: in the past 20 years

 

-property taxes have nearly quadrupled

-business tax has gone up

-alcohol tax has gone up

-liability insurance has gone up

-loss insurance has gone up

-utilities like gas electric and water have all gone WAY up

-trash collection has tripled in 10 years

-building maintenance cost has tripled

-paying ASCAP/BMI

-employee costs have gone up

-food costs have gone up

 

In short everything has gone up, but there is still only so much he can charge for a drink before people just won't buy them. The costs of business have gone up 4-10 fold in 20 years but the price of drinks, like wages themselves, have only gone up 3-6 fold. Less profit for the bar=less pay for entertainment. Sometimes it = no entertainment at all.

[Kramerguy]

I play thru a valvestate, so does that make me half-assed or something?

[Janx]

Yesterday's free range live music scene died not because of the musicians, but for fiscal reality and big crackdown on the part of law enforcement. Who wants to go to a bar / club to raise hell and drink all night when you might get popped driving home to the the tune of thousands of dollars and loss of your license? The cops circle bars these days like sharks on a blood trail and people know that. Sometimes I wonder just how bars stay in business.........................

 

 

I don't have a problem with that. Until the law changes to say I can bludgeon to death any drunk I find at the scene of a car accident, it's in everyone's best interest that the cops pick them up first.

 

Could there be better methods? Probably. But in the end, if you spend an evening at the pub, drinking all night, and you get into your car to drive, you deserve to get pulled over the moment your tires hit the street. That's what DWI is.

 

That then said, any musician who complains about being beersalesman, should stop playing at bars, where the patrons are there to drink, not appreciate music, which is why you're a beer salesman. Play at a MUSIC venue, not a BEER venue.

[Lee Knight]

Originally Posted by Lee Knight
And of course it's not about the gear, but gear directly reflects what you feel about your music. If programing some Line 6 box is your idea of gear, and plugging some pointy head stock whammy bar joke of a guitar into it is your idea of bringing it... I think we can agree we have dissimilar taste.
Now turn that up to gig level and... oh boy. That's rock!

That's what I do and it kicks ass.

OK... if someone tells me the new car I just bought has issues and proceeds to list those issues for me, but I'm happy with that car, then they're full of {censored}. And I don't much like that guy. Understood. OK. I'm full of {censored} and you might not like me.

Except that a Line 6 tweaked to perfection in a live setting... I know what that sounds like. Maybe you make it sound great. Fantastic. But if you make it sound like I heard it sound every single time I've heard it... then you might reconsider.

And this is my point. Is switching from a faux Tweed to a faux Marshall at the bridge of a tune as important as being a musician and creating something. With your hands and heart and mind.

That's what missing with the live experience. Give me a guy playing into a 22 watt early 70's Fender Deluxe, and making that work for a variety of tones and textures, and I'll show you a guy with artistic insight and tone chops. Need a drastically different tone? Here, let me set down my Paul and pick up my Strat or Tele.

This same guy stands to be someone I'm more moved by than the guy doing a dance on his Line 6 controller. Who cares? From a swarm of bees to a murky sludge. And a fake sounding murky sludge at that. Sorry.

But the deeper issue is how players can order tone in a can. This is indicative of their basic commitment to their supposed art form. Live music is an art form, but mostly was an art form...

Now it's bowling night. "Hey! Checkout my Edge tone. Now... my Brian May. This thing's awesome!!"

[ggm1960]

I don't have a problem with that. Until the law changes to say I can bludgeon to death any drunk I find at the scene of a car accident, it's in everyone's best interest that the cops pick them up first.

 

Hey people driving over the legal breath alcohol limit aren't obeying the law, why should you? You could be a new superhero: DUI MAN!

 

You might be wise to carry a weapon though. Some drunks are downright mean.

 

 

Actually I wish they'd just outlaw booze again and then we could all play at those places you're talking about where people come to just enjoy the music..........if only there were any!

It's getting so bad that the only people that can get away with drinking and doing drugs are cops, judges and politicians!

[Janx]

While I'm no fan of alcohol or drinking, I find it tiresome when folks blame the downward trend on tougher DUI laws and enforcement. If preventing drunk driver fatalities shuts down bars (due to no customers), I'm mostly OK with that. Fact is however, there's plenty of DUI busts (which also mean the law isn't deterring), so it ain't the cause of the downward trend. Folks keep going out and getting drunk, for them to get busted (otherwise DUI busts would also be down).

As for legalizing/illegalizing, America has tried a variety of models in dealing with drugs. Freely available, limited sales, outright prohibition, prescription only. None of them stopped usage, none of them were problemless, all of them had side-effect problems. The DUI system is probably the most "tolerant" in that it says if you're of legal age (so you don't mess up your life by making bad decisions with an immature mind), you can use all you want. In turn, if you drive, you're busted. So folks are free to use alcohol however much they want, providing they stay where they are at, so they don't affect anybody. To enforce this law, it seems effective to sit outside a pub, and wait for people to drive off in their car.

The real problem with the industry is supply and demand. There's plenty of demand. Folks are always listening to music. Kids damn near have ipods surgically implanted these days. The problem is that there's more supply than even the large demand we have.

Every musician is a source of supply
every vector for getting music is a source of supply, be it iPod, file sharing, MP3, internet, concerts, TV, radio, physical media (CD), bars, private parties

half of those vectors wasn't a factor 20 years ago. Which narrowed the funnel of music.

There were also fewer musicians trying to make it, or at least less communication between musicians beyond the local region, to compete with. Now, everybody with a guitar is trying to get anybody to listen to them, and their reach is worldwide, instead of limited to their home region.

It's entirely possible, that the number of bands (as a ratio versus non-musicians) that have been wanking in their garage, hoping to make it, is the same as it was 10, 20, 30 years ago. The difference is the internet makes us aware of them, and lets them try to infiltrate/compete with your local market. A good test is whether the number of bands hoping to make it in LA or nashville has increased dramatically, over the general growth in population. I bet that both "music" towns have had about the same ratio of people hoping to mae it. It's just that now with the internet we all know about them.

[ggm1960]

 

While I'm no fan of alcohol or drinking.

 

 

I'd have never guessed.

Like I said in my last post, alcohol should just be made illegal, the sooner the better.

 

Prohibition, economic depression, socialization, revolution....... it's all part of the natural cycle of things and I get tired of waiting for the next phase. The only constant is that there's always some fat greedy (yet politically astute) asswipe who thinks they know what's best for everyone and is ready to steal your money so he can prove it.

[bigjd]

I play thru a valvestate, so does that make me half-assed or something?

 

 

This is Funny!

[MusicalSchizo]

Wow, there's a lot of whining going on here. Allow me to whine some as well.

Just {censored}ing play. If you're doing it as well as you can, and pouring your heart into whatever music you're playing (whether it be your own or someone else's), and people are, by and large, enjoying what you do, it's a success.

Remember this, oh snotty musos: No one is blown away by the same things.

My opinions?
-I find bands that care more about how they look than how they sound irritating. There are A LOT of those bands these days.
-I find that it is rare to hear ANY musicians that do covers with the same sort of spirit as the original - they're usually just cranking them out (and playing them WRONG).
-I find most original music these days boring and derivative. Occasionally, I'll find it exciting and derivative. But I rarely find anything that sounds fresh at an original show. It usually is just poorly-written songs with out-of-tune guitars and snare drum.
-I find tone snobbery amusing. What a waste of energy (and expense) for maybe 0.01% of the population to hear the fruits of your work. Tone snobs are the "audiophiles" of the musician set. Make sure you try those Pear cables - I hear they're great for guitar! Aw, I'm really just poking fun at you guys...if you love that, by all means - I love to hear the results, for sure, but I'm in that 0.01% with ears that can appreciate it.

The music that's on the radio and being consumed by the majority of society now as ever is all a retread of something that came before...and anyone with any sort of musical experience as a listener can make a list of things that songs remind him of when he hears it, which I think is a symptom of something bigger: Music isn't as special to people as it used to be.

As for the gear issue, well, I think it's amusing when people criticize Line 6 stuff or Korean guitars - just dismissing them out-of-hand. Everything can be considered on a case-by-case basis, and anyone who thinks that some sort of tone-snobbery is the key to people giving a {censored} about your music or even remotely the key to making good music is horribly deluded.

We all have heard great players playing {censored}ty gear and making it sound good.

We have all heard {censored}ty players playing great gear and making it sound {censored}ty.

I know that no matter what I sing or play, my heart is in it 100%, whether it's some lame cover or one of my own songs that I labored over for years. I've always felt the audience deserves that.

I think that even though my role/experience with music now is that of the "let's go bowling" "weekend warrior" archetype (because I have a family), I find that most experienced musicians of a certain age have overly rosy memories of the past.

I've heard recordings of all types of bands from back then...they sucked as much as bands today - sometimes more, because (for the cover bands) they were entirely dependent upon their own guesstimation when it came to learning cover songs, and all bands were limited by the availability of good sound. PA systems were terrible. Monitor systems were laughable. In pictures, many of these acts were nowhere near as entertaining visually as your local "Spazmatics" or "Metal Shop" franchise band.

So please spare us this "good old days" crap - it sucked then as much as it sucks today. Or, more accurately, there was as much sucking going on back then as now. The "suck per capita" was exactly the same.

The difference as many have correctly stated is that society has changed. DJs took over, and people are now completely used to dancing to recordings, not musicians. The vast majority of people don't consume music in the same way, and they don't care about bands anymore.

And contrary to the assumptions of many snobbish (read: OUT OF TOUCH) musicians: people DO want to hear the same friggin' songs every time they go out. I've been playing in all types of cover bands for over a decade, both at corporate events, weddings, and bars and clubs, and this is my experience.

Does it get old playing the same 50 songs? Only if YOU let it. Only if you ignore how happy those songs make the patrons at your shows. Only if you ignore the connection you can make with people playing their favorite song.

People have been wanting to hear Brick House, Jessie's Girl, Should I Stay Or Should I Go, Mustang Sally, and all that other cliche {censored} for the past 25 years, and we still get requests for them ALL THE TIME (even if we don't play all of them).

So to summarize:
Just {censored}ing play...and mean it. That's what's really important.

Rant over.
Brian V.

[Rich4Once]

BTW, Mn is smoke-free. And your state has been for a while too. SoDak is not yet, and I do play a lot of clubs there. Makes me appreciate the Mn and Ia ones.

 

 

I have that issue, too...here in Lincoln it's all non-smoking, but outside the city limits it's "smoke twice as much because Lincoln's not helping out"!

Actually, this summer the whole state goes smoke-free...I can't wait!

[BlueStrat]

 

So please spare us this "good old days" crap - it sucked then as much as it sucks today. Or, more accurately, there was as much sucking going on back then as now. The "suck per capita" was exactly the same.

Actually, no- in the 'good old days " I remember, there were 6 night a week gigs had by the pros, and weekend tavern bands that were either not good enough to get the 6 night gigs or didn't care to. There were a few bands who did originals mixed with covers. There we no all original bands playing their ten marginal songs with three other bands for 12 bucks apiece at all. There was no home recording,, no studios on every street corner and no internet to market yourself. You actually had to get signed by someone who saw some talent in order to make a record and get distributed.

 

I agree there has always been crap, but the crap- to- quality ratio has been turned on it's head. It happened when the full time gigs died out and technology made it possible for every swinging schlong with a Squier, a Peavey amp and a Fostex 8 track to fancy themselves as songwriters, producers, recording engineers, publishers, distributors, booking and marketing agents.

[Rich4Once]

Yeah talk about cops like sharks,last night and Friday night there were about6 both nights patroling the strip to my house out in the sticks and both nights they had at least 4 people pulled over. Thats Staters,Countys and City. Sharks is a little bit of an understatement, and where were they when the fight broke out last night? (yes again same bar as my other post)

 

 

I was able to flummox the cops in Boise once. I drink ice water when I'm playing, and after a gig was driving my fairly drunk female companion for the night home from the bar in her car. Immediately after leaving the bar's parking lot, I'm pulled over. I hadn't even had a chance to do anything, but he didn't want to waste time waiting for an illegal lane change or something, so he got right to it. Imagine his surprise when he pulls a car over driven by a "band guy" that's stone cold sober! LOL

 

I know he HATED letting me go!