A dark day is upon us. A close friend of mine is quitting his band. They play originals and... well... used to have a pretty awesome following. But now he's concentrating his musical efforts into a Cover Band.Yeah.
Now, this isn't necessarily a rant about shitty cover bands (but there are a lot of them) but more about the death of dreams.
Years ago, he and I wanted to form a band. That never happened. (That happens to me a lot really) But he's a talented guy. And unfortunately, the music scene in Sarasota & Bradenton fucking crumbled. Why, do you ask? Well, lots of reasons.
Bands don't want to do fun shit anymore. What the fuck happened to the Art of Putting On a Goddamn Show? Motley Crue, musically, were just like every other Sunset Strip band in the early 80's. Why did they get signed? Because they had the audience's attention. How did they do that? By putting on a fucking big stage show, and promoting the shit out of it. Plain and simple.
These days, here in sunny Southwest Florida, nobody fucking bothers. There are a lot of great bands with good music and zero stage presence. No real show. The last underground band from Bradenton that I saw that had something was Crash Fist Fight. Somebody once described them as Guns N' Roses on crack. It was pretty accurate. My old band Death Makes a Holiday used to do shows with them, because we were all friends and it's fun to play shows with your friends. We loved playing with them, but they were a tough act to follow.
Bands aren't putting together a package show. How many times have you gone out to see your friends play? And how many times did you have to sit thru 2 or 3 shitty fucking bands just to hear your friends? Or, even worse, come see your friends and leave because the other bands were fucking garbage? I know the answer for me is "too goddamn many".
Why are bands letting some fucking clueless bar manager or wannabe booking agent dictate who gets on the bill? Why are you letting shitty bands ruin the scene? If your band is good, you must know other good bands, right? Why the fuck aren't you putting a package deal together to a booking agent and promoting the shit out of it? Why the fuck are you letting the venues in this area run the scene when it's fucking obvious not a single one of them has a fucking clue?
Bands don't promote. Just make a Facebook Event Page and hope for the best. Right? Wrong.
Design the posters. Get them printed. Hang them up in the venue. Hang them up around the venue. Get to the venue early and hand out a few flyers. No shit.
Don't be so fucking pretentious that you won't throw in a few cover songs. Every band should have a list of 4-5 covers they can whip out any time. Maybe not every show, but it's like a surprise. I knew one band that they had everybody pick a cover song, and they'd all learn it, adapt it to their style. And it made shows fun and awesome. So stop thinking you're above that shit, because sometimes it'll win fans to your music by adapting someone else's song.
I dunno, maybe I'm just yapping at the mouth, but it kills me. It hurts my fucking heart that the Music Scene is losing talented people because nobody fucking cares anymore. Not even the bands that are active seem to care anymore. And it makes me not want to care anymore.
The scene died because we all let it. It's our own goddamn fault.
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