Did bands from the past have it easier?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by JeremyD, Nov 24, 2015.

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  1. dino77

    dino77 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Europe
    Of course. Many of the Brits of the 60s generation 'studied' at art school on student grants they didn't have to repay. Hence, they could concentrate on practicing and pulling chicks.
     
  2. Thom

    Thom Forum Resident

    That's a really good point. In most cities/towns, there would be fewer live music venues today than, say, in the 60s, 70s 0r 80s; and a lot more competition for the average person's 'entertainment dollar' (and for their time). In a small country like New Zealand, it's always been somewhat difficult for a band to make a living touring venues in NZ (a lot chose to relocate to Australia, or even Europe), but in 2015 I would say it's impossible (particularly if you don't have airplay or TV exposure; and even if you do, it's no certainty). Small towns and smaller cities just don't have the venues (or level of interest) in booking all the bands who want to play. That applies for live theatre too.
     
  3. Brian Lux

    Brian Lux One in the Crowd

    Location:
    Placerville, CA
    Yeah, I remember those days. Pretty much everybody I went to high school with knew somebody in a band or somebodies brother (or, rarely, sister) who was in one. I worked on stage crew for our school and we had a lot of bands play at dances and such and my crew buddies and I always asked the bands for their band cards. At the end of the two years we worked together we divvied up the cards between the three of us and each of us ended up with a nice stack of cards. I still have a good 5 dozen or so of them, mostly from local or semi-local bands.
     
  4. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    Sure, but the difference between now and then is the "excluded middle". In the 60s and early 70s, there were a huge number of labels and radio stations that would play local music creating regional hits. After records started selling in large quantities (Todd Rundgren - who had an East Coast regional hit with Hello It's Me cited Frampton Come Alive as the turning point) corporations primarily interested in selling large numbers of "units" entered into the industry. They bought up small labels, that had previously been guided by passionate music lovers, and assembled them into behemoths engineered to do one thing - sell millions of copies of an album.

    So everyone adopted their goal. All of the sudden, music became about having a huge hit, or failing utterly. A band that would play 6 nights a week at a club generally had no ambition to do anything more than to continue to do so, and their place has been usurped by a myriad of other entertainment options.

    But that band doesn't have to try to depend on the people in their town anymore. If they're good, they'll be able to reach people all over the world.

    Here's an example - my wife is a huge fan of a song-songwriter from Albany, New York named Happy Rhodes. She discovered her on a cassette mix tape a friend had sent her. She found her tapes, played them on her radio show. She also posted about Happy on the very early Internet - one of the very first MP3 files ever made was a Happy Rhodes song shared on a newsgroup. As a result, Happy got fans all over the world. Here's a video clip I put up a long time ago, about the coup the hardliners tried to have against Gorbachev's reforms. The guy interviewed is Vadim Anatov, the founder of the very first Internet Service Provider in the Soviet Union.

    He's wearing a Happy Rhodes t-shirt.

     
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  5. rockledge

    rockledge Forum Resident

    Location:
    right here
    Where I was in the early 1980s, the worst band in town was booked six nights a week. You could leave a bar that had a band that was packed with people , I am talking a bar that had a guy with a clicker counting bodies so as not to violate fire regulations, and within walking distance find another bar with a band. On a Tuesday night.
    In that very same area, bands make almost the same dollar figure almost to the dollar as they did in 1982. Which is to say, their pay is aprox 40% of what it was in 1982. And they are lucky to get a two nighter at the same club.

    Now a lot of clubs will not even charge a cover charge to feed the band , because they know if they do the place will be desolate.

    With of course the exception of campus area bands , who often work for free or whatever tickets they themselves can sell.

    I am fortunate to be in a band that does higher level stuff and does , with the exception of one night club, private clubs and parties and corporate gigs exclusively.

    The only way a local band can survive now is by doing stints in areas that are tourist traps such as the east coast. I have a few friends who do that , I seldom see them because they gig constantly just trying to keep a place to sleep and food.
    They will go out for 6 months at a time and come home for a month and then go right back out at it.
    No thanks, not how I want to live.
     
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  6. JeremyD

    JeremyD Member Thread Starter

    Just talking here no need to get defensive.
     
  7. Donfrance

    Donfrance As honest as a politician.

    Easier in the past? Well, you depended more on other people to promote your music. Today you can control this more yourself. In the past you had to go to a recording studio. Today, you record at home and create a video clip on top of that.

    Don't things always look easier and simpler, when we look a few years back?
     
  8. bopdd

    bopdd Senior Member

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    There has been a broad tapestry of genres and labels that have existed in any given decade before and after the Internet. If we're talking about rock or pop, sure the hits were (and still are) important to the major labels, but there were tons of peripheral genres that signified getting quality music into the public's hands with no emphasis on number one singles, etc. Avant garde, classical, jazz, blues, progressive electronic, industrial, folk, psych, etc, etc.

    That said, it does seem by the 90s that corporate culture was progressively swallowing up music culture in it's entirety, and I am in the boat that the disruption of corporate culture was ultimately for the better because the music was getting more risk averse with or without the threat of the Internet. But there is simply tons of music from the 60s/70s/80s that was released with no expectation of a hit single on the horizon. That music was discovered by small audiences, spread through promoters and tours and labels and college radio and (naturally) word of mouth, and much of it was really great. Analogous artists have a better shot now of getting a bigger audience but at the same time they probably also face more competition from a saturated DIY market.
     
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2015
  9. Raunchnroll

    Raunchnroll Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    Regional hit? That...... along with I Saw The Light .....was a hit way out here too.
     
  10. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    The Nazz version?
     
  11. Zep is not really a good example of an average band. Page and Jones were very musically and business experienced by the time of Zep's formation. There was a fair amount of excitment and expectation regarding Jimmy Page's New Yardbirds group. Peter Grant was a one of a kind manager just by NOT being a thief and advocating for the band's rights with the record label, promoters, publishers, etc., Zep were were VERY savvy in how they broke the US with heavy touring, monitoring record sales and working each US city's rock radio stations, and also being very aware of what competing bands were up to, (Page admired Ian Anderson's US success).

    Rock and roll was also the predominant youth culture expression at the time so it enjoyed maximum youth engagement and their dollars.
     
  12. Raunchnroll

    Raunchnroll Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    No - Todds. Thats what I read your post as. The Nazz was definitely too obscure. My first 'exposure' to Todd was Runt's We Gotta Get You A Woman.
     
  13. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    By the time of Something/Anything we were moving away from regional hits. From the Wikipedia article:

    It was first recorded in 1968 by Rundgren's band Nazz and was included on their self-titled debut album. Although released as the B-side of the group's debut single Open My Eyes it was picked up in preference to the A-side by Boston radio station WMEX, where it rose to #1, and was subsequently picked up by other stations. It first charted on October 6, 1973 at #97 and peaked at #5 on Billboard's Hot 100 on December 22, 1973 on the U.S. charts.
    It became a national hit, but five years later, and as a completely different recording.

    I'm trying to remember the critic who said that "...more virginities were surrendered to that song than any other."
     
  14. spridle

    spridle Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cleveland
    The thing about a more common experience is that there were some really great bands that almost everyone loved. There were also a lot of regional acts that you could discover when you went to visit a cousin or took a vacation. The other thing about a common experience is that it was a great way to turn your friends on to the underground in a comfortable way for them. Most people don't like listening to two hours of music they never heard before. A lot of them will get interested in one or two new bands when they get mixed in. It may have failed you, but that worked for a lot of people.

    I did click your link. Ecto Folk sounds like Jewel to me. Is she the Queen of Ecto Folk? Whatever it is, it isn't for me. But going up in genres shows where it's splintering into meaningless categories. Vintage Rockabilly? Rockabilly is a pretty narrow genre as it is, and a new band playing Rockabilly is doing essentially the same thing as the pioneers. We don't need Neo Rockabilly, Vintage Rockabilly, Rockabilly and Traditional Rockabilly. They all sound almost the same and splitting hairs like that alienates people.

    Than again for me there's Rock N' Roll and then there's everything else.
     
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  15. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    She was in the genre back when she still had a last name and yodeled, before she had all the edges sanded off her by the industry. Happy Rhodes is the queen of the genre.

    I could say the same thing about Metal, but I'm not into Metal, and my opinion isn't the one that counts. It helps Metal fans find more music that is likely to appeal. Someone who is into Black Metal may appreciate Sabbath or may not, but saying "It's all Metal!" doesn't help their purchasing decisions.

    It's not particularly helpful though. I may think something is "Rock N' Roll" and you may disagree. Heck, there are some totally confused people who think there hasn't been any Rock N' Roll since the 80s!
     
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