bandmates *facepalm*

There are some young bands around here, but mostly it's old guys who are really actively playing. Lots of places to play around here.
Being realistic though, I'm old. Are young people interested in an old guy in their band? Not so much.
 
drumnut87 said:
*RANT*

so, ive joined a band, and all of the members bar me have never gigged before. theyre nice guys, but VERY inexperienced. theyve justt bought a new mixer between them (behringer XR18), and i said i'd help them set it up properly as ive got live sound experience.


so i do, and what do they go and do? mess with every setting possible because its either "not giving them a good sound" (theyre running amp sim pedals into the mixer which they havent got the hang of tweaking properly yet), or "its not working right" ( it works fine when they dont all try to connect to it with their various old phones and tablets and mess with the mixer constantly).

its gotten to the point where the main guitarist (who apparently has a home studio), plugged his expensive fractal audio amp modeller pedal into the mixer, strummed a bit, looked at it, and wondered why his guitar was super quiet........told him he needed some gain on the channel to get it coming through the speakers.......his reply? "you dont need gain i dont think, its not a microphone so it should just work". so i calmly had to explain to him that everything that goes into the mixer, whether it be his guitar pedal, a bass amp sim pedal, a microphone or even a music player, needs a gain structure on it......you could physically see the cogs turning in his head trying to process this info.

the bassist admits hes a jack of all trades, master of none, he has a music stand in front of him with a phone on it with the notation on, and to swap pages on his phone he actually stops playing, scrolls, then rejoins in a bar later.

the male singer/rhythm guitarist, again, good guy to know and keen, but very inexperienced, cant get the vocal structure right for some songs, and get the timings all wrong so comes in either a bar or two too early, or misses it completely and throws us all off, or we start a song at the right speed ( im using a metronome to dictate the tempo from the original songs), and he swears theyre either too fast or too slow, and seems a bit touchy when his timings are told to be inaccurate.

and the female singer is good at songs she knows, but the songs she knows and suggests are obscure pop songs ( when the rest of the band want to be more rock based) like we suggest "since you been gone" by rainbow, she says shes never heard of the song or them, then suggests a song called "shoot him down" by a singer called alice francis, to which the rest of us reply we've never heard of her or the song (which we hadnt), and she looks very put out by the fact we dont know it when apprently its "very well known".


we've been rehearsing/practicing since august/september, and so far getting absolutely nowhere.


i have a lot of patience for folk, specially musicians who need to earn their gigging badges, but even though they say they want to gig, the progress towards that goal has been almost non-existant :/

*end rant*
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Ah yes... reminds me a lot of the first band i was in. Singer changing structure of the song on the fly and was irritated that we didn't follow him... key player who made a mistake and expected us to follow him when played a wrong chord, played the right one and started playing from there which meant he made a 4/4 bar a 5/4 or even 9/8 sometimes and totally interrupted the flow of the song... guitar played who was so oblivious to what the rest was playing that after the intro he came in a bar too late and consistently played the entire song behind the rest of the band. have to give him for being consistent, but hilarious that he didn't even notice he was lagging behind xD

Fun to look back on, but at that time it was really annoying (not saying i was perfect back then).

Was in a coverband years ago and we had a rule: our (female) singer had a veto on songs she couldn't sing because sometimes someone came in with a song suggestion that just wouldn't work (Motorhead for example). Or even when we did a cover that required the guitars to be in drop d tuning and the guitar players were to lazy to tune 1 string... so the entire song was off key because of that

Stopped playing in bands and doing gigs almost 4 years ago and only play with a guitar player now. Have loads of fun without all the hassle
 
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iCe said:
Ah yes... reminds me a lot of the first band i was in. Singer changing structure of the song on the fly and was irritated that we didn't follow him... key player who made a mistake and expected us to follow him when played a wrong chord, played the right one and started playing from there which meant he made a 4/4 bar a 5/4 or even 9/8 sometimes and totally interrupted the flow of the song...
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Interesting... I'm working with a guitar player right now that consistently drops a beat...🙄
 
Believe it or not, my band actually learned a couple of the songs I'd suggested! I was 100% certain, they were going to blow off my suggestions and didn't even prepare lyrics sheets. And even more amazing is that the guys want to play ALL my suggested tunes, not just a couple. I guess I was wrong (once again).
 
2 hit wonder said:
There are some young bands around here, but mostly it's old guys who are really actively playing. Lots of places to play around here.
Being realistic though, I'm old. Are young people interested in an old guy in their band? Not so much.
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A lot of what makes a band interesting is a charismatic front man. I remember the first time I heard the band Drowning Pool. I was at a bar in Dallas TX, never seen or heard of the band, and even my wife who does not like that kind of music much had a good time.
All because the singer knew how to keep the audience entertained. It wasn't just about the music, it was more what he said between songs. He was very funny and very clever.

I feel that any band with older members (35+ because that is "like way old" to any gen Z) should strive to have a good front man. (clearly the rest of the band playing well matters a lot too). Also encourage the youngsters to watch reaction channels. A lot of them have never heard music prior to 2000 so they are missing out on a huge amount of good stuff. The reaction channels are keeping that music alive and are responsible for reviving New Metal and other genres. From there, the next logical step is that some of those kids would want to play an instrument, and of course those kids (sub 30) would want to go see live bands (aka the old guys). So we need to do our due diligence and encourage kids to watch reaction channels because let's face it, if you suggest what music they should listen to, they will shut you down, but if a peer suggest it then it's fine. Either way as long as they are listening. I know there are other avenues but why fight it, they use social media, might as well manipulate it so that they don't feel it's coming from you but that "they discovered all those bands".
 
I can't watch reaction videos. Too much fake.
 
doggyd69b said:
A lot of what makes a band interesting is a charismatic front man. I remember the first time I heard the band Drowning Pool. I was at a bar in Dallas TX, never seen or heard of the band, and even my wife who does not like that kind of music much had a good time.
All because the singer knew how to keep the audience entertained. It wasn't just about the music, it was more what he said between songs. He was very funny and very clever.

I feel that any band with older members (35+ because that is "like way old" to any gen Z) should strive to have a good front man. (clearly the rest of the band playing well matters a lot too). Also encourage the youngsters to watch reaction channels. A lot of them have never heard music prior to 2000 so they are missing out on a huge amount of good stuff. The reaction channels are keeping that music alive and are responsible for reviving New Metal and other genres. From there, the next logical step is that some of those kids would want to play an instrument, and of course those kids (sub 30) would want to go see live bands (aka the old guys). So we need to do our due diligence and encourage kids to watch reaction channels because let's face it, if you suggest what music they should listen to, they will shut you down, but if a peer suggest it then it's fine. Either way as long as they are listening. I know there are other avenues but why fight it, they use social media, might as well manipulate it so that they don't feel it's coming from you but that "they discovered all those bands".
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yeah...I feel like my most favorite shows were band where the singer was not only good at singing, but kept the mood light and fun, and kept the crowd in it.

Anthrax, Rush. Primus, Iron Maiden, Strike Anywhere....just a few of the bands who had frontmen who kept the show going from end to end
 
2 hit wonder said:
I can't watch reaction videos. Too much fake.
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Galactic Criminal is the only one I have ever watched, and have been for 8 years now 😮 . He reminds me of all of my metalhead nerd friends
 
I joined a startup band in the 90s and finally broke into a band that could get and keep gigs. The drummer went to just singing and had a great witty presence as a front man.
He made it so much fun. Even when he told the Amvets audience they were "a bunch of drunk Zombies", it worked. Lol! We played a fiery version of Breakin the Law nailing the final punch note and there were crickets from the crowd, just like the scene in the Blues Brothers at Bob's Country Bunker. He stood there in silence, lifted the mic and told them that and they started looking around at each other sort of embarrased for not clapping.

There were other things that helped the band. The 2 guitarists were body builders, we all had fit, girlfriends or a wife that always attended shows. We all had moustaches, lol. I remember fit 6 women dancing in front of me on the drum riser, another popular band coming in from finishing a gig down the street and doing the We're not worthy" bow to us. They were better musicians than us. Good times.
 
2 hit wonder said:
I can't watch reaction videos. Too much fake.
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I know, most reactors don't say when they don't like a band because they don't want to lose views, but that is not the point, the point is they are exposing new generations to older music that they might otherwise never heard therefore giving it a new lease on life, keeping us old guys relevant.
 
Yeah, their audience is too often just the people they're pandering to, pretending someone's fave artist is so great and they're so impressed that they have to make incredulous facial expressions.
 
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2 hit wonder said:
Yeah, their audience is too often just the people they're pandering to, pretending someone's fave artist is so great and they're so impressed that they have to make incredulous facial expressions.
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Alex Hefner is one of those. Overly exaggerated or as kids these days say "Too extra"
 
doggyd69b said:
Alex Hefner is one of those. Overly exaggerated or as kids these days say "Too extra"
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yeah...I feel like he is what kids want these days...over the top, cussing, loud bells and whistles...very Tik Tok
 
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