Articles
What pisses me off about the thing I love
by Rich on 21 May 2004. Read 467 times.
*Please note. These are my opinions of well researched facts. So I want respect for this fact, please feel to disagree or agree with my opinions but treat them as opinions.* I LOVE MUSIC. I really do. But there are something’s that really annoy me about the business, about the bands and about the fans. I just thought I’d shade some of my views with you so we can have a few debates about things in the future. Fans:The first thing I shall talk about is two aspects of fans behaviour at live gigs that piss me off more than anything else when I’m at a show. The first of these is total disrespect to support bands. On countless occasions, in fact every single gig that I have ever been to I have encountered behaviour like this: Whilst a support band has been playing people just shouting “You Suck”, “Fuck Off” or “Go Home”, booing or the worst, throwing things at them. I wish people would think about a few things before acting this way. All these people are doing is trying to earn a living by playing music to people. Sure you may not think they are very good, they might not actually be any good but either way, why on earth do people think they have the right to verbally abuse them for doing something they believe in strongly enough to make a career for themselves out of it. If you were working in a bank and a customer came in and didn’t like they way you were counting money or whatever else bankers do, and then proceeded to throw line upon line of the more colourful language at you you’d imagine they’d be removed from the bank. If worse you had glass bottles thrown at you you’d hope they’d be arrested. But in a band you have to put up with, in fact you have to expect it. The reason behind this is often that they just were too ignorant to either listen properly or check out the band first. I mean at Reel Big Fish, The Starting Line and Sugarcult show back in 2003, people seemed so into Sugarcult and then gave TSL the above treatment. Lets be honest the bands aren’t a million miles apart at all, so how could one be so good and the other want to make a person throw stuff? Probably the fact Sugarcult were a little more well known at the time. It’s bullshit, also remember that a lot of the time, the band you are trying to decapitate are probably good friends with the band you’re there to see, especially in he case of 2 or 3 overseas bands touring together. The second thing that pisses me off most about fans is their elitist attitude towards bands they “discovered”. For example I was recently at the Reel Big Fish, Goldfinger and Zebrahead gig in Bristol. If we are honest we’ll say that most people hadn’t heard Zebrahead before they were announced to play the gigs. People may have checked them out after seeing their name on the tour posters (which is fair enough it often stops point one happening) but they were certainly not well known. Either way you had a few fans that were into the band getting so arsey because everyone was “jumping on the bandwagon”! Fucking Hell!! Be happy for the band. This is how they get their fans. The only true way a band can, touring the world and getting people into the music. It’s not like they had done adverts for dog food to appeal to these people. They’d just played a kick ass show. These “fans” should be ashamed. The final thing is everything to do with bands selling out. Lets get one thing straight. Having your song on Radio 1 or your video on MTV is not selling out UNLESS you have in the past said you’d never do this. SELLING OUT IS CHANGING YOU MUSIC OR ATTITUDE FOR NO REASON OTHER THAN MONEY, EVEN IF THIS GOES AGAINST WHAT YOU BELIEVE! So when you take that into account, tell me how a band that have released an album as an unknown band, then toured the country, got a fan base and then ended up on MTV with the same songs sold out??? Presuming that they didn’t peach about the devil of American owned music television channels. Bands:
Most bands I don’t have a problem with and mot are so accomading and just generally great, regular guys. BUT there are the odd bands that ave made a habit of doing things that annoy me. (none of these involve getting on MTV which I have no problem with). This isn’t the time to start naming bands. Not playing a totally live show is unforgivable. If you go to see a band live, that is what you expect. To see said band, playing their instruments and singing (or not) live and for it all to be real. You expect mistakes, perfection isn’t high on the list, but you want it to be real. It’s not a problem to have people playing extra instruments that the band don’t play themselves (NOFX have a live keyboard player for example) but to play to backing tracks just isn’t really on. I’m not certain but pretty sure All American Reject were doing this on their last tour and I lost almost all respect for them. These extra bits weren’t needed. I mean at one point they had a drum machine going. THIS BAND HAS A DRUMMER!! He’s sat there whilst a glorified keyboard is playing his part. The other thing is not respecting their fans. In the same way I think fans should respect bands, the respect should repaid with a quick chat after the show and sign what’s put their way. (note I accept there are occasions when this might not be possible but when it is it should be done). The Industry:
There are so many things about the Industry as a whole that I dislike but I’ll take about my main two concerns. The first is actually fans more than industry but it’s something that affects the industry more. DOWNLOADING. I think that it can be great when there is control by bands and labels it’s awesome. For example how cool was it when Drive Thru Records gave away Hellogoodbye and Jenoahs EPs earlier this year? OR how great WAS MP3.com and how cool IS pureVOLUME.com? I think all bands should offer a couple of tracks per album as free downloads as people will very rarely buy an album blindly. I never have. Have always heard at least one track from an album or at least have liked the bands back catalogue. And seeing as most bands will never get mainstream radio airplay or MTV video rotation Downloads are a great way to do this. But illegal file sharing will kill the industry. It’s theft. Simple as that. I have never downloaded a whole album, I don’ ever listen to leaked albums, how ever much it’s eating up at me to hear said band, because it was stolen. It hurts the bands incredibly. For example lets make up a band. We’ll call them Hot Dog Eating Superstars Ride To The Boot Factory and they are signed to “Vinyl Records” and they live in California. So Hot Dog Eating Superstars Ride To The Boot Factory ave a new album coming out they are hella excited and a few weeks before it finds itself all over the net. Hot Dog Eating Superstars Ride To The Boot Factory are concerned as they are a new band with a small royalty rate and large advance to repay as they got slightly screwed by their label (another thing I dislike). Damn, it seems everyone has downloaded the album instead of buying it and now Hot Dog Eating Superstars Ride To The Boot Factory are screwed. They are in debt to their label and have to cancel that UK tour they had planned. Oh well loads of people are into the band so they can tour the states on the cheap and sell merch at twice what they’d like to. So the show goes really well people seem really into the band. Maybe it’s not so bad after all. Hot Dog Eating Superstars Ride To The Boot Factory go out to the mech stand to be cool guys and “hang out” but they haven’t sold hardly any merch. Hot Dog Eating Superstars Ride To The Boot Factory think that’s weird as the kids loved their show. They pop their heads outside the venue to find people buy merch for half price off drug crimals off the pavement. Hot Dog Eating Superstars Ride To The Boot Factory ask some kids why are you doing this. The kids tell the band. Your merch is a rip off. Hot Dog Eating Superstars Ride To The Boot Factory tell the kids, that the merch is expensive because they need to pay debt because no one brought the album as they STOLE it off the internet. Hot Dog Eating Superstars Ride To The Boot Factory get dropped a few weeks later and now work in various fast food chains except the one they all thought would fail who is now in a better band! (how does that always happen?) That’s a bit light hearted but that is what happens. The final thing is how unfair the industry is to new bands. In short no one cares about originality or great music any more. Take for example Lukash, The Attika State, David Lopan or Zero Point Six. It’s all about money. Which sucks. FULL STOP. So next time you slag off a band, download entire albums or buy the most disposable shit you can get your hand's on, remember this is how these people survive.