Hotels get a star rating between 1 and 5, so why not a star rating for live music venues?
The star rating for hotels is given to indicate the quality of the facilities they offer, based on a set of standards and criteria. If we were to offer a stars for music venues would would the criteria be? From the point of view of the fans, this might include
* good sound, set at reasonable levels and operated by suitably experienced sound engineers who are present at the controls throughout of the show.
* reasonable and affordable entry prices, relative to the acts that are appearing
* reasonable prices for refreshments and a good selection of them
* some food and snacks being available
* a sheltered smoking area
* toilets that are kept clean throughout the night
* a quiet area for non-smokers to relax in
* comfortable seating for those who want it
* friendly and courteous staff, including those controlling the entry
* the venue is kept clean and in good decorative order
From the point of view of the bands
* good sound with stage monitors, suitable microphones and a decent house drum kit
* the sound system is operated by experienced engineers throughout the show
* Pre-show sound checks
* a secure area for the storage of instruments and equipment
* at least one dressing room
* an easily accessible system for enquiring about bookings
* an efficient and well organised system for publicising shows
* acts are paid promptly in accordance with terms and conditions agreed at the time of the booking
* reasonable refreshments available to band members
* polite and courteous staff available to help band members while they are present at the venue
* suitable stage lighting
* achieved standards of health and safety in all areas including the stage
* a web site that offers bands a good standard of information about how to play at the venue including contact with regular promoters
As with hotel ratings, the number of stars would be awarded by an independent inspector who would visit the venue to check that criteria are met and would do this at least once a year.
It might also be a good idea to ask fans and band members to vote on what rating they think a venue should be given. There is nothing wrong in involving users in this process; it is they who have first hand experience of using the venue. The technical inspection is also required because issues like health and safety and the payment of bands would not usually be experienced by fans and voting alone is not reliable enough. A voting system shares power between venue users and inspectors.
Pubs sometimes achieve awards, such as “pub of the year”, as an acknowledge of excellence. If enough publicity is attached to such awards, this might be good for business.
If such a rating system were to be introduced, what benefits would it confer on the industry?
I think that the advantages would include fans be better able to make judgments about value for money. True, fans don’t usually decide whether they will go to a venue, based on the facilities available at the venue; they go to see the band of their choice, if they are playing there. It might be of more value to the bands when deciding which venue to include in their tour. It’s very difficult for bands to know what standard of venue they are booking into when playing out of town. Their only recourse at present is the find other bands that have already played there and ask them.
Once a rating has been set, its then a benchmark. The venue might see an increase in its rating as being good for business. There might be a degree of competition between venues in the same town, to achieve better ratings than the others. Industry analysts might be able to see if there are trends in ratings over a period of time.
Are there any disadvantages in this idea? All standards have costs. Venue must meet health and safety (including fire) standards in order to stay in business. If inspectors find them to be at fault they are given the opportunity to correct faults in order to stay open. They have to find the money to do this. Voluntary standards would also require venues to find the money to upgrade some of their facilities in order to achieve an additional star. At the moment there is not a lot of incentive to improve standards. Increased standards have to be funded and this is not easy in the current economic climate.
Rating systems are by no means universal in the leisure industry. They have become established for hotels and restaurants but certainly not for pubs, cinemas or leisure centres. Rating systems work best where there is a choice for the consumer or user. If a live music venue is the only one in town, there is no competition for increased ratings.
At present the only bodies to set standards for such venues are the local authorities that license them for public entertainment and that is largely restricted to the safety of the public.
It’s very difficult to run a live music venue and since the start of the credit crunch, hundreds have closed.
Making a profit from live music is, at the small scale end of the market very difficult. At the top end of the market, companies are making huge profits from live music. In fact, the overall value of ticket sales for live music has overtaken that for the sale of recorded music (for the first time ever.)
It is the ticket buying public that funds live music venues. It is what fans pay at the door that keeps these small venues open. Its is often thought that small venues make their money from bar sales. This is not the case. In most venues, the bar sales budget is kept separate from the operation of the music side.
The music side of the venue has to pay for sound engineers wages, entertainment licensing, performing rights fees, publicity and promotion, cleaning, repairs, electricity, business rates, insurance, door staff and all the work of booking in bands to play at the venue.
In the bar side of things, they have to pay for drinks stocks (often in too small quantities to be able to offer good prices), licensing, health and safety, bar staff wages and cellerage costs.
If the venue makes a profit at all, it has to plough some of this back into the business to fund surpluses at the bank. Venues go through good times and bad times and its in the bad times that good operating reserves are needed, particularly in these times when overdrafts are available than they used to be.
Demand for live music tickets can be very variable; it can for example be affected by the weather. A long spell or wet or very cold weather can affect ticket sales. The public can be very volatile in their consumption of leisure; people that used to enjoy going out to see a band might now decide to buy a video or CD to watch or listen to at home. In the local area, attendance will depend on the supply of bands that people want to go and see. If the local area has a constant supply of new bands, this will fuel ticket demand. Once a crowd has heard all the bands in its local area, their interest in seeing them regularly might wane. We might also argue that the musical and artistic quality of local bands and artists is a factor driving demand. Where there are high quality bands and acts, people will feel motivated to go out and pay to see them. Even if the venues are not of a high standard, people will put up with this, to see they bands they want to support. However, poor standard venues will see people coming down for one or two gigs but no wanting to get back there regularly over a period of time, if they facilities are dismal.
The public is getting used to increasing standards in the leisure industry, in bars, restaurants, cinemas, shops, cafes, theatres and clubs. Big companies have invested a great deal of money in making these venues attractive. They want to give customers a really good experience when they go out to spend their income on leisure. Sadly the small live music venues can compete with this. the public are getting used to clean, well lit, well decorated venues that are fitted out attractively and staffed by people who are properly trained.
Perhaps this is why they feel so let down when they go to small live venues that are grubby, dimly lit, staffed by untrained students who have to work for a pittance and offer poor value for money. Our small live venues are well below the standards we are used to in the rest of the leisure industry.
Why is this? Other leisure venues tend to be run by large national chains, big companies that have money to invest in their outlets. Pubs and bars tend to change hands quite frequently and at eash change of owner, they tend to get revamped and modernised. By comparison, small live music venues tend to be privately owned and do not change hands that often. Most of them operate on a shoe-string and have insufficient turnover to be able to invest in refits and upgrades to their facilities.
One other factor can affect ticket sales at the permanent live music venues. This is the supply of free music gigs in the local area. Pubs that have falling takings, particularly mid-week, often start to put on bands, knowing that this will bring people into the pub. Bands can fill an empty pub, if only on one mid week date. they don’t charge on the door because this would put off the small number of regulars who do venue out on that night. But the down side of all this free music is that the bands don’t get paid either. The more bands that go and play for free in pubs, just to get a performance opportunity, the less ticket revenue goes into the live music venues. Why pay £5 to see a band at a venue when you can see them for free at a pub the week after?
Free gigs offer some bands the chance to play in a new venue, perhaps to some new people who otherwise would not hear them and in some circumstances they might think this worth the odd free gig now and again. But if there is a systematic programme of free gigs, going on regularly, with bands who also play in ticketed venues, everyone looses. There is nothing wrong with a few bands putting on a charity funding raising event where they all play for free. But if they are out playing free entry gigs week after week, that serves to lessen the demand for tickets at the venues. It undermines the venues and the bands that could otherwise make a little money out of ticket sales.
Its all about seeing the bigger picture. Permanent live music venues play a key role in live music; they are hard to keep going and they depend on tick sales. If a live music venue were to say “we will stop hiring bands to play here that play free gigs in our local pubs”, it would be harsh but it would also be realistic. If the permanent live music venues were all to close down, then bands would have no where else to play other than free gigs in local pubs. I think that would be a great loss to the quality of live music in a town.
A Social Enterprise is an organisation that is a business where profits or surpluses are reinvested or used to benefit the community, rather than to reward private investors. These businesses trade for primarily social or environmental objectives. They trade because they want to benefit the community rather than private individuals, such as shareholders. They do not usually distribute profits in the form of dividends. The purpose of their existence is social rather than financial. None of these ideas is absolute and we can find exceptions to all of them.
The government defines social enterprises as “businesses with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximise profit for shareholders and owners.” [6]
The purpose of running the business is to benefit either the community or the people who work in the company. Some social enterprise companies do have shareholders and all of them are there “for-profit” rather than “not-for-profit”.
Companies that run as social enterprises are often distinguished by their legal and management structures. The things that people have used to characterise a social enterprise and differentiate it from a charity or voluntary organisation include
* Having social goals and objectives that refer to the community
* Their principle activity is trade (either in goods and/or service delivery.)
* Assets are held for the benefit of the community
* They tend to have a more democratic approach to management
* They can be accountable to service users, customers, employees or other stakeholders
There are various legal forms that social enterprises can take, including:
* Co-operatives
* Credit Unions
* Housing Associations
* Industrial and Provident Societies
* Companies Limited by Guarantee
* Limited Partnerships
* Community Interest Companies
* Co-operative Consortium
* An unincorporated association
A Community Interest Company (CIC) is a special legal entity set up by the Government and subject to regulation by The CIC regulator.[1]
Social Enterprise companies can be subject to an asset lock. This means that, should the company be wound up, its assets must be passed to a charity or other suitable organisation, for the benefit of the community. Any assets that are liquidated must be transferred to another organisation whose assets are also locked.
CICs can have limited liability in the same way as private companies. They are subject to an asset lock and to a community interest test, which is applied by the CIC regulator at the time the company is formed. The liability of the directors can be limited in much the same way as a company limited by guarantee. CICs can be limited by guarantee or by shares.
It is not the case that social enterprises are defined by the type of trade they carry on; a social enterprise can do almost anything, provided that it can make a case for saying that its commercial activity benefits the community. “A CIC can pursue a wide variety of social objectives such as environmental improvement, community transport, fair trade etc.” [2]
“A CIC can be established for any lawful purpose, as long as its activities are carried out for the benefit of the community” [2]
A CIC cannot be a charity. A charity may operate a CIC as a trading subsidiary and this would gift its profits back to the parent charity. A CIC can have a single share holder (a parent charity). It can issue a dividend to its share holder but the amount of this dividend is capped by the Companies Act (currently 35%).
CICs can pay the directors of their boards a salary, as would be the case with most private companies. CICs do not attract any tax advantages, as charities do.
The CIC legal form was established in 2005 and it is estimated that there are now around 3000 – 4000 CICs (3,500 being an often quoted figure) [4] but this is a small proportion of all the social enterprises in the UK. [3]. It is estimated that there are around 62,000 social enterprises in the UK [6].
There is a national association of CICs [4] which acts as a representative body for all CICs in the UK and represents their interests to Government and the Regulator.
Social enterprises are sometimes referred to as “not-for-profit” businesses. But then it is possible that an organisation, which sells good or services, portrays itself as being “not-for-profit” and need not call itself a social enterprise.
If an organisation or company that trades makes a surplus (of income over expenditure) then it might either donate that surplus to a charity or other social beneficiary or it might reinvest that surplus back into itself. Either way, there is no real accountancy difference between a surplus and profit. [8] They are both an excess of income over expenditure.
Community benefit
When we examine businesses that say they are social enterprises, it is clear that the term community benefit can mean a number of different things.
“Community” can be a discrete and definable group of people living together in a geographical area, ranging from a very small village through to a whole city or large urban area. It can also refer to society generally, meaning, the whole of the UK or one of its principalities (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland).
The Charity Commission refer to “The Public Good” as an alternative to “community benefit” [2].
The terms “public”, “social” or “community” are often used interchangeably without there being any clear technical differentiation between them.
These are general beneficiaries. Some organisations might have specific beneficiaries, such as the employees of the company (as would be the case with co-operatives.)
Enterprise and trading
Charities can trade. They can sell goods and services in order to raise money. This is often referred to as fund-raising. Whilst a lot of charitable fund-raising consists of asking for donations of money (tin-rattling and raffles), charities frequently do sell products at a profit or engage in events that are carried on to make a profit (such as a dinner or concert.)
Charity Law lays down restrictions on what trading registered charities can do and what they must do with the profits [2]. They can do this without having to create a separate trading subsidiary, although the Charity Commission issues guidance to regulate the trading activities of charities.
The main difference between a charity and an enterprise is that a charity primarily engages in activities that address its core goals (such as the relief of poverty) whilst an enterprise exists mainly to conduct itself as a business to make money for its beneficiaries.
What is clear from looking at social enterprises is that they confer two main levels of benefit
* What they do benefits the community (e.g. provide a service) – their work is the beneficial outcome.
* They make a profit from sales and this profit is a benefit to the community – their commerce creates a distributable beneficial financial outcome.
Nearly all social enterprises need to make a profit; they might be able to survive on a break even basis, but, like most businesses, need to make a profit in order to build up their reserves or to justify their existence if they are subsidiary of a charity. Profits can be reinvested into operational costs or into reserves that ensure the company’s financial future.
Many social enterprises have been created for the benefit of people who are in some way disadvantaged, such as, people who have been unemployed for a long time, people who are disabled, or people who live in areas of high deprivation.
One objective of such enterprises is to create employment and income for their client group, through commercial activity.
Social Enterprises by type of activity
As already observed, these bodies can engage in almost any kind of activity. We can see that there are certain types of activity
* Very specific activities such as undertaking one particular function or providing a specific kind of service (for example, selling cheap wheelchairs to disabled people or teaching children from a particular ethnic background.)
* A range of activities within a defined field, for example, social care, health, education, environment, sport, etc. All kinds of things might be sold, a variety of services might be provided but there is a focus on a field of interest or group of service users.
* Geographically limited activities, where, for example, the social enterprise is a shop or centre in a village, town or city. Its customers will tend to be people living in that defined locality.
Discussion
What is clear from examining the evidence, about organisations that are calling themselves “social enterprises”, is that it is a broad church in which there is a wide range of activities being engaged in by an equally broad range of legal entities (legal types of organisations.)
A recent debate about what is and is not a social enterprise calls into focus the issue of definition. A company called Call Britannia set itself up to employ people from a deprived area of Birmingham. Some bloggers commented that they thought that this was not a social enterprise. It was claimed that this was a private limited company. It was argued that this company could not be a social enterprise if it distributed a dividend to its private investors. The blogger argued that social enterprise is “a way of doing business rather than a specific, single ‘model’. [5] He went on to argue that some companies could be more commercial than others and some more social than others. Some private sector limited companies see themselves as having a social mission and that what they do has a socially beneficial impact. Private companies often donate from their profits to charities and enter into sponsorship deals with community bodies. Some very large public companies are known to be philanthropic. It is common now for companies to donate a fixed amount or percentage of a fee or charge to charity. Some companies get involved in fundraising for specific charities that they wish to support. [7]
Some have argued that “social enterprise” is a brand rather than a model. An organisation can self-identify as a social enterprise, when it thinks it has a social mission and wishes to benefit a community or cause. Commentators have argued that many voluntary organisations have dubbed themselves in this way but whilst they are very social, they are not very enterprising.
Another point of view is that “social enterprise” is an activity rather than a particular structure or legal form”. [9] Geof Cox argues that “social enterprise is a verb not a noun – its something you do, not something you are”. The debate doesn’t end at this point, because other commentators have emphasised that structure can be as important as function. It all depends on what the definition is for.
Any kind of legal structure can be used to engage in “social enterprise” but it is the nature of the commercial activity that primarily defines this as being socially entrepreneurial with a possible added property of what can and can’t happen to the profits and assets. Layered on top of this is the view that truly social enterprises will have a set of values and ethics that differentiate them from mainstream business entities. [9]
This presupposes that there are clear activities, procedures or models that must be present for an organisation to justify calling itself an enterprise. Simply selling goods is not in itself enterprising – many charities do that all the time as part of their fund-raising departments.
Given the general level of technical looseness in this subject, the word “enterprise” is frequently used as a synonym for business; an “enterprise” is a commercial project or a business. When an organisation is “enterprising” it is being run as or engaging in a business. So if an organisation is a “social enterprise”, that means it is being run as a business that has social benefits.
In the wider world, the term “enterprise” often means something that is associated with risk taking, as when an investor puts money into a company or project in the hope that there will be a return on investment or pay back. Buying shares in a company is a risk-taking enterprise. In the social world, entrepreneurs want to reduce risk as much as possible.
They don’t often want to engage in something that is risky. Commercial investors risk their capital in an enterprise in order to hopefully win a return. Social capital investors are not so keen on risk.
“Enterprise” in this sense can just mean “trading”.
Conclusions
It would be easy to get into hang-ups about the word “enterprise”. In the writings about social enterprise, there is a severe lack of accuracy; words are used in a facile way that lacks technical specificity. A social enterprise is just an organisation (some form of company) that has been created to trade for social benefits.
There is a very broad range of organisation types, activities and methods that can be found out there. This makes accurate counting and classification difficult if not impossible.
Charities and other types of voluntary organisations undertake trade but they are not social enterprises because this is not their primary purpose – they engage in trade as a feature of a broader fund-raising function.
What characterises a “social enterprise” is that it has trading as its primary activity.
Notes
1 The Companies House Web site.
2 The Charity Commission web site.
3 The Guardian.
4 http://www.cicassociation.org.uk/
http://www.bssec.org.uk/blog/?p=384 A posting to the Birmingham and Solihull Social Consortium about a company called Call Britannia.
The information shown in this article might now be out of date. This article has been retained for archival purposes.
So why would be want to get into this anyway?
Social Enterprise is one of those annoying phrases that seems to mean something when you first see it; the more you get involved with it, the more confused and murky it becomes.
It’s not new. S.E. has been around for a few years. Certainly since the late 70s in the UK.
It’s not strange. Examples of well known S.Es include The Eden Project, The Big Issue, The Co-op, Jamie Oliver’s restaurant and the London Symphony Orchestra.
It’s not isolated. The Government has been pushing S.E. through The Office of the Third Sector and through ministers who have been going round the UK speaking about it.
It’s “social” because its about giving something of benefit to the local community, society or the public. It’s “enterprise” in nature because its about doing business.
It’s “for profit”. Though the profit is more likely to be re-invested into the company than distributed to share-holders as a dividends. Strictly speaking it’s for social profit.
Social Enterprises are likely to replace a lot of what we have been calling “voluntary bodies” – the charities and other volunteer-led organisations that have sprung up in their thousands, all over the UK, since Victorian times. Whereas voluntary organisations wanted to give away everything they provided (and get it paid to do this from the public purse), S.Es are more likely to sell their services or get their projects funded initially from grants but then make them sustainable if there is a market that can pay for them.
Our economy has depended for hundreds of years on private investment. From Tudor times this was largely provided by wealth individuals. With the rise of the Joint Stock companies, capital investment became increasingly institutionalised through banks and investment houses. With the rise of the state, in particular the ‘welfare state’, public spending on quangos, grant aid to charities and voluntary organisations increased and this was amplified when we entered the European Community and that because a source of regional structural funds.
It now looks like there is a sea change underway in the way that the Third Sector is funded. In the Thatcher era we saw privatisation and rolling back the frontiers of the state in order to reduce public expenditure. As this happened there was also a huge expansion in the non-statutory sector, so that any savings that were achieved by privatisation were offset by huge increases in payments being made from the public purse to the wide variety of non-government organisations springing up all over the place.
The current sea change, programmed by the Labour government, looks like privatisation but it’s capitalism with a social face. It’s about putting less state money into the voluntary sector and expecting the sector to fund it own funding. If we step back and look at the bigger picture, can we see the same amount of social product being created at the same level of resources, or are we simply going to witness a huge decline in social capital?
Clearly the models are changing – from the charity and voluntary organisations to the social enterprise. The methods through which resources are acquired and services and products are delivered are subject to fundamental change. What concerns us most is whether the same proportion of GDP will go into this sector.
We also left wondering whether the new methods of providing social capital will be more or less efficient than what we have seen over the past 100 years. Is it actually more cost-effective to have the non-statutory sector funding itself, rather than channeling resources through the coffers of the state?
Bear in mind that the non-statutory sector includes health, welfare, the arts, sport, community projects, environmental projects and possibly a wide range of other things besides. That is a majorly big number of ‘mouths’ to feed. The other issue that weighs on my mind is that ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’. A private social sector, funding itself, will be free of state control, in any direct sense, only subject to the same laws as any other commercial enterprise. That for me is a bonus.
Welcome to this blog. It was created on 15th January 2010. The Blog is edited by Trevor Locke. For more information about the Blog see the “About” page.
Postings and comments on this web site do not necessarily reflect the views of LASS and are the poster’s own thoughts.
Since I started my career in live music, I have seen over 3,000 bands play live. Some of them have been good enough to put on the stage of a big arena, some have been worth watching again on the smaller stages and some I have ticked the box and moved on to the next. But I am left wondering, what it is that makes a band stand out from the rest? In this article I try to pull together the elements that make a band first class.
The music
Because we are talking about bands that play their own music, we have to start with their collective ability to compose good music. The best bands are those that can turn out musical hits on a regular basis. Some bands have come up with one good song but have failed to equal it, even though they have produced new songs on a regular basis. What puts a band at the top of the tree, is their ability to turn out great songs, time and time again. That is true of the really great, world class bands, as it for the unsigned, unknown bands that grace the stages of the small venues.
Having said, that what then are the elements of a good song? Melodies and lyrics. The world’s best loved songs have simple melodies that everyone can remember and sing on their way to work or in the shower or at the karaoke. Most of the great popular songs have simple lyrics that are meaningful to most people or that say something that speaks to most of us. Not that rock songs have to be simple or vapid. I prefer rock to pop because rock to my mind is more musically rich and vigorous. The lyrics of Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” is not simple; the words are full of captivating visual images and highly ambiguous phrases. One of my favourite singer-songwriters, Don Mclean, wrote lyrics that I have never been able to understand (“American Pie”) but I have been listening to with wonder for many years. The US band Staind wrote song lyrics that completely changed my attitude to rock music and were a revelation to me. “It’s been a while” was one of the most emotional and haunting lyrics I have ever come across in rock:
Its been a while
Since I could look at myself straight
and it’s been a while
since I said I’m sorry
It’s been a while
Since I’ve seen the way the candles light your face
It’s been a while
But I can still remember just the way you taste
But everything I can’t remember as fucked up as it may seem
I know it’s me I cannot blame this on my father
he did the best he could for me
The early albums of Staind had a profound affect on my attitude to and appreciate of nu-rock.
Lyrics are great if you can read them and they strike you as being poems even if you have not heard the music. They have a quality that is free standing from the music. Some great iconic songs have been based on lyrical material that was far from simple – using metaphor, imagery and iconography to great effect. So, for example,
And all the roads that lead to you were winding
And all the lights that light the way are blinding
There are many things that I would like to say to you
I don’t know how
might on the face of it seem simple but what does it really mean, if anything? People like this song because they can make of it what they will. There are a million interpretations of it.
Some bands have written totally unintelligible lyrics, following in the footsteps of Lear, but have made them work inside the context of the song (Muse, Led Zeppelin, Bowie). The regurgitating of age old clichés is a big no no for me. I hate songs which refer to persons of the female gender as “baby” or “babe” and yet our fathers were totally happy with this.
Put together captivating lyrics with memorable melodies and you have a hit. People are going to love it. The melody has to be easy to remember. The rhythm of the song has to do something to our pulses. The lyrics have to be hearable – you have to be able to hear what is being sung about. If the song has a chorus, then it should be iconic – the audience should be singing it on the way home from the show. Sadly few rock vocalists articulate their words clearly enough for most people in a crowd to hear what they are singing. If the same applied to guitar lines, the band would be a flop.
The song should have dynamics – the rise and fall of the mood, the use of catchy phrases and breaks that amplify the flow of the song and tensions that build up to a break. It needs to attract a cross section of music lovers. A good band is one that can play or sing to a wide variety of people and capture their attention, irrespective of their age, sex or cultural background. Contemporary music is, in my view, too tribal, too limited to one particular group or segment. Much modern music celebrates age, class, gender or race. It’s not the genre or idiom of the music that matters. It’s not about rock versus pop, or pop versus hip hop, or hip hop versus r’n’b. It’s about music that can reach across boundaries.
I often ask bands, what comes first: the melody or the lyrics. I regularly get a “don’t know” answer. It is however true that both of these need to fit together. There was a time when lyrics were truly shocking, absurdly trivial and a reflection of the complete inarticulate illiteracy of the songwriters. Some of these are still being sung today and are fondly remembered by fans and music aficionados alike. But modern music lovers are much harder to please than they were 30 or 40 years ago. Today you have to be able to write lyrics that appeal to audiences who are generally well educated, articulate and intelligent.
Entertainment.
Live music is a form of entertainment. To reach out to an audience, a band has to live its music on the stage, it has to infect the audience with its passion for its music. I have seen bands who play well, from a technical point of view, who make good music, but stand on the stage like cardboard cut-outs. I have listened to bands who have potentially top class songs but for what ever reason they have not come alive. Stage craft is as important as song craft. It’s no good being able to write a great song if you can’t perform that song. Bands playing live on stage have a strong visual element. You go to see a band as must as you go to listen to them. Some lead singers have been referred to as great entertainers, because their performance is half an hour of working a crowd. Bad vocalists don’t sing to the audience; they sing to themselves, the ceiling, the other band members but they fail to engage the people in front of them. Singing always has an element of acting. Even if you can’t see the audience (blinding stage lights in your eyes) you should still act as though you can see them and you know they are there.
Does a band have attitude? Whether its the attitude of the lead singer or of the whole band, rock bands do sometimes portray something in their act that suggests aggression, cool, petulance and so on. Punk in some of its forms works a recognisable set of attitudes, as does death metal and nu-rock. Some young bands manufacture attitude, throwing their instruments on the stage at the end of the set and storming off the stage but this can easily look very false and contrived.
Originality
Most small bands sound like a bigger band. Bands that are not covers bands or tribute bands, need to play music that is recognisable but not a simply clone of a currently popular big band or one of the greats from the last 20 or 30 years. There are some really good bands out there that have popular appeal, but still sound too much like The Libertines, The Kings of Leon, AC/DC, Green day, Blink 182, or some other band. No band can write music in a vacuum. I remember being at a gig where a band played that I had not heard before. Half way through the set, I stood there scratching my head and thinking – I know they are good at what they are doing but I have never heard anything like this before. They are not like anything I have ever heard before. Then the penny dropped. I realised that I was listening to a band that was truly original. Suddenly, it all became very exciting. This is not something that happens very often.
If a band really does invent original music, they can find themselves struggling to find people who like it. The sound-alike bands do well because fans easily identify with what they are hearing. Play something that no one has heard before only the musical sophisticates applaud it.
Team work
This article discusses: “what makes a good band”. There are some acts out there where a star quality front man or woman puts on a truly amazing singing experience but the rest of the people on stage are just backing musicians. It’s all about the lead vocalist. If the lead singer leaves the band, there is not enough left to go on to success. This is still a band, may be, but what makes a band, as a whole, a first class act? Teamwork. Firstly let me say that I have a strong opinion about rock bands: in my view the best rock bands have at least three good vocalists. In a standard four piece band I would expect there to be a strong lead singer and at least two backing vocalists. In a trio, all of them have to vocalise. For me, the top quality rock band is one has adds vocal depth to good instrumental arrangements. Rock bands are, with few exceptions, singing bands.
Some bands put on a really sparkling show because they all work together to make it happen. Even when not singing, a guitarist and even a bassist can be dancing on the stage. The stings section can all jump up at a break in the music. The drummer can put on his own show at the back of the stage. The guitarists can assume postures that are familiar to that style of music. There is so much that instrumentalists can do to turn a band concert into an act which entertains the crowd as much visually as it does aurally.
I have seen bands where there is an amazing front man but where he is backed up by the musicians who sing, dance, play their instruments and create a total package that makes their set have a special magic.
Appearance
This is difficult. I can remember when bands during the 1970s tried to out do each other in the costume department and rock became theatrically camp. Today, most rock musicians want to look like they have just walked on to the stage from their day job or their bedroom. Now and then a band wears black shirts. A band that starts putting on a costume or uniform can be regarded with suspicion. One or two metal bands wear costumes, a trend set by Korn.
Bands I see on the television playing at huge festivals, have, I guess, chosen their wardrobes carefully with the aim of not looking like they have dressed differently just because they are on stage. They have, I suspect, chosen their jeans and tops carefully to fit with the latest fashions. No big band member wants to look like a nerd. They want to be wearing what all their fans are wearing, or at least the best dressed of them. Hip Hop and Rap singers seem to have gone in for uniforms big time. They have to be wearing the latest in-clothes to have any chance of getting anywhere. No matter how badly they perform, they can be sure of getting booked because they are wearing the right stuff. This is tribalism. These artists are buying into an art form which is more about iconography
than it is about music.
Indie rock artists just need to look ordinary and everyday but even that requires taste. The majority of the bands that I have seen have literally gone on stage in the same clothes they always wear to work or college. Indie bands do often change their shirts from what they came to the venue in, changing in to something that they imagine is more in keeping what their act.
I have come across bands that have sought the services of a professional stylist, but this rare.
Finally let me say that it is not common to find a group of band member who look the part. Pop moguls have been manufacturing boy groups (singing groups) by picking four or five young men who are all the right height, shape, age and facial cute-ness. They have been manufactured as products for pre-pubertal female consumers. It smacks of musical pornography but some labels have made a lot of money out of it.
When Liverpool four lads happened to come together in the early sixties, they were not manufactured, they just happened. They grew to be one of the greatest musical legends of all time. During the sixties, they happened to be the most iconic youth act imaginable. Yet there were not selected for their looks.
If you read the stories of how most of today’s rock bands formed, you see processes at work that are largely about friendships, mates meeting up a college or people being introduced informally because they could play a guitar, drums, bass and so on. There is never any reference to their appearance. Looks are almost irrelevant when it comes to the formation of young rock bands. If a band happens to have members who look the part, that is likely to be the result of happy co-incidence or maybe, because this particular group of mates all look fairly alike.
Once in a while a band comes along with four people who co-incidentally look the part. They all look right for the style of band and its music. If they are good at all the other elements of a first class band, they are probably going to make it. They are the same age, wear the same style of clothes, have hair styles that match and share common musical tastes. None of this was intentional or planned by managers.
I have seen bands where three of the members look spot on but one stands out like a sore thumb. If that one is the lead vocalist then they are not likely to get very far. The exception to the rule is the drummer – the one who sits at the back and can look like anything because they are hidden away and its doesn’t mater that much. Equally, there are bands with really good looking male drummers who sweat copiously, rip of their T’s and suddenly because a key part of the show.
Sex has always been used to sell music. It’s either sexy female vocalists who are there to lure male fans or handsome male leads who are there to appeal to anyone who has an eye for male looks. Take That climbed to fame in the gay clubs of Manchester because, at that time, they were all regarded by fans of either gender, as being really good looking guys. They had sex appeal and they they used it to sell their music. Some young bands deliberately get naked on stage because they know that their teenage audiences think them hot enough to get away with this. It’s a trap for the unwary. At one gig a band member took off his shirt only to be greeted by a chorus of “put your shirt back on” from the crowd.
There are many bands out there that either innocently use sex to sell themselves, or, in some cases are in a band only because of their hormones. It’s said that there are so many male bands only because the guys in them see this as being the way to get girls. To what extent is this realistic? I’ve been fortunate enough to know a few, good looking guys for long enough to find out about their private lives and I didn’t see them getting laid at every gig. In fact many of them have steady girl friends to whom they are faithful, even though they could pull any one of a dozen or so girls who are standing in front of the stage wetting their knickers at them.
Talent
In a good team, all the band members need to have equal degrees of talent. Some bands have average musicians but one stands out – a star lead guitarist or an ace drummer. This makes up for the lack of ability in the rest, in some cases. But the best bands are all good at what they do to more or less equal degrees. But does a lead vocalist need to have an x-factor voice? This is interesting. Some great singers don’t have the best voices but they have voices that have character. The only bottom line requirement is that they can sing in tune. Sadly I have seen bands with lead singers who desperately need either to have a good voice coach or who need to find something else to occupy their time. Singing out of tune is not acceptable. It’s no good blaming the stage monitors.
One of the most exciting band vocalists I know is not a good singer. He can’t sing but he can put on a stunning performance and he has has genuine star quality as a front man, but there’s no way I can see him as a singer. He shouts, growls and screams his way through his set, accompanied by three of the most technically exciting musicians I know and the band is always thrilling to see. In rock, there many flavours of vocalisation and I do not put down screamo bands because they appear to have opted out of singing in favour of screaming, which is a specialised art form that is very hard to do well and correctly.
Some bands are good at playing together, writing listen-able songs and also give their guitarists or drummers solo spots where they can demonstrate their virtuosity. Completely acceptable but not a requirement. Good singing, thrilling guitar work and drumming add up to an exciting package, that makes rock what it is.
When it comes to the voice, size doesn’t matter; it’s what you do with it that counts. Some world-class singers have had horrible voices but absolutely tantalising personalities; they can make bad songs into great ballads. Springsteen was noted for his rough gravelly voice.
It is said that the voice is another instrument that has to be played like a guitar. But the guitar is a standardised instrument. All guitars sound more or less the same. Guitar-heads won’t agree with me but you know what I mean. When it comes to the voice however, there are huge variations of colour, timbre, range and tone. One band I know was generally regarded as making good popular songs, which they performed well but the front man, who sang in tune and put on an acceptable stage performance, nevertheless bored me because his voice had little character. It was too plain and didn’t suggest anything. Another band was generally ok at making music but insisted on always having one female lead vocalist whose voice was annoyingly penetrating. High pitched and piercing, even though could sing in tune, I couldn’t bear to listen to them. Their recordings were even worse than their live shows because of this one flaw, and they just couldn’t see it.
The other thing about team work is that the band members should be able to work together effectively, particularly when off-stage, in the rehearsal room, making songs. All bands have fights now and again. Some bands fight like cats and dogs all the time but somehow manage to stay together and produce some really good music, despite the conflicts going on internally.
Young bands are particularly vulnerably to in-fighting because the band members do not have the worldly skills or experience to know how to manage differences of personality or opinion. One very young band I know well are still together and doing really well after two years, during which time huge blow ups have occurred with various members threatening to walk out of the band because they weren’t getting their own way.
There’s a difference between team work and four people who have a chemistry. I have seen bands where the live performance is a joy to experience because the group of musicians on the stage feed off each other, giving out a vibe that even non-musicians like me can only wonder at and which takes music making on to the next level.
Too often bands stay firmly within their comfort zone and don’t want to challenge themselves. Part of talent and a desire to reach for originality involves being ready to leave the comfort zone behind and try something new. Great bands are those who want to push the boundaries of what they are doing and reach deep inside themselves to draw on their talents to produce something that is fresh and ground breaking. Such bands will make it because the industry is always on the look out for something new.
Industry
By industry I mean hard work. Talent can easily go hand in hand with laziness. Equally, there are some bands who are not that great in the talent department, but who are succeeding because they work hard, believe in themselves have know how to manage themselves to climb the ladder.
The music industry is going through a sea change. We have moved away from the age of the record label, where a band made it only because a label signed them. The Internet has created the infrastructure for bands d.i.y their way to a reasonable of commercial success. As I have always said, behind every successful band there is a team of people who are off-stage but contribute to the band’s success.
Hundreds of bands have contacting me wanting management because they believe that a manager is going to carry them up the ladder. This is the subject of another article and I have a lot of say on this subject. Many hundreds of small bands are self-managing and actually do a good job at it. The downside of this is that while they are spending hours and hours each week booking gigs, doing publicity and artwork and coping with the huge range of things that need to happen behind the scenes, they are not concentrating on music. Some bands have at least one member who demonstrates considerable excellence at undertaking most of the duties involved in good band management. No wishing to pre-empt my future article on band management, the biggest single fault in most of the bands have I have followed, is this lack of programming. I’ll come back to that point another time.
What makes a good band?
This page forms part of our archives
Since I started my career in live music, I have seen over 3,000 bands play live. Some of them have been good enough to put on the stage of a big arena, some have been worth watching again on the smaller stages and some I have ticked the box and moved on to the next. But I am left wondering, what it is that makes a band stand out from the rest? In this article I try to pull together the elements that make a band first class.
The music
Because we are talking about bands that play their own music, we have to start with their collective ability to compose good music. The best bands are those that can turn out musical hits on a regular basis. Some bands have come up with one good song but have failed to equal it, even though they have produced new songs on a regular basis. What puts a band at the top of the tree, is their ability to turn out great songs, time and time again. That is true of the really great, world class bands, as it for the unsigned, unknown bands that grace the stages of the small venues.
Having said, that what then are the elements of a good song? Melodies and lyrics. The world’s best loved songs have simple melodies that everyone can remember and sing on their way to work or in the shower or at the karaoke. Most of the great popular songs have simple lyrics that are meaningful to most people or that say something that speaks to most of us. Not that rock songs have to be simple or vapid. I prefer rock to pop because rock to my mind is more musically rich and vigorous. The lyrics of Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” is not simple; the words are full of captivating visual images and highly ambiguous phrases. One of my favourite singer-songwriters, Don Mclean, wrote lyrics that I have never been able to understand (“American Pie”) but I have been listening to with wonder for many years. The US band Staind wrote song lyrics that completely changed my attitude to rock music and were a revelation to me. “It’s been a while” was one of the most emotional and haunting lyrics I have ever come across in rock:
Its been a while Since I could look at myself straight and it’s been a while since I said I’m sorry It’s been a while Since I’ve seen the way the candles light your face It’s been a while But I can still remember just the way you taste But everything I can’t remember as fucked up as it may seem I know it’s me I cannot blame this on my father he did the best he could for me
The early albums of Staind had a profound affect on my attitude to and appreciate of nu-rock.
Lyrics are great if you can read them and they strike you as being poems even if you have not heard the music. They have a quality that is free standing from the music. Some great iconic songs have been based on lyrical material that was far from simple – using metaphor, imagery and iconography to great effect. So, for example,
And all the roads that lead to you were winding And all the lights that light the way are blinding There are many things that I would like to say to you I don’t know how
might on the face of it seem simple but what does it really mean, if anything? People like this song because they can make of it what they will. There are a million interpretations of it.
Some bands have written totally unintelligible lyrics, following in the footsteps of Lear, but have made them work inside the context of the song (Muse, Led Zeppelin, Bowie). The regurgitating of age old clichés is a big no no for me. I hate songs which refer to persons of the female gender as “baby” or “babe” and yet our fathers were totally happy with this.
Put together captivating lyrics with memorable melodies and you have a hit. People are going to love it. The melody has to be easy to remember. The rhythm of the song has to do something to our pulses. The lyrics have to be hearable – you have to be able to hear what is being sung about. If the song has a chorus, then it should be iconic – the audience should be singing it on the way home from the show. Sadly few rock vocalists articulate their words clearly enough for most people in a crowd to hear what they are singing. If the same applied to guitar lines, the band would be a flop.
The song should have dynamics – the rise and fall of the mood, the use of catchy phrases and breaks that amplify the flow of the song and tensions that build up to a break. It needs to attract a cross section of music lovers. A good band is one that can play or sing to a wide variety of people and capture their attention, irrespective of their age, sex or cultural background. Contemporary music is, in my view, too tribal, too limited to one particular group or segment. Much modern music celebrates age, class, gender or race. It’s not the genre or idiom of the music that matters. It’s not about rock versus pop, or pop versus hip hop, or hip hop versus r’n’b. It’s about music that can reach across boundaries.
I often ask bands, what comes first: the melody or the lyrics. I regularly get a “don’t know” answer. It is however true that both of these need to fit together. There was a time when lyrics were truly shocking, absurdly trivial and a reflection of the complete inarticulate illiteracy of the songwriters. Some of these are still being sung today and are fondly remembered by fans and music aficionados alike. But modern music lovers are much harder to please than they were 30 or 40 years ago. Today you have to be able to write lyrics that appeal to audiences who are generally well educated, articulate and intelligent.
Entertainment
Live music is a form of entertainment. To reach out to an audience, a band has to live its music on the stage, it has to infect the audience with its passion for its music. I have seen bands who play well, from a technical point of view, who make good music, but stand on the stage like cardboard cut-outs. I have listened to bands who have potentially top class songs but for what ever reason they have not come alive. Stage craft is as important as song craft. It’s no good being able to write a great song if you can’t perform that song. Bands playing live on stage have a strong visual element. You go to see a band as must as you go to listen to them. Some lead singers have been referred to as great entertainers, because their performance is half an hour of working a crowd. Bad vocalists don’t sing to the audience; they sing to themselves, the ceiling, the other band members but they fail to engage the people in front of them. Singing always has an element of acting. Even if you can’t see the audience (blinding stage lights in your eyes) you should still act as though you can see them and you know they are there.
Does a band have attitude? Whether it’s the attitude of the lead singer or of the whole band, rock bands do sometimes portray something in their act that suggests aggression, cool, petulance and so on. Punk in some of its forms works a recognisable set of attitudes, as does death metal and nu-rock. Some young bands manufacture attitude, throwing their instruments on the stage at the end of the set and storming off the stage but this can easily look very false and contrived.
Originality
Most small bands sound like a bigger band. Bands that are not covers bands or tribute bands, need to play music that is recognisable but not a simply clone of a currently popular big band or one of the greats from the last 20 or 30 years. There are some really good bands out there that have popular appeal, but still sound too much like The Libertines, The Kings of Leon, AC/DC, Green day, Blink 182, or some other band. No band can write music in a vacuum.
I remember being at a gig where a band played that I had not heard before. Half way through the set, I stood there scratching my head and thinking – ‘I know they are good at what they are doing but I have never heard anything like this before. They are not like anything I have ever heard before.’
Then the penny dropped. I realised that I was listening to a band that was truly original. Suddenly, it all became very exciting. This is not something that happens very often.
If a band really does invent original music, they can find themselves struggling to find people who like it. The sound-alike bands do well because fans easily identify with what they are hearing. Play something that no one has heard before and only the musical sophisticates applaud it.
Team work
This article discusses: “what makes a good band”. There are some acts out there where a star quality front man or woman puts on a truly amazing singing experience but the rest of the people on stage are just backing musicians. It’s all about the lead vocalist. If the lead singer leaves the band, there is not enough left to go on to success. This is still a band, maybe, but what makes a band, as a whole, a first class act? Teamwork.
Firstly let me say that I have a strong opinion about rock bands: in my view the best rock bands have at least three good vocalists. In a standard four piece band I would expect there to be a strong lead singer and at least two backing vocalists. In a trio, all of them should vocalise. For me, the top quality rock band is one that adds vocal depth to good instrumental arrangements. Rock bands are, with few exceptions, singing bands, in my opinion.
Some bands put on a really sparkling show because they all work together to make it happen. Even when not singing, a guitarist and even a bassist can be dancing on the stage. The strings section can all jump up at a break in the music. The drummer can put on his own show at the back of the stage. The guitarists can assume postures that are familiar to that style of music. There is so much that instrumentalists can do to turn a band concert into an act which entertains the crowd as much visually as it does aurally.
I have seen bands where there is an amazing front man but where he is backed up by the musicians who sing, dance, play their instruments and create a total package that makes their set have a special magic.
Appearance
This is difficult. I can remember when bands during the 1970s tried to out do each other in the costume department and rock became theatrically camp. Today, most rock musicians want to look like they have just walked on to the stage from their day job or their bedroom. Now and then a band wears black shirts. A band that starts putting on a costume or uniform can be regarded with suspicion. One or two metal bands wear costumes, a trend set by Korn.
Bands I see on the television playing at huge festivals, have, I guess, chosen their wardrobes carefully with the aim of not looking like they have dressed differently just because they are on stage. They have, I suspect, chosen their jeans and tops carefully to fit with the latest fashions. No big band member wants to look like a nerd. They want to be wearing what all their fans are wearing, or at least the best dressed of them.
Hip Hop and Rap singers seem to have gone in for uniforms – big time. They have to be wearing the latest in-clothes to have any chance of getting anywhere. No matter how badly they perform, they can be sure of getting booked because they are wearing the right stuff. This is tribalism. These artists are buying into an art form which is more about iconography than it is about music.
Indie rock artists just need to look ordinary and everyday but even that requires taste. The majority of the bands that I have seen have literally gone on stage in the same clothes they always wear to work or college. Indie bands do often change their shirts from what they came to the venue in, changing in to something that they imagine is more in keeping what their act.
I have come across bands that have sought the services of a professional stylist, but this rare.
Finally let me say that it is not common to find a group of band members who look the part. Pop moguls have been manufacturing boy groups (singing groups) by picking four or five young men who are all the right height, shape, age and facial cute-ness. They have been manufactured as products for pre-pubertal female consumers. It smacks of musical pornography but some labels have made a lot of money out of it.
When four Liverpool lads happened to come together in the early sixties, they were not manufactured, they just happened. They grew to be one of the greatest musical legends of all time. During the sixties, they happened to be the most iconic youth act imaginable. Yet they were not selected for their looks (they selected themselves.)
If you read the stories of how most of today’s rock bands formed, you see processes at work that are largely about friendships, mates meeting up a college or people being introduced informally because they could play a guitar, drums, bass and so on. There is never any reference to their appearance. Looks are almost irrelevant when it comes to the formation of young rock bands. If a band happens to have members who look the part, that is likely to be the result of happy co-incidence or maybe, because this particular group of mates all look fairly alike.
Once in a while a band comes along with four people who co-incidentally look the part. They all look right for the style of band and its music. If they are good at all the other elements of a first class band, they are probably going to make it. They are the same age, wear the same style of clothes, have hair styles that match and share common musical tastes. They can all sing. None of this was intentional or planned by managers.
I have seen bands where three of the members look spot on but one stands out like a sore thumb. If that one is the lead vocalist then they are not likely to get very far. The exception to the rule is the drummer – the one who sits at the back and can look like anything because they are hidden away and its doesn’t mater that much. Equally, there are bands with really good looking male drummers who sweat copiously, rip of their T’s and suddenly because a key part of the show.
Sex has always been used to sell music. It’s either sexy female vocalists who are there to lure male fans or handsome male leads who are there to appeal to anyone who has an eye for male looks. Take That climbed to fame in the gay clubs of Manchester because, at that time, they were all regarded by fans of either gender, as being really good looking guys. They had sex appeal and they they used it to sell their music. Some young bands deliberately get naked on stage because they know that their teenage audiences think them hot enough to get away with this. It’s a trap for the unwary. At one gig a band member took off his shirt only to be greeted by a chorus of “put your shirt back on” from the crowd.
There are many bands out there that either innocently use sex to sell themselves, or, in some cases are in a band only because of their hormones. It’s said that there are so many male bands only because the guys in them see this as being the way to get girls. To what extent is this realistic? I’ve been fortunate enough to know a few, good looking guys for long enough to find out about their private lives and I didn’t see them getting laid at every gig. In fact many of them have steady girl friends to whom they are faithful, even though they could pull any one of a dozen or so girls who are standing in front of the stage wetting their knickers at them. I have also seen bands where the female lead singer ticks all the boxes when it comes to being hot. She plays up to her sex appeal and everyone in the room is looking at her.
Talent
In a good team, all the band members need to have equal degrees of talent. Some bands have average musicians but one stands out – a star lead guitarist or an ace drummer. This makes up for the lack of ability in the rest, in some cases. But the best bands are all good at what they do – to more or less equal degrees. But does a lead vocalist need to have an x-factor voice? This is interesting. Some great singers don’t have the best voices but they have voices that have character. The only bottom line requirement is that they can sing in tune. Sadly I have seen bands with lead singers who desperately need either to have a good voice coach or who need to find something else to occupy their time. Singing out of tune is not acceptable. It’s no good blaming the stage monitors.
One of the most exciting band vocalists I know is not a good singer. He can’t sing but he can put on a stunning performance and he has has genuine star quality as a front man, but there’s no way I can see him as a singer. He shouts, growls and screams his way through his set, accompanied by three of the most technically exciting musicians I know and the band is always thrilling to see. In rock, there are many ‘flavours ‘ of vocalisation and I do not put down screamo bands because they appear to have opted out of singing in favour of screaming, which is a specialised art form that is very hard to do well and correctly.
Some bands are good at playing together, writing listen-able songs and also give their guitarists or drummers solo spots where they can demonstrate their virtuosity. Completely acceptable but not a requirement. Good singing, thrilling guitar work and drumming add up to an exciting package, that makes rock what it is.
When it comes to the voice, size doesn’t matter; it’s what you do with it that counts. Some world-class singers have had horrible voices but absolutely tantalising personalities; they can make bad songs into great ballads. Springsteen was noted for his rough gravelly voice and some, in the 80s, for the ability to reach eye-wateringly high notes.
It is said that the voice is another instrument that has to be played like a guitar. But the guitar is a standardised instrument. All guitars sound more or less the same. ‘Guitar-heads ‘won’t agree with me but you know what I mean. When it comes to the voice however, there are huge variations of colour, timbre, range and tone.
One band I know was generally regarded as making good popular songs, which they performed well but the front man, who sang in tune and put on an acceptable stage performance, nevertheless bored me because his voice had little character. It was too plain and didn’t suggest anything. Another band was generally ok at making music but insisted on always having one female lead vocalist whose voice was annoyingly penetrating. High pitched and piercing, even though she could sing in tune, I couldn’t bear to listen to them. Their recordings were even worse than their live shows because of this one flaw, and they just couldn’t see it.
The other thing about team work is that the band members should be able to work together effectively, particularly when off-stage, in the rehearsal room, making songs. All bands have fights now and again. Some bands fight like cats and dogs all the time but somehow manage to stay together and produce some really good music, despite the conflicts going on internally.
Young bands are particularly vulnerably to in-fighting because the band members do not have the worldly skills or experience to know how to manage differences of personality or opinion. One very young band I know well are still together and doing really well after two years, during which time huge blow ups have occurred with various members threatening to walk out of the band because they weren’t getting their own way.
There’s a difference between team work and four people who have a chemistry. I have seen bands where the live performance is a joy to experience because the group of musicians on the stage feed off each other, giving out a vibe that even non-musicians like me can only wonder at and which takes music making on to the next level.
Too often bands stay firmly within their comfort zone and don’t want to challenge themselves. Part of talent and a desire to reach for originality involves being ready to leave the comfort zone behind and try something new. Great bands are those who want to push the boundaries of what they are doing and reach deep inside themselves to draw on their talents to produce something that is fresh and ground breaking. Such bands will make it because the industry is always on the look out for something new.
Industry
By industry I mean hard work. Talent can easily go hand in hand with laziness. Equally, there are some bands who are not that great in the talent department, but who are succeeding because they work hard, believe in themselves have know how to manage themselves , to climb the ladder.
The music industry is going through a sea change. We have moved away from the age of the record label, where a band made it only because a label signed them. The Internet has created the infrastructure for bands to d.i.y their way to a reasonable of commercial success. As I have always said, behind every successful band there is a team of people who are off-stage but contribute to the band’s success.
Hundreds of bands have contacting me wanting management because they believe that a manager is going to carry them up the ladder. This is the subject of another article and I have a lot of say on this subject. Many hundreds of small bands are self-managing and actually do a good job at it.
The downside of this is that while they are spending hours and hours each week booking gigs, doing publicity and artwork and coping with the huge range of things that need to happen behind the scenes, but they are not concentrating on music. Some bands have at least one member who demonstrates considerable excellence at undertaking most of the duties involved in good band management. Not wishing to pre-empt my future article on band management, the biggest single fault in most of the bands have I have followed, is this lack of programming. I’ll come back to that point another time.
There are many hundreds of places where bands can play. Every city, town and even small villages have venues of one sort or another. Some are permanent live music venues, with stages, sound systems and lighting. Some are pubs that play bands maybe once a week. Some are part of big national chains and others are just owned and run by one person.
In this article we discuss some of the issues that bands have raised about the way in which they are treated by venues. We would like to hear your comments. This draft work in progress will eventually become a permanent article in the GYBO magazine (no longer available)
Why do some venues make us pay to play there?
It has long been the practice on the part of some venues to make bands play for the ‘privilege’ of performing. This is often in the form of making a band pay a deposit, which they will lose if they fail to sell enough tickets for that show.
It is often the case that a live music venue will send a band that it has booked, a batch of tickets to sell. They might ask the band to pay for these tickets in advance. The band might be able to sell the tickets at less than their face value and pocket the difference. If the band sells above a quota of tickets the venue might give them a bonus. If it all works well and 30 to 40 people buy tickets to see that band play, both the venue and the band make money.
In cases where the show is free entry and there are no tickets to sell, the costs of putting on bands and any money paid to the band has to come from somewhere. That money might come from drinks sales. Pubs have tills and if live music brings people into the pub, they spend money at the bar. At the end of the night the pub landlord takes money out of the till to put for the PA, sound engineer, any publicity he might have done and some cash to pay the bands. If it has worked and enough people have come in to see the band, the venue owner has achieved his objects. If not, then there is a loss. Not all venues have sufficiently good profit margins on their wet side sales to be able to afford to pay bands.
There are a few pubs where there is always an established crowd wanting to be entertained. So the pub landlord knows that on a Friday or Saturday night his pub is going to be full of customers and he can make enough money to put on a band or two to entertainment.
A more common situation is a pub that has hardly any customers on mid-week evenings and, so get people in, hires bands to play who will bring in a crowd with them. If the landlord does not want to charge on the door, he or she has to be certain that the band with come with its own crowd. The fans buy drinks and enough money is made to give something back to the band.
Even in permanent live music venues, bands have to bring people with them. It’s not common for music lovers to go out to a venue and have a night out listening to what ever band happens to be playing that night.
I have seen serious live music venues go bust and close down because bands were accepting bookings to play there and have done nothing to get fans to come with them. Do this often enough and the venue goes broke.
I have also come across bands who can’t be bothered with all this fan stuff and expect to be provided with a stage, a cash payment and a large audience who wants to listen to the music they have composed. Which planet do you think they are from?
There is no following in this country for unknown music. If your band is not known and is playing its own music, you have to sell that music to people like it.
The bands that get hired and paid serious money but who are not signed and not known outside their home towns are nearly always covers or tribute bands who play stuff that people are willing to buy into because they know it.
There are plenty of Pink Floyd tribute or covers band who people pay to see. But for the Job Blogs Band, playing their own original songs, they will only get paid if they have a fan base that likes what they do.
See the broader picture on this issue: there are probably over 75,000 bands in this country writing and playing their own music. That is way, way over the number of live music gigs per year.
A large percentage of those bands often play for nothing, simply to get a chance to play live with some kind of audience.
Page last edited 3/9/23. Page printed for archives.
Filed under: Band Promotions — webmaster @ 12:12 pm
It’s a shame when a good band sends us a promo pack that is complete crap. It happens a lot. Some bands are good at playing music but when it comes to producing printed, promotional stuff, they fail to do themselves justice.
Here are some horror stories about promotional packs received at the GYBO office
Blank CDs sent in without even the band name being written on the CD – so now we have a collection of blank CDs and have no idea which bands are on them.
No date on the CD to tell us when the tracks were recorded.
No song titles – so if we want to discuss a song we don’t know what it is called.
Info sheets without any contacts details on them – a two page closely typed essay about the band’s history and no contact details — not even a phone number.
Hand written letters in spidery writing which we have difficulty reading
Failure to understand the difference between a website address and an email address – email addresses beginning with www.
Band info sheets that tell us the band is based on the UK but not where exactly
Photos of the band that are so poorly reproduced you cant make out what they are
Biog sheets with masses of irrelevant information – we havn’t got time to read all these minor details and really dont need to know all that stuff anyway.
Photos with no explanatory captions, so we cant understand much about what the photo shows us.
Biog sheets that fail to explain what type of music the band plays – are they heavy metal, punk, pop rock or rootsy folk rock – it doesnt say.
Sometimes we are unsure as to why this stuff has been sent in.
Large amounts of material, CDs and even DVDs but no covering letter asking us what to do with it.
What do these guys want? Show bookings? Album promotions? Management services? A review? They forgot to say.
A one line letter or note asking “please consider this band for a show booking” or “Please write a review of our latest album” would at least tell us what they want
So if bands are sending out this stuff to venues or record labels, it is hardly surprising that they are not getting any bookings or interest back.
We now have a large collection of band press and promo packs and 100s of sampler CDs
This rather poor collection of material helps us to figure out how to make an effective pack that will actually be worth the postage and get the band results.
For tips on how to write a good pack read the comments on this blog entry.
See details of our promo pack writing service on our main web site Get Your Band On
Published: 24th October 2009
Promoting Your Band
It’s a shame when a good band sends us a promo pack that is complete crap. It happens a lot. Some bands are good at playing music but when it comes to producing printed, promotional stuff, they fail to do themselves justice.
Here are some horror stories about promotional packs received at the Get Your Band On (GYBO) office.
Blank CDs sent in without even the band name being written on the CD – so now we have a collection of blank CDs and have no idea which bands are on them.
No date on the CD to tell us when the tracks were recorded.
No song titles – so if we want to discuss a song we don’t know what it is called.
Info sheets without any contacts details on them – a two page closely typed essay about the band’s history and no contact details — not even a phone number.
Hand written letters in spidery writing which we have difficulty reading
Failure to understand the difference between a website address and an email address – email addresses beginning with www. [were not uncommon]
Band info sheets that tell us the band is based on the UK but not where exactly
Photos of the band that are so poorly reproduced you cant make out what they are
Biog sheets with masses of irrelevant information – we haven’t got time to read all these minor details and really don’t need to know all that stuff anyway.
Photos with no explanatory captions, so we can’t understand much about what the photo shows us.
Biog sheets that fail to explain what type of music the band plays – are they heavy metal, punk, pop rock or rootsy folk rock – it doesn’t say.
Sometimes we are unsure as to why this stuff has been sent in.
Large amounts of material, CDs and even DVDs but no covering letter asking us what to do with it.
What do these guys want? Show bookings? Album promotions? Management services? A review? They forgot to say.
A one-line letter or note asking “please consider this band for a show booking” or “Please write a review of our latest album” would at least tell us what they want
So if bands are sending out this stuff to venues or record labels, it is hardly surprising that they are not getting any bookings or interest back.
We now have a large collection of band press and promo packs and 100s of sampler CDs
This rather poor collection of material helps us to figure out how to make an effective pack that will actually be worth the postage and get the band results.
Useful links
Links have been removed because they are no longer valid
