Writer Trevor Locke

Tag: rock bands

  • New bands starting up

    17th August 2014

    New bands.

    How do bands cope with the pressure of starting up?

    Watching a new band playing on stage for the first time, I asked myself ‘how do they cope with playing at their first gig?’

    When you watch a band playing on a stage, you are looking to see how they appear – are they relaxed and confident or are they nervous? Are they enjoying being in front of people, playing their own music? Some new bands look like rabbits caught in the headlights. As a writer my task is to observe musicians intently and try to feel what they are feeling. In a way, this is about trying to empathise with them. I watch for the signs: what do I see on their faces? Do I see excitement or fear? Or both? Do I see a bunch of guys who are confident, relaxed, exited? Or, do I see a group of people who are nervous, fearful, worried? Being under pressure does not mean that they will make mistakes or play badly. When they get on a stage and lights go up the adrenaline kicks in. They probably can’t see the audience in the glare of the stage lighting. Their hearts start to beat twice as fast; their minds start to work at a furious pace. They have a lot to concentrate on, whether it’s singing, remembering the lyrics, remembering the tunes they have composed, watching the strings of their instruments to see where their fingers should go. Determination sets in. It might not be until the last couple of songs, of their half-hour set,  that they really get into the swing of the music.

    You can tell when a band really wants it. Their faces and the way they perform on stage show how their ambition is burning. They want to be successful. They want their fans to love them, they want to win over people who have not seen them before, they want to leave the room with adulation and their reputation secured. They want to play a set which is going to mark them out and make a name for their music on the scene. If they are to win over audiences, they have to really want it. They have to win over the sceptical and the curious. People who might be hard to convince. People that are not there to see them. These are people who are watching closely to see what this new band is made of.so when they start to play they all have to say to themselves ‘let’s ‘av it.’

    How do young, inexperienced musicians cope with that kind of pressure, at the start of a music career as a performing band? Can they get to that level of stage craft where they can portray themselves as a strong, confident, determined group of people who believe in themselves and their music? How do they do that? Maybe that is not what they are actually feeling on the inside, but what do we see on their faces? As a group of people, do they all share the same level of commitment? Do they want it, individually and collectively? Are they really ready to make the sacrifices needed to become a serious band?

    When you watch a band performing on stage, it is not always easy to tell what is going on their minds. Some musicians have a knack of smiling and looking happy, whatever they are really like on the inside. Do they look like they are just playing another gig or is this a special event for them? Are they feeling the crowd and are they getting that buzz, that reaction,  that is flowing on to the stage? The older a band gets in its musical career, the more difficult it is to see what they are feeling. Mature musicians tend to get used to live performances (just another gig) and have a professional manner that hides anything going on inside. If something goes wrong,  they joke about it and carry on. It’s just what happens to bands. It comes with the job. They appear as polished professionals, doing a job, well rehearsed, steadily working away at their chosen craft. Some young bands can also look like this.

    You can never really tell what’s happening on a stage. You might be able to watch carefully and write about it in such a way as to convey (to readers) what it was like to be there. But all gigs have layers of experience, seams of reality, and you can never really report everything. Fifty people might go and see a band; they will take home with them fifty different reactions and experiences.

    (Written at a festival in July between gig slots)

    Origininally published in Trevor’s Music Blog, 2014.

  • Leicester’s rock bands: breaking news

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    This page forms part of our archives

    We gather news from our local bands; follow our breaking news stories.

    For actual news go to Music in Leicester magazine.

  • What makes a good live music scene?

    13th December 2010

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    Having just got back from a really good meeting of the Leicester Music Collective, I thought I would commit a few words to paper. Well, the digital version of paper maybe.

    The nub of the meeting was talking about how we put more bums on seats.  Leicester has seen a massive increase in the number of live music venues and consequently in the number of gigs happening, week in and week out.

    Promoters, venue owners and other industry movers and shakers are scratching their heads about how we should try to get more people to come out to support live music events.

    We are all passionate about live music. We want to see more people attending gigs because we believe it is a really great way to spend an evening. But how do we do it?

    One solution that is being delivered, is to print a monthly listing of gigs across all venues and distribute it as widely as possible. I support this. Even though I spend a lot of my working day pushing out information about gigs –  on the Internet – I realise that there is still a proportion of the population who do not go on the ‘Net every day. Even if they do, they tend to use it just for e-mail and don’t spend time surfing the websites and social media outlets where they could come across info about live music.

    If you do want to know about gigs or bands or music, you don’t have a problem finding it on the ‘Net.  If you might possibly want to go out and ‘see a band’, incredibly it can be difficult to find out what is going in this city. If Leicester has a problem getting the word out about gigs, it’s also likely to be the case that other cities have the same set of issues.

    Distributing flyers that list gigs is one part of the solution and a lot of people said a lot of things about the practicalities of making this happen. Happily, someone has made a start on it and a listing is being produced.

    Leicester has a profusion of live music venues; it has a huge supply of bands and artists playing every kind of music you can imagine. Live music has been a feature of Leicester life for decades.

    There was some really interesting analysis of the impact of the BIG music society on tours, venues, ticket sales and festivals. Interesting though that is, my focus now is on amplifying the crowd for the small venues and the unknown, unsigned bands.

    Someone pointed out that people will pay £20 to £40 to see a band they really want to see. Getting people to pay £5 to see bands they haven’t heard of, is much more difficult. But this is precisely where I operate and that for me is the major challenge.

    Everyone agreed that it’s about getting the information out there; whether we use high-tech fixes or plain paper solutions, we need to make sure people know about what is happening, where and when.

    On top of that, there is a harder task of ‘selling’ unsigned, live music.  Why would anyone want to pay £5 to see a line-up of bands they have never heard of before? Well, after two years of going to gigs, seeing hundreds of new bands and writing about many of them, I really feel passionate about live music. In a world increasingly dominated by recorded music, the difference between the two is immense. For me, live is the best. Live is what brings music to life. I don’t just want to hear it. I want to see it.

    But can I sell that idea to people who just want to plug themselves into their iPod and think that is what music is about, full stop?

    I want to shout about the live music experience. I want to convince the public that live is an unbeatable form of entertainment. I want to convince people that going out to a gig and seeing bands playing is much better than watching it on TV or listening to music through earplugs.

    This wonderful group of people who have come together in Leicester has started to take that whole issue on board. The discussion, however, has focused too much on the supply side and not enough on the demand side of the market.

    They did come up with the idea of doing a survey; asking people who go to live gigs what they think about things like the venue, the ticket price, the transport there and back, what they like best and dislike most about shows and so on and so on.  That is good; we need to know much more about the punters, we need to keep asking questions that might help us to figure out the quality issues posed by live shows.

    The other side of the equation is the bands.  This needs to be on the agenda. In live music, everything is driven by the bands, at the end of the day.  They are the people who make the music. But how do they contribute to making a local live music scene a success?

    I am really looking forward to that debate. I already know some of the things that will get said:  what bands think of venues and promoters and vice versa. In Leicester, there is an almost endless supply of young men who want to play their guitars on a stage. Sorry girls, but the ratio is about 20:1. I have lost count of the numbers of male musicians but I can count the female players of guitars, bass and drums on my fingers. Same is true of vocalists.

    I have asked many questions about how bands write music. Who writes the songs, who makes the melodies, how do they choose what style of music they will play, what influences move them, do they ever think about what they look like on stage … and the answers are all invariably the same.

    Musicians follow their own musical instincts. When four guys get together, assuming they gel together on the music, they will produce for their band, what they have had as a musical career, what they have grown up with, it’s all about their tastes, their musical passions, their sense of what works.

    Ok, I hear you say, but that is also true of every other art form. It’s so obvious it’s hardly worth thinking about. But I also hear musicians talking about wanting to be successful, of making it in the music business.  Having talked with band members (for a few years) about this very subject, I know how difficult it is to get them to think outside of the box.

    If a band has real talent and makes music that is good enough for people to pay to hear, what else do they need to do?  Sadly it is not all about the music. Of the 250+ rock bands in Leicester that write their own music, only a tiny few will ever stand any chance of making it in the world outside. Are they the ones that have their fingers on the pulse of modern music and happen to be writing the best songs?  Not necessarily. There’s a lot more to it than that.

    I’ve written about the ‘bands with no fans‘ thing before. I’ve talked about how bands can promote themselves. I’ve gone on about putting fans on floors. It’s still amazing to hear unsigned bands complaining that promoters are not providing them with big enough crowds.

    It’s amazing because there is still a lack of ‘mojo’ about what makes live music work. Even if all promoters and venues did a perfect job of promoting shows, it’s still obvious that it is the bands who have the fans. It’s the band who has to put feet on floors. They are the ones who know who their fans are.

    It’s incredibly difficult for promoters to sell tickets to the fans of a band. Even though MySpace, Facebook and Twitter are the most immediate conduits to the fans of a band, it’s not easy for promoters to message those people. Bands are not going to hand over their login details to a promoter and say – ‘ok here are all our fans, you talk to them.’

    Promoters can fire out marketing messages to the general body of people who might like live music. We can put stacks of flyers into what we think are the right places. But the ones who are most likely to turn up at the door, are the people who already know that band. Access to those people is restricted to the bands themselves.

    I don’t want to get started on the issue of ‘pay to play’ but the reason that hoary old chestnut won’t go away is that for many venues and promoters it’s a solution that can work.

    In a nutshell:  the promoter sells tickets to the bands. The band members then sell them to their fans. It can and does work but there are many band members out there who do not like it.

    Some festival tickets can cost between £20 to £30. If you have to sell, say, 50, that’s £1,000 to £1,500.  For most small bands that’s a load of money to worry about.

    Even so, I have heard bands say that they would be willing to pay that kind of money to get on to certain festival stages.

    I’m not condoning this; I am just recognising that it happens. If it’s not part of the solution, it’s certainly part of the problem.

    If bands want to be successful, they have to play the music that people want to hear. They have to put on a performance that people want to see.

    They might well have to compromise on their own personal tastes and accept that there is more to being a successful band than self-indulgence.

    Moreover, they also have to bear the burden of winning, keeping and organising their fan base, promoting themselves, getting their name known and constantly tapping music industry people on the shoulder.

    It’s great to hear stories like “oh, we had this box of 400 CDs and we had to sit down and listen to them all and decide which ones we wanted to sign up.”

    As a music writer, I sit in the middle of all this and hear both sides of the story. If we want more feet on floors in Leicester then both the promoters and the bands have to work together to achieve that.  No one has the exclusive power to win ticket sales.

    We all agree that live music is the best music and we all want more people to join in and enjoy it.  We are only going to succeed if we all work together.

    That ‘s what these meetings are about. Not why, but only how and to a lesser extent who.

  • What makes a good gig?

    In Leicester, it’s not about playing at a particular venue, that bookings are about, but finding the right line-up to play in.

    All the main venues have their good nights and their bad nights. A good night is when a reasonable number of people attend (40+). That can happen at any venue on any day of the week, but only when the line-up is right. A bad night is where a set of bands fails to draw a crowd and they end up playing to each other. That happens a lot and the sad thing is that it keeps on happening.

    Someone is making the same mistake over again. It could be the promoter, the venue or the bands or all of them together. But when it does happen everyone looses.  So why don’t they get it sorted and stop putting on nights that are bound to fail?

    It would be better if there were less gigs but more good gigs. Music producers fail to co-ordinate their shows with each other.  They all work in isolation.  They do what they want to do – when they want to do it. In my view, everybody looses in this scenario.

    At the root of this problem is the fact that there are just not enough ticket-buying fans to go round. We live in hard times. People do not have enough disposable income to allow them to go out to live music events that often.  Too many shows chasing too few people. It’s a problem that everyone recognises but which there is an in-built reluctance to do anything about.

    Many people around here have commented that some kind of live music coordinating forum just might help the local scene to plan its programmes more effectively. What would help to move this forward is a few music producers getting it and giving some thought to how to make it happen.

    One last word:  if you must put on a live gig, choose the right line up!  Don’t book bands willy-nilly just because they say they are available. Well constructed line ups will attract a better crowd than a random selection of bands playing a hotchpotch of musical styles. It seems so obvious. Why then does this still happen?

  • Venues: friends or foes?

    Venues: Friends or Foes?

    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.

     

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