Musical Differences, or, Quit Playing That! You're out of the band!

[jancivil]

By the time I could get into school I saw naught but a hard road ahead, people significantly more accomplished than I were on the road starving.
I’d have liked it if we had material to be the next Yes, but I was doing it for the practice.
I wasn’t the writer of the songs but tried to make them grand.

[BONES]

There was a time when I'd have loved to have been the next DEVO but that was never going to happen. If I'd known that Front 242 existed in the mid 1980s, I might have thought about becoming the next of them, but I had no idea anyone else was doing anything even remotely like what I was doing until much later, so that didn't happen, either.

My bandmate and I were discussing it a few weeks ago and all we really want to do is get to alevel where we can get in contact with a promoter and they'll be happy to put us on their festival line-up or consider us for tour supports. But even that is further off today than it was a decade ago, when bands in our genre still played out here.

[jancivil]

damn

[BONES]

Yeah, it's quite disheartening to see your support structure evaporate around you. 25 years ago we ran one of five regular Goth/EBM club nights in Sydney. These days there aren't five of those a year and when they run, they play the same music they did 25 years ago, like no new music had been released in the interim. It's also the same old faces, pretty much no new blood at all.

15 years ago, a band like Covenant or VNV Nation could sell out a 1000 seat venue but last time Covenant toured here (7 or 8 years ago), with Clan of Xymox and Leaether Strip, we all played to less than 300 people in a 500 capacity venue.

[tapper mike]

I thought I'd responded to this thread.... Obviously not.

I used to play in a Classic Rock and Blues band back in the 90's Chicago/Detroit blues from the 50's onward and 60's 70's. 80's Rock. It was a great band to be in. The crowds loved us in all the dives we played. I got this crazy idea to write songs. So I broke out the fourtrack cassette. Used the smpte time sync for my DR5 and proceeded to record all the parts


Bad idea. Trying to get the band together on a non gigging night was impossible. I shelled out months of rent to rehearsal space for a place we only used once. I became quite overbearing with regards to sticking to the material that I'd written. And I'd constantly get backlash of disinterest. We actually did get two songs and we even played them live on occasions. The crowd which normally liked use would tell us that they liked the song but their interest in the song while we performed it was another matter.

I was the problem.

These guys weren't kids. They were adults. Wife, Kids, Day Jobs. To them as much as they enjoyed it it was a hobby. I wasn't the leader of the band but they went along with me anyway as much as they could and I always thought it wasn't enough. As time moved on I got a promotion to management in the restaurant field which meant giving up the band. As much as I wanted to stay with the band I also wanted things for myself and a grown up job so I took it.

[jancivil]

actually before the prog band the singer & I made some demos of Beatles-y things with the general intent of a record deal. Unlike running a band which is going to fall to me in the end, I was not responsible for shopping the record to labels. The material was probably not strong enough, on reflection. I knew nothing about life at 16, basically a feral child. He became religious, I went to conservatory. Life gets in the way.

“A plan is a list of things that don’t happen.” (line from some crime flick)