That's entertainment! [1 comments]
22/09/07
I’m convinced that live music needs to be entertaining. Nobody wants to have to sit (or stand) through a performance that has no entertainment value. Now I’m not saying that everyone needs to play Hey Jude and Dire Straits all night. Far from it. People find entertainment in all sorts of musical styles, personalities, rituals, venues and situations. But too often bands get it wrong – they undersell entertaining music by acting too cool or they overplay the ‘act’ to hide a dull set. And occasionally you find a band (or often a singer/songwriter) who acts cool while playing dull tunes, which I’m sure everyone will agree is a bad idea. Except the front man and his mum.
Everyone has got it wrong
To understand why this mismatch of standards is so common, we need to explore the reasons why bands play gigs, and why audiences go to them. I’m talking about local gigs here. National and international tours are another game altogether.
Bands play gigs: to have fun; to get better at playing gigs; to get feedback on their music; to get involved in a scene; to promote a release; to show off; to sell merchandise; to make money.
Audiences go to gigs: to support their friends’ bands; to meet their friends; to be entertained.
The expectations don’t match, and this misunderstanding carries right through the music industry. Bands think that audiences are lucky to see their show. Promoters think bands are lucky to be playing their venue. Managers think bands are lucky to have their help and advice. A&R guys think bands are lucky to have 30 seconds of their listening time. Record companies think the public is lucky to be able to pay for music. Publishing companies think songwriters are lucky to make any money from their songs…
Say hello to your biggest fans
A band’s greatest fans are going to be their friends and family. They will know the songs and know the band, guaranteeing them a good time at gigs. They will keep coming whatever musical journey the band are on. They will invest in the band – and they need to be rewarded for their investment. And the best way to do that is to entertain them. Show them a good time. They already know the songs, and they have seen the act before. So keep it fresh. Talk to them.
Bands will often argue that talking to the audience, or drawing any attention to the personalities of the performers will detract from the audience experience, and deny them the quality performance they paid for. Looking at our motivation table, it’s clear that this is another misunderstanding. It will detract from the band’s experience (they fear that the audience will focus less on the music, detracting from the reliability of the feedback), but will enhance the audience’s experience by being more entertaining.
Everyone is a potential fan
There was a time when bands would build a local following by selling out bigger and bigger venues until everyone in town was pawning their grandmother for a ticket. In the current local scene, this just doesn’t happen. Ok it does, but on a tiny scale. A huge local following is about a hundred. And one of the reasons for this is that bands don’t (and don’t want to) use gigs as a marketing tool until they have something to sell.
For the first few struggling years, bands should use every gig as an opportunity to befriend new potential fans, promote the next gig and make sure that twice as many people turn up next time. Instead they see getting booked for a gig as the target. They play it, the same folks turn up, they go home. Nothing gained, nothing lost. They will play to a room of (say) 50, of whom 10 are there to see them specifically. If they pull out all the stops and entertain the crowd, they could have 20 or 30 turn up to the next gig to see them.
Bands will often get stuck on a bill with a couple of other acts that don’t match their style (in Oxford the ‘filler’ bands tend to be metalheads, but I’m sure every town has a default genre). They mistakenly believe that anyone who has turned up to see the other bands will have no interest in their (obviously superior ;o) musical offering so they set up a sort of pitched battle with the crowd, opening the set with something classic like “You won’t like this.”
Everyone enjoys an entertaining show. I could even imagine sitting through a country gig if the singer had a sense of humour. Everybody in the crowd wants the unknown band to be fun, exciting and entertaining. But more often than not they hear the first few bars and wander off to get a drink.
A campaign for live music
I want to make live music entertaining again. I’m on the lookout for some sort of Live Music Action Group. I want to transfer some of the energy in the local music scenes out to the public, whose experience of live music is watching the last few minutes of Friday Night With Jonathan Ross. That energy needs to be taken from the useless promoters and the self-defeating bands, who could do with a bit of a wake-up call anyway.
Galvanise the bands into action, and the public will follow. More entertaining bands means more crowds. More crowds means more power over venues, which means more money, which means more marketing, which means more crowds, etc.
Just give me a minute to write my manifesto…
tags: gigs, live music, local scene, promotion
Music needs a good kick up the arse. lets sort it out.
— Oli Egan · Oct 2, 07:02 PM · #