tegs07

10 minutes ago, KingBollock said:

There are bands that I find incredibly frustrating. They seem like really cool people that I’d happily have a pint with, and they are obviously incredibly talented.

 

The only two that have sprung into my currently addled mind, are Behemoth and the Foo Fighters. I really enjoy Foo Fighters music videos, but the music… other than Monkey Wrench. Blah! Another band is Radiohead. I like the song creep but I can’t stand anything else they’ve done. Again, they had quite cool videos, so I would watch them, but on mute.

Agree on both counts. Both bands clearly have something but whatever it is it’s lost on me

56 minutes ago, Mickyk said:

So following on from the Morrisey hate expressed on here a by quite a lot of members who clearly dislike the guy.May i ask why that is ?What has he actually done or said to curry this hate. I genuinely don't know so i thought id ask.

Back in the day he was just an intellectual snob. He then moved up to being a bitter man about how the record label never did enough for him, then screwed over his band mates involving court battles, then released some truly dire records that didn’t sell for which he blamed the UK public, then got all BNP and a bit racist, then moved to the USA where he made an astronomical amount of money. I gave up on him when he was still bitter and twisted despite being wealthy beyond most peoples expectations and living in Clark Gables old house! 

Most of this information was gathered from his nicely written, but thoroughly irritating autobiography which should have been called:

’the world gave me the moon on a stick but it wasn’t bright enough’

1 hour ago, police squad said:

Having been on BC for a while now (and also being a bit older and wiser) I don't understand when someone says something is rubbish or someone is rubbish

when they / it aren't. You just don't like it.

Is Morrisey a rubbish singer, just because I don't like him (as a singer and as a person)? He does what he does and I do quite like some smiths songs

Are all P basses rubbish just because they don't work for you. I don't really like super ornate single cut basses where the top bit goes right down the fingerboard but I'm sure they're very good

 

The food in Wetherspoons. Actually I think it's ok for the money, very good value but it's not gormet and that's not expected at that price point

 

your thoughts please

Anyone that gets up, gives something a try and puts themselves out there deserves respect, no matter what field they are in.

That said Coldplay are still rubbish.

I have heard really positive things about this:

https://buskersbern.ch/en

A lot of bass for the money. GLWTS.

Personally I really like Birchwood-Casey Tru-Oil. Old pictures of bass before final buff and set up:

2 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

 

 

Im late 40's and still go to plenty of gigs. Even get involved in the odd most pit. At a lot of the gigs I go to, im far from the oldest.

Gigs aren't just for young whippersnappers

It’s not necessarily an age thing. Some middle aged, middle class professionals will go regularly to gigs at random. I would not rely on them randomly stumbling across my band though if I was trying to make a living from music.

41 minutes ago, neepheid said:

 

You assume I play mid week.  And I'm only 5 or so years behind you...

Or weekends. Most of the time I have commitments and strangely enough getting in at gone midnight doesn’t gel well with getting in to work and doing a decent job. Your rant is not for me. If you don’t want to prostitute your self on the socials or want people to use streaming platforms that is up to you but as you said “no effer want to get off their fat one”

So I guess it’s everyone else who is at fault for not knowing about you?

I will continue going to see relatively unknown artists who I discovered in the digital space. I hope that I contribute in some small way to them making a living.

As I have already said most of these bands have an audience no larger than The Fall in their early days and from what I gather previous members hardly made a fortune from record sales even in the good old days.

5 minutes ago, neepheid said:

 

Aim lower - at the local level here at least, door tax is less than a tenner, and the pints are £5-6.   Still no effer want to get off their fat one (and their heads out of Instagram's backside...), but that's our fault for not being all "HEY, WE'RE IN A BAND, WE'RE GOOD, YOU SHOULD COME AND SEE US" all over the socials, because it's bloody gross and quite ikky to have the begging bowl out, whoring ourselves to hell and back again just to try to coax a few folk to come and see a band.

I am in my mid 50s. The days of frequenting random gigs mid week are 30 years behind me. The generation that you need for that are teenagers to mid twenties and like it or not they get their information from the digital space. 

4 minutes ago, Supernaut said:

Dude, just go to a venue and watch a band. You can live life without the Internet. 😁

I do. I just tend not to blindly pay £25+ for tickets, £7+ plus a pint and £15 plus on transport on a whim. Like most people. 

7 minutes ago, Supernaut said:

Go to more gigs and buy directly from the musicians. 

This is getting very circular. How do I find these musicians? Talk to my middle aged IT mates? Ask my kids? How do they find the bands? Streaming and social media, they don’t read the NME or listen avidly to John Peel (largely because he is dead), they don’t join bands by taking the little serated number from the add in the local corner shop. Like it or not the world has changed and it’s digital. I don’t do social media as I genuinely have concerns about the political and social ambitions of the big tech companies so streaming is the least worst option.

1 minute ago, Supernaut said:

Do you think musicians have a fair payout for streaming music? 

Do you think that you are missing the point? No is the answer. Do I think people are going to start buying records and CDs again and restricting their social lives to pubs and working man’s clubs? No

So we can’t re write history. We can utilise technology. Even in the glory days I have read enough autobiography from people in smaller bands like The Fall, Spacemen 3 etc to know that they earned very very little from sales of recorded music.

6 minutes ago, Supernaut said:

Musicians earning fair payment is now 'moaning'? Okay. Hard to have a discussion with someone who thinks otherwise. 

The key phrase is by recorded music. Musicians made money by selling records and CDs for probably about 40/50 years in several centuries.

Musicians made money before the gramophone. They make money in the digital age. The important part of the debate is how. Not moaning about the change. Embracing the technology that is available to make a living. I would say that even in the glory days getting well known relied on getting a record deal, getting a promoter etc and unless bands were hugely successful they saw very little money. In many ways smaller bands are better off without the good old days.

5 minutes ago, Supernaut said:

Does it benefit the artist? Are they given a fair payout? 

Not like the good old days! Things have changed though. The music industry has changed. People’s priorities have changed. How people spend money has changed. Their aspirations have changed. 

Taking advantage of these changes is far more constructive than moaning about the good old days. The propensity of the UK moaner is something to behold. No matter how much resistance we have the next generation will see things differently, they will use technology differently and they will spend their money and time differently. Musicians made money from recorded music for a very brief period in the big picture. Probably a couple of decades in hundreds of years. That era is over.

5 minutes ago, peteb said:

 It wasn't thirty years or so ago! 

 

I remember even in the late 80s early 90s pubs being rammed to capacity when the most established local bands were playing so can well believe it. It’s not something I witness now but I have limited exposure. It may well still be a ‘thing’?

Just now, Supernaut said:

How so? In this day and age, has you've noted in this thread, bands can use technology to gain fans without the need from labels. 

The one musician I know who makes a full time living wage and has been at it for years, has established audiences and booking agents tends to get around 250 to 300 max under their own steam so if the venue takes a punt on unknowns to fill that number it must be a very successful venue with a top notch team.

2 minutes ago, Supernaut said:

Normally those playing at venues within 30 minutes of where I'm located. This is playing at dedicated music venues so 300-500 capacity. 

Local unsigned artists playing 300-500 capacity? Wow that is pretty incredible.

1 minute ago, SteveXFR said:

 

At least with the formulaic pop music made by humans, it keeps recording studios, producers and session musicians in work.

Yes true but ultimately it is pointless going all Don Quixote. This technology is out in the wild. Some of it is useful, some of it is deeply destructive. Ultimately we can only learn to use it and make our own decisions about what elements to embrace and what elements to resist. In the same way I never gave Cowell a penny of my money or willingly watched any of his abysmal TV shows I will avoid AI generated music.

I have to let other people make their own decisions about it though.

4 minutes ago, Supernaut said:

Not sure why you're so bothered with how I spend my time and what I do? 

when it’s relevant to a the discussion at hand I am. Otherwise I have limited interest. You rarely seem to have anything to add other than to tell everybody else that they are wrong.

15 minutes ago, Supernaut said:

I'll counter with this - there was a time Spotify didn't exist, you know? 

I noticed a thread where you have got rid of all your televisions. Personally speaking we are in the golden era of TV. Streaming services like Netflix and Apple TV have created utter gems with outstanding writing, acting and soundtracks. I am currently listening to the soundtrack of Down Cemetery Road on Spotify and will check out the artists I like.

The world has changed. Some technology is incredibly useful. Narrowing your sources down to physical print media or analog media is going to severely restrict your access to news, culture and information, not to mention your ability to understand the world of the younger generation. The generation who don’t remember a time when Spotify didn’t exist and are using an entirely new toolset to create, communicate and educate.

Interesting thanks for the replies. I am not a gigging musician but a punter. I tend to rely on Spotify to find new artists and Dice to let me know when they are touring.

As has been mentioned AI is a threat but for now I think people are safe. Formulaic music has been around since forever with the likes of Stock, Aitken and Waterman and later Simon Cowell. I am not convinced that AI music is anything different but just another step. Some people will go and see a holographic performance of AI content. I can envision this unfortunately. I am sure that just as people went to whatever boy band was going through the motions, many others will continue to seek something different.

6 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

So how do you discover new music other than by going to gigs?

I would also ask that with out the good old days of music press and A&R men and local radio and local newspapers and all of the other things that made a local music scene get national attention how does anyone get people to their gigs? I’m not sure that TikTok works well for everyone.

14 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

 

Its a good way to discover bands you might never have heard of. Today I found an excellent post metal band called Humanfly who were listed as a related artist under a band called Dimscua who I discovered as a related artist under Cult Of Luna. So thats two bands who will sell me gig tickets and a t shirt next time they play Bristol because I found them through streaming. 

You don't have to use it if you dont want but its there for those who do and its not going to disappear. 

This is me as well. I would also add I bought physical copies of the albums from the artists I like for years. I have them already. Any new bands I discover are via Spotify pretty much exclusively. I try and see as many live as possible and really does it matter if I buy a CD or a TShirt at their gig? It would only be one or the other in any case so T Shirt it is.

19 hours ago, peteb said:

 

That's a frightening thought and almost certainly true. We are now living in a post capitalist world and the new world is a scary place. 

 

The sad thing is that it doesn’t have to be. Collectively there is a lot of potential for change. I honestly believe that understanding  the cause of a problem is the first step towards solving it. My experience with trying to deliver technical and workflow solutions to increase productivity in the workplace and futile attempts to explain or at least introduce economic concepts that can be investigated further have led me to worry a bit though.

I think that our comfortable past has given false confidence that the future will be the same. It will all come good.

Maybe it will but I am not taking it for granted. For the tiny amount of people who are interested this guy gives very clear explanations:

US centric but totally relevant for us in the UK.

38 minutes ago, TimR said:

No one can afford to buy the house they're living in based on their salary. No one, orher than a few could.

 

I couldn't afford the house I live in now based on my salary at the time.

 

Mainly because of the housing ladder.

So what you are saying there is anyone relying on their income to get by in the world rather than their wealth (the sum total of the assets they own and possibly extract rent/revenue from) is going to struggle and this struggle is getting worse over time?

I would argue that the term ‘housing ladder’ is another way of saying ‘inflation resistant alternative to cash’ or a hedge against currency debasement. 

I don’t know why this is such a difficult concept for people to grasp. Those who are reliant on wages only get shafted by the current system * . It’s simple. Creating more money (wages) won’t make any difference. Replace the colander rather than try and fill it with more water.

Edit: This system is not capitalism. What we have lived through over the last couple of decades is not capitalism and it’s getting worse. The global south can see this and are retreating from it and creating a new system as I type while over here in the west we get more dystopian, more insular and more aggressive towards our allies and competitors.