Dankology

This. 100%. I'm sure I've said it here before but what a world we live in in which you can potentially reach every single member of your potential audience throughout the world - without having to tour, sort out distribution deals or play some horrible corporate game. And let's not forget that the price of having a select group of acts elevated to arena level was countless bands being screwed over in punitive deals or silly tax-loss arrangements. Not to mention that the ability to attract 16,000 people to a gig in a given area almost certainly involves being able to attract a lot of people who arguably have very little interest in music whatsoever. And why would they - a quarter of a mile away from the band, listening (or not) to the music bouncing back at them from the concrete sides of a sports venue?

Over lockdown we tried doing some online writing that involved playing to a click and sharing the files. I found it incredibly difficult to keep time with a plain click but programming it as a simple bass drum and snare beat really helped. I'm sure a bit more practice would have helped too but it was a good workaround.

A fundamental.

John Martyn doung Johnny Too Bad? But, if anything, his cover is skankier than the original...

Elvana - the Elvis fronted Nirvana covers band? Their version of Aneurysm is a thing of genius but I'm not certain I could stick a full gig

Apologies if I'm stating the obvious but have you checked that turntable has a built-in preamp or that the interface has a phono input?

Great thread! I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Lennon's very loose bass playing on The Long and Winding Road yet. As an aside, many many years ago I told my brother that the laugh at the start of Roxanne had been prompted by Sting whipping his member out at the start of the take. It was only very recently that I found out that he'd assumed I was serious and had spent the intervening two decades believing that was exactly what had happened.

I think there is a difference between recognizing having to wait for inspiration to strike -fed by whatever conscious and subconsious influences are around- vs believing songs are being mystically beamed in by some higher power. It's one of the reasons I try to expose myself to a constant soundtrack of new and old stuff as well as music I don't necessarily enjoy - you never know what good bits might filter through, or what misheard bits can be appropriated. Anyway, I'd have hoped the ether, being infinite and all that, would manage something a bit more inspiring than that same two chord hook we were constantly having to rework...

I seem to remember reading that Madness had a system whereby the originator of the song got 50% with the remaining 50% being split equally between all of the band (so the main songwriter would get 50% + 1/7 of the other 50%) - I quite like this as an idea although I'm sure it's not something that would work for every band.

Thanks for all the nice comments. I'm a little bit shocked by how common this situation is - but then again, perhaps the confidence to front a band (and do so with your own lyrics too) might well come hand in hand with some complex ego/confidence issues 😉 It looks like quite a few of us are coming out of lockdown with new and hopefully happier projects - the very best of luck to all of us! In terms of the slight detour into copyright issues - I'm not sure that the "song = top line and lyrics" policy still stands, if ever it did. I think the definition in law is something very vague like "a substantial element", which is probably why things like Andy Summers' arpeggiated part from Every Breath You Take isn't up for grabs. Rigidly sticking to the melody and lyrics angle leads to bizarre situations such as the period in which Jagger & Richards received royalties for Bittersweet Symphony due to that song featuring a sample of a melodic motif that they hadn't even written themselves.

I've been meaning to post my own tale of woe for some time now - so I was about to post to Jakester's thread but ended up venting at too much length... Didn't want to thread-jack so please forgive the possibly unnecessary new topic. I joined an originals band about three or four years ago which until that point had been a keys/gtr/vocal doing a small number of originals and classy covers that were facilitated by the singer's excellent voice. Things were going really well - I knew a few low level promoters and local radio folks so we managed to get some ok gigs and coverage and we had lots of new songs coming through, turning us into a 99% originals band. A couple of us worked tirelessly to get radio play, social media traction and gigs despite an ever changing mission statement from the singer: "I'm sick of doing sh!tty support gigs" one week but then "I want to do a load of pub gigs locally" the next... a period of "I just want to go out and do some solo slots at open mics"... followed by "I don't want to do gigs at all" the next month. We booked some studio time and put down five songs, although it took two years to actually get three of them "released" on Spotify etc - which should have been a warning sign in itself, in retrospect. In the year prior to lockdown the singer's output dropped considerably and so we went from her bringing in chords, lyrics and melodies for each song to band members working up sketches which she would put words and melodies on top of. We got some great songs out of this process and did some more recording. We're lucky to have access to a nice sounding room and I've got loads of recording gear so we took over the drummer's house for a weekend and got another clutch of recordings in the bag. I ended up doing endless mixes of two of these tracks - interminable back and forth finessing things until we eventually put one of them out. Within days, the singer sent a message out to say that she didn't really like this song and that she "couldn't really get behind it" - you can imagine how this sat with me after the hours of work I'd put in, similarly the guitarist, who'd put a video together for it and who had worked with me submitting it to all the usual radio shows, blogs and other places your average, bottom-of-the-ladder indie band has to plumb. Of note, this song was the first of our releases to have a joint writing credit. We, at length, managed to get over this blip and started working up songs in rehearsal. After spending a few sessions on a new one and having it ready to record, we were again told "I can't really get behind this one" - again, a song that had begun as band composition. This caused major ructions and as we were already into lockdown at this point most communication was taking place via texts and group chats. I had my suspicions about this being related to the singer perceiving a loss of her status as sole songwriter and indeed she sent us some messages about being uncomfortable with our creative process and with collaboration being difficult for her as she "received her songs from the ether" - seemingly unaware of the masses of work we all put into crafting her contributions into finished songs. But at the same time she was at pains to point out that we were not just a backing band - without being able to clarify how this curious creative relationship could go forward. The drummer managed to get us all to agree to a meeting to get things straightened out. Within hours, the singer sent a message "dissolving this iteration of the band" and explaining that she wanted to keep the band name for herself and that she expected to be able to use all the songs and material recorded thus far on her Spotify and social media accounts. I balked at this latter point and made it clear that any songs or recordings I'd contributed to were off-limits. I felt quite bad about this at the time but over the following 6 months it has proven to be a shrewd move. The three of us immediately decided to continue as a new band and in looking at the contributions that we'd had rejected and even some of the finished songs, realized that we had a decent clutch of music that we'd actually written without the singer's input and have been going about re-purposing them with new lyrics and melodies. The eye-opener has been how much more productive and positive the band has been. For someone who endlessly posted on social media about positivity and the need to exclude negative people from one's life, it seems that our original singer was an astonishingly negative and stymieing presence. We all live close to each other and the band members, spouses and children all remain in contact which makes it even harder when the singer is heard to say that she regards the preceding four years as an entirely negative experience and a waste of time - although I wonder if she'd feel this way if she'd walked away with all twenty-odd songs as she'd intended... I've glossed over many, many minor and not-so-minor niggles here: the hours put into researching, sourcing and incorporating -and subsequently discarding- flavours of the month such as loopers, Ableton, IEMs etc; trying to maintain relationships with promoters and presenters when it was belatedly decided that a particular gig or session was not going to happen; the endless hours dedicated to promoting the band and hustling gigs; the irritation of spending entire rehearsals teasing a song out of a tiny half-idea while having more fully-realized contributions summarily dismissed - in truth, all the sorts of mundane things that eat away at most bands in the end. I do find it amusing that our potentially excellent band was preemptively derailed by the sorts of issues that seem to destroy bands *after* they've achieved some degree of success - one wonders how much social media played into this: that sad sort of non-fame that comes from having an instantly contactable audience of friends and fans. Friends who never seemed able to get to the gigs, I might add 🤐 If you've read this far, thank you - I've been meaning to vent for some time and I think there is something to be gained by sharing these tales of misery. Not that I'm miserable now - the new band is far more creative and fun and the future looks pretty bright. I do enjoy reading stories about unreasonable band members though so I hope others here have something to moan about too...

Marking the thread as this is literally something we started experimenting with this week. We're currently toying with the idea of using VST instruments in Ableton and an Akai Mini or MPK 225. Ableton won't play nice with my favourite plugins so the current set up is a bit of a lash up: crappy old Roland controller keys triggering vst sounds in Reaper. It was great fun - guitarist and me had already swapped instruments and were jabbing at the keys whenever either of us had a hand free. Will be reading with interest to see how we can finesse things.

I am stupidly tempted by this, despite the likelihood of having exactly the same issue as you. Is this at Chase, going off the tags?

Some random thoughts occur: if it's a headline gig would want to play through someone else's gear? Would it be practical to have a complete teardown and set up between each set? Would you trust the promoter to hire in appropriate gear? Would a small charity gig be able to stretch to the hire costs? Is there enough room in the venue to store multiple drum kits and amps throughout the evening? I've never minded sharing gear but the stuff I take to gigs is deliberately bulletproof. I've also got to play through equipment I otherwise wouldn't have done and have subsequently added to my ever-growing shopping list. It's a double-edged sword. To be honest I'm that jealous of the gigging opportunity, I'm not sure my judgement is to be trusted.

It sounded more like being in a tent that someone was whipping increasingly quickly and forcefully... I think I've got a recording of it that I'll try to post. But you're right - if it isn't as obvious as a visibly disconnected component, I'll be out of my depth.

The electrics *should* be sound - it's a small room in a domestic property that was recently refitted and rewired by the owner's (professional) electrician friend - although stranger things have happened, I I suppose. The cables are ok in as much as the speaker misbehaved even with different xlrs and kettle leads. I'll have to figure out how much a replacement will cost vs my time poking at it with a screwdriver. Thank you for the pointers!

The rehearsal room is being readied for action again... We've got a couple of Mackie (or possibly Tapco) Thumps that haven't been used in anger for some considerable time - active speakers fed from a Behringer XR18. When I was giving everything a test run last week one of them gave a little crackle which very quickly built up to a quite terrifying loud static sort of noise - pulled the plug but exactly the same thing happened a few minutes after plugging in again. It's a very electrical sounding noise, if that makes sense. Any thoughts on how to bottom this out? I was wondering about possible condensation inside or maybe a a dodgy solder joint that starts playing up as things get warmer?

Another massive Fall fan here, although I didn't bother seeing them live for the last 10 years of the band's existence. The sad thing was that I could stand it when it could be either awesome or awful but that final era of being consistently sort of OK did nothing for me at all. Plus the gigs were increasingly short, late and expensive... And the fans ever more obnoxious - the slightly cerebral working class types of old being outnumbered by people actively reveling in Mark Smith's drunken antics. So sad. I'd put a top drawer Fall performance head and shoulders over almost anything else I've ever heard: an alchemy achieved by unstable line-ups - and MES was quite right to point out that none of the musicians could ever do anything a fraction as compelling once outside of his influence. I shall dismount from my hobbyhorse. I was also deeply disappointed by the sort-of-reformed Afghan Whigs (essentially the Twilight Singers moonlighting) and the Only Ones' brief reunion - although the rehabilitated Peter Perrett is now marvelous live.

In keeping with this thread's spirit of presenting absolutely opposing opinions... In my last band, we found IEMs had exactly the opposite effect: the singer could boost their in-ear vocal level way higher than they were used to, sang much more softly and so needed to be boosted in the mix - masses of feedback and loads of cymbal spill into her mic. Hardly insurmountable but you need someone on board with the idea that the sound man can't magically fix everything at the desk. Bassists seem good at this, other band members' mileage may vary.

I love TV Eye - one of the few live albums that actually sounds like a gig.

I wasn't aware that the original Love had toured internationally - must have been fantastic to catch them during that era. I think I've only left one gig early for anything other than travel reasons: Plan B at the Manchester Academy 3 - somehow we caught him in between his initial gritty acoustic rap phase and the majesty of the Strickland Banks album. Boiling hot small venue, songs that sounded like a dodgy boyband and the sort of audience I've never since come across at gigs. As we walked out the doormen seemed to approve "yeah, he's only got one good song". I do sort of wish I'd held out though - he was clearly in some sort of transitional phase, would have been fascinating to look back on it properly.

I do sometimes wonder if this sort of thing is a potential negative though. As a kid, if I'd bought a record (or tape, usually) it meant that I'd invested serious money in it and if I didn't enjoy it straight away I'd keep bashing away at it until I liked it or was sure I didn't. Still do that nowadays, to be fair. With a generation or two now reliant on streamed music, I do fear that the stuff that isn't instantly gripping can fall by the wayside. I suppose CDs made an early start on this by making it easy to skip tracks rather than having to play the whole album through to hear favoured tracks... A slight aside - does anyone else here use the Logitech Squeezebox/Media Server systems for their listening?

I heard an interesting (and possibly apocryphal) statistic about how many new LPs are being bought as ornaments and collectors items, never to be played. And the quality of some recent pressings is shocking. Anyway, I'm very fond of vinyl - as a teenager in the mid 90s it allowed me to scoop up loads of essential stuff without breaking the bank. Black Sabbath first 6 for £2 - £4 a piece, the Ramones' classic stuff for not much more, endless boot sale bargains (Layla on seemingly unplayed double vinyl and Bringing It All Back Home for 60p each being particularly memorable)... Latterly I've been able to pick up Van Morrison's OOP stuff for much less than the scarce CD versions but this is very much an exception. I still love the process and ceremony of putting a record on, the big sleeves and the magic of how the sound is actually extracted from the disc - something that seems far more fascinating than digital encoding. But they are an indulgence for me and I'd always want a digital copy too. Anyway, I've been plugged the gaps in my collection via ultra cheap Amazon, Ebay and pound shop secondhand CDs for the last few years. This wonderful song by Jeffrey Lewis could be the story of my life:

Jesus, that Facebook page... I do hope somebody is already onto this.

Yeah but most artists' live albums aren't back catalogue re-defining like old Neil's. Crime in the City on Weld, Transformer Man on Unplugged, When Your Lonely Heart Breaks on YOTH - all completely vitalize tracks that don't quite work on their original LPs. For me anyway... whenever I'm trying to get someone into Neil Young it's always the live albums I point them to.