{"id":2319,"date":"2012-07-10T13:02:04","date_gmt":"2012-07-10T20:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/?p=2319"},"modified":"2016-03-08T09:36:59","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T17:36:59","slug":"post-scarcity-model-part-four-touring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/10\/post-scarcity-model-part-four-touring\/","title":{"rendered":"post-scarcity model part four: touring"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over on his Tumblr blog<\/a>, Mike Doughty lead an article on touring with this paragraph:<\/p>\n

Radiohead wouldn\u2019t exist without early major-label funding. The future won\u2019t bring new Radioheads. All I want to say here, truly, is: let\u2019s get used to it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This far, I agree<\/em>. Hell, I started with something damn near identical in Part I of this series, which came out before his, so I didn’t steal it. XD<\/p>\n

He follows with this:<\/p>\n

This means that there will be fewer bands.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I strongly<\/eM> disagree, but not in the obvious way.<\/p>\n

A bunch of things I was going to talk about today – the way that old-school touring doesn’t work – he covered, just after I’d finished outlining this article. Go read his<\/a>, if you’re curious. But to summarise: less money, fewer traditional venues (by which I mean live-music bars and clubs), the dissolution of concert-going culture (and it is<\/em> mostly gone), much<\/em> higher travel costs, and more. Lodging’s no picnic either.<\/p>\n

Take that as read; they are the facts on the ground.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
It’s kind of like this<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of Mike’s answers is: don’t have a band. They’re too expensive, it’s too much money, it’s $6000 a week for bare-bones, you can’t do it. Sound amazing as a soloist or duo.<\/p>\n

I disagree strongly with that dollar figure, but leave that aside for now.<\/p>\n

“Don’t have a band” is<\/em> a solution, and it does<\/eM> work. And in fact you’ll have to<\/em> do that to some degree – or most of you will, there are always exceptions. As part of that, you have to find new kinds of places to play and new ways to book and so forth; we’ll get to that, I swear to you.<\/p>\n

But he’s absolutely wrong about fewer bands. Fewer bands is not actually the answer. More<\/em> bands is the answer.<\/p>\n

Here’s how it works:<\/p>\n

You<\/eM> want to tour. A lot of musicians don’t<\/em> want to tour, but do<\/em> want to play. They’ll have day jobs they like, but they’ll want to play out and put serious work into it.<\/p>\n

So you tour around as a solo or duo at first. As you’re doing that, you network the living fuck out of all the good local people you can, and build enough contacts to have a band in every<\/eM> town. Or, at least, have one in the central towns within an area that’s a day-trip away from shows.<\/p>\n

This has actually been my game plan with CRIME and the Forces of Evil. A lot of people seem to think I want to be a solo act. Were that the case, I wouldn’t have a band<\/em>-style name.<\/p>\n

This isn’t bad planning; it’s a strategy<\/em>. And that strategy has been: work my act up, play far above where my few years of experience would indicate (which involves a lot of catch-up in skills), write an assload of songs, get attention, get known…<\/p>\n

…and start attracting Forces<\/em>. An ever-shifting cloud of supervillains<\/strike> musicians, non-travelling or even travelling musicians with whom I get to play in different towns and venues. We meet up, we practice a couple of times together, we do a few shows, it’s awesome<\/em>, we go our separate ways until we come back together again.<\/p>\n


Not entirely unlike this<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The best part is, everyone<\/em> get something out of it. Touring musicians who want bands get bands without the travelling expenses. Limited-touring people get a chance to step up, play with more people, build into however much mobility they want. Non-touring musicians get to be a part of it<\/em>, for reals, without any of the touring stress.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, there are still a fair number of cover bands out there. This can and should be<\/em> a new lease on life for them. They’re already all about covering other bands; now they can do it with the actual act<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And what makes this workable is the same technology that upended the old system: cheap, easy, reproduction. You make a scratch recording of how you want a song to sound live. Channel left is everything from the song except<\/em> the musicians you’re meeting up with; channel right is the part they need to learn. Play both, you get the whole song.<\/p>\n

When you get into town, you rehearse a couple times as a unit, mostly to practice timing, and then you do your shows.<\/p>\n

Everybody wins.<\/em><\/p>\n


so much win<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, it’s a skillset, as with everything else. But it’s a skillset people can and will learn. I know they will, because I didn’t invent this<\/em>. It’s already happening. SJ Tucker was my gateway for this, but it’s all over the place in both filk and nerdcore, two of the big forms of geekmusic.<\/p>\n

It even has names. Sometimes it’s called the Instaband concept. I think of it as the Hive, but that’s my Teen Titans<\/i> fandom showing, or rather, the AU fanon where…<\/p>\n

Right. Sorry. Topic drift.<\/p>\n

Regardless, I saw this happening and thought, I want that<\/em>. I’m adapting it to my own needs, and I’m trying to build on it and improve it, of course, and I write about things because I’m one of those people who sees a problem<\/em> and a possible solution<\/em> and starts waving their hands wildly about going GUYS GUYS GUYS OVER HERE OMG!<\/p>\n

Which I like to hope is a contribution as well.<\/p>\n

Also, I recognise the connection to pre-recording-industry town bands and orchestras. If you don’t know; every little town, even really little ones, used to have a little band that played all the events – holidays, parades, whatever. It’d be made up of all the local people who had businesses or farms or whatever, but who liked playing music. Touring musicians would utilise them, too.<\/p>\n


St. Pepper reporting for duty, ma’am!<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But it was much harder in many ways, because while you could have sheet music, you couldn’t know what it should<\/em> sound like. So quality was lower, and it was supplemented by touring bands as that became more possible. With large touring bands becoming economically unviable, we’re kind of going back<\/eM> to that system, only this time, with far better tools – and better quality.<\/p>\n

In short, all of this can happen<\/em>, because it is<\/em> and has done before<\/em>. Given the correct circumstances, it will again.<\/p>\n

And we’re over 1000 words already, so that’s all for today. We’ll talk about where to play out in a post-concert culture, and ways to make money at it, next time.
\n <\/p>\n

\n

This is Part 4 of Music in the Post-Scarcity Environment<\/a>, an ongoing series of articles about, well, what’s on the tin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over on his Tumblr blog, Mike Doughty lead an article on touring with this paragraph: Radiohead wouldn\u2019t exist without early major-label funding. The future won\u2019t bring new Radioheads. All I want to say here, truly, is: let\u2019s get used to it. This far, I agree. Hell, I started with something damn near identical in Part [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,4,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-of-indie-music","category-diy","category-tours"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8777,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions\/8777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}