is anyone else just really fucking bored of watching bands?
Like you've been to so many gigs that seeing four guys get onstage with guitars and drums just fills you with dread.
How often do you see a band which actually excites you? Where you're not partly wondering what to do when it's all over? When to go to the bar or toilet?
I think it may be my complete lack of interest in musicianship that does it. I am not remotely excited by seeing somene who is 'a good guitarist' - unless they're jaw droppingly good like Jon Gomm or something - but even then he's got shit songs so there's no depth to the performance. So maybe the simple act of watching music played well has lost it's charm...
Have I killed music for myself by overindulging?
:(
probably
i find occasionally skipping support bands and only going to see people you know you like helps.
sounds like it
try taking some time out and only going to see those who at least really excite you on record.
and/or something completely different.
What?!
If I did that I'd miss out on so many good bands.
I stopped going to gigs for ages, and was completely overwhelmed the other week when I saw saw White Mice, Pleasurehorse, Parts & Labour, Scotch Egg and Glenn Branca's 100 guitars piece all in one week. I've been restored :)
cue four zillion replies about Les Savy Fav last night
But apart from that. Hmmm. I see what you mean. But that's what sets the good bands apart from the not-so-good ones.
Too much live music can make you yearn for a time when you don't go out and get bored stiff by some sub-Libertines student rabble. But the highlights more than make up for it, when they occur.
Nope.
Most bands are pretty boring. Most solo acts are pretty boring.
We live in the time of a fantastic DIY culture where anyone can record music on stage and play if they want and that's got a lot of positives but it does mean there's a fuck of a lot of boring bands.
I like the punk DIY thing
And also the idea that EVERYONE should have a go at making music. But most music is shit.
Oh I do.
I'm quite involved with the UK antifolk scene which is pretty much based around the principal that absolutely anyone can get up on a stage and play/sing songs regardless of talent or anything else.
You get an amazing atmsophere some amazing original outsider music. There's a fair bit of absolute shit too but I still think the principal and the aspect of anyone being able to get involved in it is a fantastic ethic.
i agree
some amazing music gets made by people with no musical ability. Some fucking awful music also.
I think the key point is inspiration. I'd rather see a great original idea badly executed than something mediocre done really well.
^ this
I get furious with bands who are little more than tribute acts, but there are just so many of them!
(Having said that, my band is derivative and shite, but that's not MY fault)
it is
I want to do some songs in public at some point!!!!!!!!!!!!! and I can only bash out block chords on a keyboard
Shouldda come to Boredoms
I do know what you mean though
I was actually addicted
to gigs from the age of 17-23. I had to go as often as possible. Then my student debt hit me and I had to cut back. I don't get as excited as I used to. I remember feeling like I was actually going to spew due to excitement at a few gigs back in the day.
"I was actually addicted to gigs from the age of 17-23. I had to go as often as possible."
i was sure this was going to end with "...and then Reef split up".
:(
Coincidence I assure you.
That's sad
although I kind of know what you mean. The more gigs you go to, the higher the bar is raised and it gets more and more difficult to be impressed.
The bands I saw when I was 16 and thought were the greatest gigs ever would probably seem really poor now.
But then it makes it extra exciting when you do see a truly brilliant gig.
you know what..
you should go see les savy fav.
nah
I only go and see bands that people talk about lots on DiS.
?
I presume that's some well aimed sarcasm?
yes
but only very mild sarcasm with no particular satirical point to make.
I feel similar at the moment
There seems to be all these decent gigs happening and I can't be arsed with going to them as I feel like I'll be underwhelmed.
Yeah.
I never know what to go to.
There's so many new bands you hear about on DiS etc. and I really ought to go and see more of 'em (especially now I'm quite Central anyway) but I so often feel disappointed that I tend not to bother going to see anyone I don't already know. Which is stupid, obviously.
maybe you're no going
to the good gigs...
that's so crazy
it might be true.
I know exactly what you mean
sometimes attending a gig can seem like a bit of a chore and I do think the more gigs you go to, the less likely you are to be really impressed by whats on show. This year so far I've been underwhelmed by quite a few bands that I really like including British Sea Power, Arcade Fire, Pelcian, Band of Horses, Blood Brothers, Jeniferever and to some extent Battles, which is a very saddening experience.
what is funny is that this year
I've been blown away by bands I certainly didn't expect ( Port-Royal, Benni Hemm Hemm when I've been a bit disappointed by bands I really wanted to see.
Maybe you need to go see things very different from what you usually do !
I'm not saying
I've not enjoyed any gigs. I'm just saying I haven't enjoyed (m)any gigs by 'indie bands'.
I've seen some brilliant shows:
Battles
A Hawk & A Hacksaw
Bjork
Jamie Lidell
Gindrinker
Silence at Sea
Ill Ease
Thomas Truax
and probably more...
but the only standard 'indie band' I've enjoyed this year has been Spencer McGarry Season. Largely because they actually have some mastery of composition which transcends their guitar/bass/drums lineup. There's a richness to what they play which is utterly missing from 99% of other guitar bands I've seen.
define indie bands ?
bands
playing mid-to-uptempo songs based mostly around guitar bass and drums. Usually with a white male singer. A band which does not cross the line into punk or folk.
this can be quite a wide definition and trust me i'm bored of every possible variation.
oh... that kind of band...
I don't think there's any exciting band of that kind at the moment...
live music is a good thing
you can have too much of it.
the thing is
I kind of have no choice but to see lots of bands by virtue of the number of gigs I play. These days I'm normally fortunate in that I get to play with other interesting acts but i still get plenty of shows with utterly generic guitar bands with embarrassing lyrics and even more boring song structures and I just think 'I've seen so many bands doing exactly the same thing you do - why are you bothering?'.
If I only went to gigs I wanted to go to as a punter maybe I wouldn't be so jaded.
it's like
I went to see Euros Childs last night at a nice intimate venue in Cardiff and he was great. I love his new songs, it was a nice informal show.
But I only 'quite enjoyed it', because of the sheer desensitization to the 'watching a band' experience. Perhaos if it was one of maybe only one or two gigs I'd seen this month I know I'd have enjoyed it loads more?
:(
I think I enjoy live music less 'cos I'm actually doing it myself
It means that I can't just relax and watch a band now. Whenever I watch a band I'll always be thinking a combination of:
a) Do I like this band?
b) Do I want to book this band for one of my nights?
c) Is there anything this band are doing we ought to be doing on stage?
d) Is there anything this band is doing wrong we should avoid?
e) If this is band is shit, how come they're doing better than us and what can we learn from that?
And various other questions. I can no longer watch music unanalytically.
I've seen Euros a few weeks ago.
He was good but not great.
That's maybe why you only 'quite enjoyed it'...
Efterklang on the other hand were pretty special, even if some bits were ridiculous !
Quality is better than quantity
I've only seen about 5 bands this year (not counting festivals) but they've been bands that have blown me away with their performances.
entirely.
i've not gone to a show in ages because i can't be bothered paying all that money and making the effort to get there for an experience that's almost never really THAT enjoyable. i've given up on going to things out of curiosity because they almost always disappoint even when i don't have any expectations. most sets are too long to be exciting anyway. plus, a lot of shows just seem to be in the wrong environment (at least in london): people are either disinterested and apathetic or completely sycophantic.
most of the time it is because of the bands, but i do find that there's a complete lack of atmosphere in pretty much every venue here. a vastly disproportionate amount of the shows i've really enjoyed have been in odd places or venues that aren't used much, rather than places clearly defined as live music venues with the same look and feel and the same things at the bar no matter where you go.
Yeah
I now actively dislike gigs in big venues for all these reasons.
i guess novelty really does go a long way...
Yeah
thats why that battle of the bands thing on t4 cracks me up, because most of them are like those shit bands you have to sit through when you go to a mate's(who's probably shit too) gig. And at most of these type of gigs I always thought can someone just tell these people they're shit and boring please. But I don't go to those sort of gigs anymore so its ok. I know I sound mean. Y'know, just cos I don't like it doesn't mean it's not good, but they do all sound the same.
exactly
in most cases I wouldn't go so far as to say 'this band is actually shit'.
I'm just so weary of it all. Which is why I'm so fucking grateful when I hear something that's either utterly off the wall or genuinely quality.
Part of me really regrets not entering that T4 thing
It would have fucked any credibility we had but the judges actually seemed to be looking for the right things (and most of the bands were awful) so we might have done ok in it.
On the other hand I hate the idea of music being a competition and think there's a reason why bands enter those kind of competitions so I don't think I'd have done it really.
I know exactly what you mean
about 6 months ago I got completely bored by music, fed up of going to gigs, completely disinterested in finding new bands.
So I took about 6 months off, didn't go to a single gig, no festivals over the summer, abandoned my iPod and listened to the radio instead, something I hadn't done for years.
Its seems to have done the trick for me, I'm not suggesting you should go and listen to Rihanna all day long, but perhaps a short break would do you good, and remind you of what you're missing.
hmmm
i know the feeling. i think it's easy to just feel "gigged out" sometimes from too many gigs and isn't helped by seeing so many bands who just go through the motions...
you probably need to take an enforced break for a while to rekindle some excitement.
that's what i'm doing anyway!
maybe
after the ten or so gigs I've got booked I'll have a break.
If your tired of music, you are tired of life.
Too much of a good thing?
Try swapping genres for awhile..?
i'm not tired of music
just tired of watching guitar bands.
there's always that moment just before they play where you think 'this band could sound like anything'. then they start to play....
i'm not
tired of music either, but i am tired of rubbish bands, especially on myspazz as i can only get through so many in one sitting, and when there's a bad run of add requests it just gets even more depressing.
not to say they're all shite cos obviously they're not and i'm happy to say that i've recently found enough new bands to keep me more than happy!
i do feel bad for missing some decent gigs recently though but i've been busy and something's got to give as late nights out and work next day just don't mix...
and soundchecks
i'm tired of soundchecks, i really hate soundchecks!
amen to that
I'd rather stand out in the rain than watch any more bands soundcheck.
that's the worst bit. watching some nomark indie mediocrities fussing over some worthless detail of the balance of their sound when you've already heard that their stuff is terrible and dull and no one's going to care if the bass is a bit toppy cos they'll STILL BE SHIT.
i hate myself.
Straight guitar bands fill me with dread too.
It's just starting from a point of swamped, besieged, overpopulated musical cliche. And that's not a good place to start from.
NEW SOUNDS PLEASE, WORLD!
THat said, sometimes a band using a 'trad' setup is just unbelievable, like when Liars first appeared.
In a way I think it's an excellent place to start from.
as it creates far more of a challenge in terms of doing something original and brilliant than it would be in less over-crowded genres.
sadly
most people within that medium seem to think they have succeeded in doing something original and brilliant.
People just get so happy with the act of creating that they have no objectivity about whether what they do is any good. they'd just so excited to have written songs/be in a band at all that they make no attempt to stand out.
that applies to everything though
it's no different to people who think that using a laptop makes them somehow automatically more interesting.
More so with guitar bands.
Simply because there is more out there and several extra decades of people filling up every space with their own take on the format.
True
but I think that the rapid explosion of lap-top music is starting to create a similar situation. It's so easy to make music on a laptop these days but it's modern enough to still have the notion of 'originality' automatically built into it. So you do get a lot of people who make music on laptops who believe themselves to be (and people who should know better believe to be) original and brilliant due to the use of the laptop when obviously the originality and brilliance should be judged on the music itself and not the means of production.
I don't think anyone thinks that using a laptop in itself is original any more.
Quite the opposite.
Obviously, it depends on the music, that's a bit of a dead point.
This is going to end up in a "what is originality" debate isn't it.
people don't
give enough credit to things which are compositionally original. That's why I love fiery furnaces so much because lots of their stuff - as well as the odd left turns mid song, crazy sounds and multi-sectioned songs - is melodically odd and musically rich.
It's why Spencer McGarry Season are miles better than a superficially similar band. And why they may struggle to get the average DiS regular to be excited about them because that musical richness/originality might not be given due credit if it's done in a very traditional/pop context.
yeah
i know what you mean.
similarly, have you seen Look See Proof play? they do the whole Libs-style thing but really really really well I think. it's really sprighty and fun, the've always make me smile lots when I've seen them..
no
never heard of them. Maybe I'll try and suspend my cynicism if I ever find myself about to watch them.
I seriously seriously wish this wasn't the case. I used to, and still do really, have a love for good old fashioned guitar based pop - even when it's not particularly clever or wheel-reinventing. But I've just OD'ed on it.
I hope not.
A what is "orignality" debate'd get us nowhere.
I still think you get a fair few people impressed by the mere use of laptops. Probably not people with an in-depth knowledge and understanding of new music but certainly in terms of the more general audience.
losers
a lot of people get impressed with
the use of guitars
I know - I used to.
When I was about 13 and saw someone playng a guitar I thought it was amazing. It was only when I started learning that I realised that pretty much anyone can learn to play the guitar to a rudimentary level and make it sound good.
^
By "sound good" I mean "sound like you can play guitar to someone who can't play guitar themselves"
i can play a D
winner!
That's literally all you need to impress people.
I'm not joking or exagerrating at all. Both guitars and, to a lesser extent, pianos are fantastic for being piss easy to play at a simple level but still impressive to naive onlookers.
yeah
you're totally right. and I've been equally bored by some laptop music I've heard lately.
but nonetheless the boring laptop music is still a welcome change from boring guitar music because it's not as common.
Yeah.
There is simply nothing worse than seeing four boring lads in boring clothes pick up their boring instruments and play their boring songs.
actually
using a laptop to tart up your boring songs is something I actively despise. I always painfully conscious of not ending up in that ballpark and try really hard to make songs that would still work if they weren't laptoppy.
so many bands these days tack electronic things onto what they do to make it more interesting. And I'll enjoy their gigs more but mostly because I'm thinking 'ooh I want one of those'.
Yeah.
LIke when Keane or SNow Patrol slap an orchestra on something to make it sound more meaningful. And you just want to slap them and tell them to stop resorting to the most obvious tricks possible to beef up their paltry shite.
Aye.
I can still just about remember when an indie band using strings was something of an unusual concept. Now it's hard to find an indie band that doesn't.
It doesn't???
FUCK! I am in trouble
Sure
but I think that's true of people in any medium.
I think it's natural to be excited about the act of creating and I know very few musicians who can be objective about what they've done (both good acts who don't rate themselves and mediocre acts with ideas far above they're station). I suspect most constantly fluctuate between feeling brilliant or shit about what they do, depending on what day of the week it happens to be.
You're right, of course, that most people in 'conventionally' set-up bands do just sound conventional. And there's few things more depressing than
a) seeing a member of such a band constantly affirming their own brilliance whilst oblivious to how mediocre they do sound.
b) the creeping realisation that, if these people are deluded as to the quality of their music, maybe you as a musician are too.
So I suppose in a way the only way any act can possibly get any idea of how good, original etc. they are is from how other people react to it, although of course this in itself does depend on the experiences/tastes of the listener. But I suppose eventually patterns emerge and if significant numbers of people are telling you the same thing you will eventually beleieve it to be approaching the truth. Or something.
I think I got lost along the way here somewhere...