Prove It All Night: with No Fame or Fortune, What Keeps a Band Onstage? (1999)

Performing is fun.

I've played in bar bands (doing covers) for 12 years now. My current project is going on hiatus due to some members leaving and us having to find new ones. We played our last show very recently and were talking about how we have an actual fanbase that's grown through friends, spontaneous discovery, and social media through no doing of my own. Before the show and between sets I'm always going out of my way to do something in service of the performance instead of talking to people in the crowd.

It then occurred to me that a decent part of the reason that I perform live is a selfish one - on some level I'd rather demonstrate social utility by being a human jukebox than have to interact with people normally. Apparently I'd rather chug water and double-check the setlist after getting off stage than drink a beer and introduce myself to people. As ironic as it sounds there's a certain security to being on stage that insulates you from having to hang out with people while still scratching the itch to go out.

Maybe I'm psychologizing myself too much but it's a thought. Definitely something I'm going to work on regardless.

I had a gig last night. Small local band with a bit of a following that hasn't performed for a few months. Audience of 120 or so. Great fun. My occasional hobby is lighting live music so I have to take what bands I can. Fortunately I really enjoy working with these people.

After the show two of the band (40 and 37 y.o.) were talking about what next. They realise that, sadly, they're probably not going to make it big, but aren't sure that the occasional local gig with audience of 120, or supporting someone bigger but where the audience don't care, is enough. What should they do? give up? change mental focus and do something completely different (one thought about being a counsellor, the other about going into visual art). I'm older, so they were asking whether I'd had similar thoughts. Sure have. I long ago realised I could never make a living lighting live music unless I moved to the US, or possibly europe. For reasons, neither were practical, so I consciously decided that desgining hardware, writing software, and doing the occasional hobby lighting gig were enough. But for those two? No idea.

Not really sure where this is going, but the tone of the article really resonated with the discussion with those two last night, and my tiredness this morning.

I still think live music beats the pants off recordings. And show in smaller venues where you can really see and interact with the band are _way_ better than big shows where you just have loud television

This is essentially the same story behind Dire Straight's "Sultans of Swing". A band playing for next to no one, but for the fun of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultans_of_Swing

  And Harry doesn't mind if he doesn't make the scene
  He's got a daytime job, he's doing alright
  He can play the honky-tonk like anything
  Savin' it up for Friday night
  With the Sultans
  We're the Sultans of Swing

One day I'll retire, and the day after that I will still write code even though I'm no longer being paid to do it. And I'll still play my guitar every day even though I have no interest in being famous. I'll do both of those things for as long as I am able because they bring me joy.

“People don’t want to come out and drink anymore. They’d rather sit at home and get drunk, or surf the Internet."

There's also the question of what kind of music people want to listen to. Rock music seems to wax and wane according to youth preferences and other pop culture and social trends. Bars and clubs that fail to adapt will usually fail.

In the late 90s dance/rap/electronic was rising while guitar-based rock seemed to be fading, or splitting into niches like nu metal. By the early 2010s rock really seemed to be in a deep trough ... at that time I saw some bands that had once been considered big rock acts in 90s like Deftones, Helmet and Kula Shaker playing much smaller venues and neighborhood clubs in Boston.

But 10 years later the pendulum seemed to swing back to rock. I saw Deftones once again on their 2022 tour, now playing a 4,000-seat arena.

Really enjoyed that. Thanks for sharing.

passion, of course! not everyone is chasing fame and fortune. most musicians I know play just because someone is listening, and often times that someone is only them!

Some people can make a living doing something they enjoy. "Success" is not fame, and vice versa (they are wholly orthogonal to each other), and I remember reading an interview with a member of Canadian group Saga, who in the US had like 1 top 40 hit in the early 80s and a few more minor ones in their home country, but ultimately they sell a few thousand records a year, and tour regularly in two "big" markets for them : Puerto Rico and Germany, and they seem to make roughly a middle class lifestyle doing so.

Beats being an accountant or urologist I suppose.

I suspect there's a similar vibe for cover band folks.

the nookie?

Bands are composed of people who like to eat.

Its a shame visa laws make it hard for European bands to come to the US

The Chicago Reader was the city's paper in the 1990s. It was a great resource for someone new to Chicago. That and NewCity. The way to find apartments for rent before Craigslist killed the classifieds off.