There's too many bands in here.

What have we done? I can't say that I didn't know that this would happen. But it has. With this post I am going to run the risk of pretense, snobbery, hypocrisy, self-service and outright elitism. But it's time. This post has been brewing for almost a week since my friends Rob and Paul from Vacuity and I got into a real rant on the fact that there are too many shitty bands that are destroying the quality of live music.

Several years ago when I finally got serious about being a musician I saw the writing on the wall, as did many. That the proliferation of recording technology would make music worthless and ubiquitous. But I had a small glimmer of hope that the only space that would somehow be spared the wrath of the DIY musician would be in the live space. That it's one thing to take ten years to write a song and record it for the price of a MAC and Pro-Tools in a box but it takes a totally different set of stones, know-how and circumstances to get the chance to play it live. But somewhere along the way in the last decade, either in reaction too or in simple coincidence with the rise of music technologies the live space has been choked out. On any given night in Toronto the main clubs that "support" live music offer up what the owners/bookers-the by-default taste makers have decided is acceptable live music. The same scene plays itself out in major cities everywhere. You get 4 to 5 bands (cause you need that many on a bill to ensure that the bar has enough diverse traffic to make money) that in a lot of cases wouldn't be found dead together on the side of the road let alone on the same bill. But to get a chance to play "The (insert famous club name here)" and tell your friends and maybe hook-up that night, it's worth subjecting your speed metal fans with the pop sensibilities of The Juicy Fruit band opening (or vice versa). You see, at the club level the same bar that plays your shit band also plays a national touring act. So your night is the night to help keep the lights on, not turn a profit. So the booker doesn't fucking care. It's about filling the night and doing the bare minimum amount of online work (about 5 minutes) to determine that they may bring out 20 people. Not that they sound good, where their stuff was recorded, the press they have, the time put into promotional material, how long they have been together, and God forbid what their stuff sounds like in conjunction with the other bands he/she is thinking of putting together. At this level it is pure and simple economics. Short-sighted to the point of next day. So the choice is made due to economics to ram the night with unsupportive acts from different parts of the musical community that in most cases should never have even been considered. And we ask ourselves as people in bands, why more folks don't come out to live music. Why club land is teeming with THOUSANDS of people every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Because our product sucks, it is inconsistent and has no real value anymore. Because on that same night of 5 bands there maybe one that, because of the lack of places to play, has taken to staying on the bill and they are a great hard-working live band. They care about the show, have studied and worked the craft. Understand the history of the place and are hungry. They are MUSICIANS not people with instruments. But their fans are not going to subject themselves to coming to a bar that hasn't been cleaned or updated since the Carter administration and have to sit through shit to wait.

Now the blame game. Talking to guys who did it back in the golden era of live music-the 70s and 80s it is easy to see why the money was made. Technology put a price on entry and a premium on quality. When a press kit hit the door of a club, what it took to get those materials in a booker's hands was time, expertise, years of work and a lot of money (garnered through talent and hard work). So the choice then for the booker was not about how many bands and who has been bugging me the loudest or whom I owe a favour to, it was about building a night. Now, the comparison is unrealistic because in a lot of industries so much has changed because of technology. And I am no where near a Luddite. But we are killing the industry at the level where the most money is made. We are killing the product. We are turning away the artists. The club level is what the Juniors is to hockey. What The NCAA is to basketball and what high schools are to football in America. The draft is getting shittier and shittier. Why is it that the industry has had to "manufacture" bands and acts at the pop level. Because there is no money in it for "the artists". The "Lionel Ritchie's", "The Jackson's", shit even Tina Turner and the Ikettes would be all teachers or driving buses if this was their age. No places to play, no fans ready to pay. How much stagnation has there been in music since we got lazy and careless because of technology. When you've got kids recreating records from the eighties on their MACs in between sessions on their Xbox with key strokes, downloads and built in ready made sounds and engineering capabilities that took pure genius, years of trial and error and guts to create in the first place 20 years ago-what's the point of something new? It's a game. It's not art. It's something EVERYONE can do now. It's not special or unique. It's not hard. Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours or 5 years to get truly great at something. Recording music is not one.

There is a real sense among our contemporaries that we need to make and promote music that doesn't suck. That the space is over-crowded and this has got to change to grow the industry so that more great bands don't have to wait for the Holy Grail of chasing the 1 or 2 booking companies in the country that can offer a steady paycheck. Music is about inclusion when it comes to ideas, community, politics, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. But it's power is being diluted. The impact of a singer or band that is at the top of it's game, has sweat it out for years, honed the craft, the aesthetic, the sound, the presentation, the look, has charisma and confidence, knows the audience, knows the unspoken rules of the trade and can blow you away in one hour of passion is irreplaceable and quickly and sadly becoming hard to find.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm misguided. I have been feeling this way for a while but have been hesitant to say anything for fear of coming across as bitter, misinformed or speaking from a place of ignorance or inexperience. I don't feel that way as much anymore after the sacrifices I have made, seen my peers fall by the wayside, seen bands that we started out with die and see an ever increasing blindness to the failures of live music.

I love what I do. I want to it with success. I want to see live music thrive. This is just an opinion. The conversation is just starting.

L.