The Tour

One of the most time consuming and physically demanding jobs for a band or artist is going on a tour. Musicians may tour the a country, several countries or the world and perform concerts and make TV and other event appearances. So why is it so important to go on tour?

Going on tour can mean different things to in different situations. As an up and coming artist, getting the chance to go along on someone else’s tour to open shows is good promotion, it gets their name out to the thousands of event attendees. The extra band awareness comes without the high cost of advertising as fans are paying to attend the concert. Also, touring with well known bands gives lesser known artists an automatic status increase.

For headlining bands, touring is all about bringing their music to their fans while doing what they love and making a living. Artists will often embark on a tour to promote the release of new music. Well executed live performances get consumers excited about the music and makes the artists album a ‘must have.’
It is one thing to see your favourite rock stars on TV but it’s not very often that fans get to see them in person. Fans look forward to and appreciate when the artist comes to them. It’s sort of a mutual ‘thank you’ from the artist who makes a living from their fans and the fans who enjoy the entertainment value from the artist.

We cannot forget though, that in the end, concerts and tours are money making events.
They are building blocks for the artist who through the extra entertainment value of a live concert can influence attendees to buy their latest album or other merchandise.

The Rock Band

There are artists with back up bands, and then there is the traditional band. A lead guitar, bass and drummer for starters with the possibility of a lead singer or multiple singers. There is something about bands that captures audiences and is different from that of single artists. It could be that many legendary bands like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and AC/DC brought together more than just a group of talented musicians. The popular saying, “two heads are better than one,” is especially true with 4 or 5 band members that are experts in their respective areas. Of course a single person can develop a melody and lyrics alone, but a group can create synergy when it brings together songwriter and musical genius to form a band.

Bands tend come across as a group of mates, doing what they love and having fun doing it. They travel together, write together and perform together, and it often shows in their music (Five reasons rock bands break up 2002). We also notice a level of entertainment that bands provide over single artists, for example, at a concert it’s more like watching a number of headline performers at once rather than a single artists and their backup entourage.

So if being in a band is so good why do so many bands break up? Well the term ‘musical differences’ is usually the official reason, but there are several possibilities. It is true that as musicians age they may tend to look in different directions creatively and inspirationally, leading to musical differences. However other reasons such as losing the love for the music, solo careers, money and outside influences (Five reasons rock bands break up 2002). Any of these reasons can potentially mean the end of a good thing, sometimes that means the end of the band, sometimes the formation of a new one and sometime, like the Rolling Stones, they just roll with the punches and keep on going.

In the end we have to remember that the musicians that make up our bands are people too and they have differences in ideas, personalities and backgrounds.

References:

Five reasons rock bands break up, 2002, Pagewise, viewed 2 June 2009, http://www.essortment.com/all/rockbandsbreak_rtmm.htm.

Assembly Line Rock Stars

Are rock stars born or made? Of course we all know that someone can go out and pay to be taught how to sing properly, but we also know that there are those special few who are born with undeniable talent. I think it would be safe to say that most of these individuals are not born ‘rock stars’, but normal people with a marketable talent. We hear all sorts of stories about how artists are told what to do and how to do everything, from what to look like to how to act, by record labels. So is this an issue in the rock and roll industry?

I referred in the above paragraph to singing being a marketable talent. By this I meant that there is a demand for entertainment, and singing and music being a form of entertainment, can be used to ones advantage to make a profit. Marketers are well known for manipulating aspects of a product in order to achieve maximum returns. This is the same thing that is done by record labels to artists that they sign. Record labels are of course money making businesses and as such use the desire of artists (especially younger ones) to become well known musicians, to manipulate them and make them into money making machines.
The idea is sort of like cars on an assembly line in the fact that record labels know what sells and molds upcoming artists into one of their ‘best selling’ categories, even if this means compromising their integrity. One of the most well known tactics is sex. Take a look at artists like, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, and Jessica Simpson and compare their how they were when they first appeared on the music scene, to present day. I’m sure anyone would see a notable difference in appearance, actions and in music.

So what message is being sent to consumers, especially children as they are easily influenced? They are being told that in order to be ‘somebody’ they need to act a certain way, dress a certain way, hang out at certain places etc.

Artists have mentioned this topic in songs such as Pink’s ‘Don’t Let Me Get Me’ where she sings:

LA told me, "You'll be a pop star,
All you have to change is everything you are."
Tired of being compared to damn Britney Spears
She's so pretty, that just ain't me

Pink also pokes fun at the ‘glamour girl’ image that record labels are promoting to the youth of today, in her song and music video ‘Stupid Girls’ below.



References:

Don’t Let Me Get Me Lyrics, 2009, ELyrics.com, viewed 2June 2009, http://www.elyrics.net/read/p/pink-lyrics/don_t-let-me-get-me-lyrics.html.

Skirts Off and Pants On

Walking into a pub gig is hard. You must walk past the rows of men throwing down scooners and telling ‘those’ stories’. When you have finally arrived at the bar you find it hard to order a champagne and orange juice without getting weird and degrading looks through the clouds of smoke coming from men of all ages gathered at the local. You start thinking to yourself, crap, my skirt is tucked into my undies isn’t it, or I have toilet paper on my shoe. Your brain skips over the concept that these men are not used to women pulling up a seat next to them, ordering a wine and listening to hard rock as well. I am sure I am not the only woman who has ever somewhat alienated when catching a secret show of her favourite band.

According to Steve Chapple and Reebee Garafalo, rock removed women from the music industry and simultaineously the bar stool too..
“The revolution in music that was rock 'n' roll effectively re-moved women from the pop charts for seven years, until the advent of the "girl groups." Prior to the beginnings of rock 'n' roll in 1955, female artists accounted for one-third of the positions on the year-end singles charts. Most of these women were pop artists like Patti Page, Doris Day, and Rosemary Clooney, who were not replaced by women singing rock 'n' roll. By 1956 the proportion of women on the singles charts had declined to 8 percent,” (Chapple and Garafalo)

Rock and Roll brought about a new wave of change, where women were not looked upon as people but as servants to the gods of rock and roll.

Susan Fast, author of Gender and Sexuality in Led Zeppelin is a fellow Hard Rock fan that has found herself in the same predicament as I mentioned earlier. Her research and study blames this cultivated assumption about women in rock and roll as groupies only, on the women themselves and their lack of involvement in shaping the discourse of Hard Rock.
Fast states, “Journalists, academics, and others writing about the band have been for the most part men, who have claimed, derided, or otherwise defined it as "male." The few women who have written about the music do not seem to be themselves actively engaged in its consumption-I have come across only one academic who discloses that she listens to it (and on her discomfort with this,). Their interest, too, has been in delineating and interpreting the characteristics of the culture that seem to make it "male." (1999, p. 247)

“Where does it leave me as an avid fan of this music since I first stumbled upon my brother-in-law's copy of Led Zeppelin III in 1972 at the age of four-teen and played "Immigrant Song" over and over again until I wore out the vinyl?”

To answer Susan, it leaves us women fans at the pub on a Saturday night getting the looks that they detest and the subtle brush of the arm, followed by a “sorry love didn’t see ya there”.

Gwen Stefani and Alanis Morrissette have been able break the mould with their personas of the 1990’s. However it was only that they didn’t act like a girl that they were able to do so. Gayle Ward noted this contradiction in her article ‘Just a Girl?’
“Performers such as Stefani and Alanis Morissette have discovered in acting "like a girl" new ways of pro-moting the cultural visibility of women within rock music. At the same time, the music industry has discovered in these female stars (each with her own carefully cultivated star persona) new ways to sell its products to young female consumers (i.e., "real" girls).(Wald, 1999, p. 587)

No wonder women of rock are in such a conundrum. If we are not filling the shoes of Bebe Buell or Penny Lane, we are acting like men. Comeon’ sisters let’s do it for ourselves and give women a voice in rock and roll.

References

Wald G 1998, ‘Just a Girl?’ Feminisms and Youth Cultures, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 585-610, The University of Chicago Press. Accessed via Internet Explorer, 1st June 2009.

URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3175302?origin=JSTOR-pdf

Fast S, 1999, ‘Rethinking issues of Gender and Sexuality in Led Zeppelin: A woman’s view of pleasure and power in hard rock’, American Music, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 245-299, University of Illinois. Date accessed 1st June 2009, via Internet Explorer.
URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3052664

The Rise and Fall of Grunge-Reasons, Explanations, Ambiguities

When the likes of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and The Screaming Trees stormed onto the world's international musical radar, bringing with it their deafening cacophony of distorted guitars, soul tearing vocals and despairingly honest lyrics the world sat up and took notice. They wondered, what is this incredible music and where does it come from? And almost as quickly as these questions were asked, people started to come up with answers. It's grunge they said. And it comes from Seattle. It's the Seattle Sound. And everyone cheered. And suddenly that Seattle sound was everywhere. Grunge hit the airwaves and took the world by storm and then just as quickly as it had come, it was gone, Kurt Cobain was dead and everybody was left wondering "what now?".

But the story is never so simple and perhaps the creation of the Grunge Aesthetic, as it swept across all facets of youth culture, is as important in the rise and fall of grunge as the efforts of musicians themselves in crafting the "Grunge" sound, if one could be said to have existed. For as Thomas L Bell notes in his examination of the evolution of Seattle Grunge:

"First, there never really was, and there certainly is not now, a "Seattle sound" contrary to the wishes and the hype of the popular press. What there was in Seattle was a major university along with a lively and rather recent melange of music clubs and lounges that had sprung up around areas of downtown Seattle and near the University of Washington campus."

What Bell describes in the coming together of Grunge at the beginning of the 90's is a lively alternative music scene with bands exhibiting incredible creative energy, one which existed in juxtaposition to Seattle's primary alternative music label, Sub Pop Records and the new prevalence of A&R representatives in bringing new music trends to a changing musical market. Sub Pop Records itself is largely responsible for the promotion of Grunge in its earliest days, including Soundgarden, MudHoney and Nirvana on a boxed set called "Sub Pop 200", including 20 pages of pictures, largely responsible for the creation of the "grunge rocker" image itself.

This release, more than anything else would launch both Grunge and Seattle into the music scene. Designers, trend creators and aritsts alike immediately utilised this in marketing a new form of consumable youth culture, with journalists and music commentators alike labeling this new wave of music "The Seattle Sound", even if they were only able to piece together three common threads:

1. The music is loud. Really loud. Tinny guitars, screaming and low growly vocals played through deafening amps left no doubt of this. Grunge bands had little money to finance large ensembles and even less for studio time. What you heard on their tapes was what you most likely heard live. Some artists even recorded their tapes on bare bones equipment in order to retain this live feel to their music.
2. The lyrics and the musicianship is honest, true and vibrant. The lack of money available lends authenticity to their sound as we mentioned through the congruence between live and studio performance/sound, but the lyrics themselves are brutally honest and resonated deeply with the audiences they played to.
3. Many big names in Grunge have gained significant recognition elsewhere and internationally, before gaining any tangible following/credibility in their own home town.

However whilst some of these trends reflect the actual form and operation of the scene itself, much of Grunge's culture was itself constructed in reaction to the emergence of the genre, not by those embodying its sound. The importance of A&R music reps in picking up and disseminating Grunge music cannot be underestimated, as it is the explosive force with which Grunge was hurled from the alternative scene, into the music industry by these trend savvy music lovers that would be the cause of both Grunge's downfall in the end. Marketing of cultural cool is never to be underestimated, both in its ability to change a sound from niche to mainstream and the way in which it can limit the shelf life of those trends it elevates to the status of hip and trendy:

"As the music of Seattle became more mainstream, much of the creative energy was lost. Grunge metamorphosed into a Madison Avenue advertising ploy. Movies such as "Singles" hyped the Seattle scene until it became a parody of itself."

The death of grunge itself therefore, was a result of its own success and discovery by A&R music reps in a new era of cultural consumption. As Seattle became known and characterised for its Grunge "sound", the same forces which promoted the idea of a coherent link between otherwise creatively diverse bands, instead denied an emergent scene the ability to differentiate and develop as they were defined and culturally constructed as part of an imagined movement in music:

"Seattle thus became: less a geographical locale than a psychic space... an associative cultural signifier readily transferable from music to fashion, books, generational politics"

By creating the Seattle Sound out of disparate and incongruous threads, by marketing Grunge culture and engineering its consumption as commoditised mainstream chic, higher ups in the world of music effectively limited its creative expansion, geographic location/spatiality and its ability to develop independently. The overexposure of Grunge and the assertion of its personality as the "Seattle Sound", is the death of this unassuming child of alternative rock.


References
Bell. T. L. (1998), 'Why Seattle? An examination of an Alternative Rock Culture Hearth', Journal of Cultural Geography, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 35-49

Music and its effect on brain power

OK so we have all heard they myth. classical music will help you think harder and loud heavy music with diminish your brains power. But have you ever looked to see if anyones done a stud y to prove it? Well it turns out there was a study done by the University of Nebraska by a Mike Manthei and Steve Kelly.

The 2 of them did extensive studies using large test samples and produced a series of results that were quite intriguing.

Before you go out and stock up on then essential Mozart collection featuring Bach you should jump over to their site and check out their results.

But if your too lazy to do that i'll give u a brief summary here :). basically they found no direct correlation between a certain style of music and intelligence only that one form of music was able the relax the listener much better than other ones(take a guess which one). That's right classical music has been proven to calm people down.. but unfortunately at this point in time they haven't found the magic song that will help u pass all the exams :)

source = http://music.arts.usf.edu/rpme/effects.htm

The Best of Rock... Festivals :P

So ... if you’ve lived in Australia for more than a year, and you enjoy/ love rock music then there’s probably a good chance that you have heard of the Big Day Out festival before. That is of course unless you have been living in a cave, with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears.

The Big Day Out is a yearly even that runs on the Australia day long weekend and is probably the biggest festival in Australia if not the biggest rock even in Australia. With a different line up each year and ever growing popularity bands. The event has been running for 17 years and has shows at Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Gold coast, Adelaide and Perth.

With an average ticket price of $138 you really do get bang for your buck with 19 different bands. You are sure to have an awesome, long and eventful day. For ticket go to the main Big Day Out Website at http://www.bigdayout.com/

Source = http://www.bigdayout.com/