One year ago today: May 12, 2023, slower than usual.
Five years ago today: May 12, 2019, he got home early.
Nine years ago today: May 12, 2015, “a low raised bridge”.
Random years ago today: May 12, 2009, aboard the USS N. Carolina.
A little more research on the potential new gig says it’s a good match. Don’t expect rapid results, the Prez is off on holidays next week until the second week of June. My strategy is to map out a loose schedule based on all the information I have. Dominant is the club is already booked ahead for two months. I will plan my summer break to leave July and August mostly open. I dislike demo tapes which are outdated the moment they are made. So that leaves me a window around June 10th to arrange a live audition. We also know band cancellations are a problem for local clubs, so we should be ready to jump in at the first opportunity.
I’ve planned for that as well. Being a duo means larger groups cannot undercut us. I’ve watched how these bands showcase, which is not the right formula a lot of the time. When you dance with a gal, you want her paying attention to you, not the band. The other bands are good, in fact, most of the time they are too good. That’s a big part of the reason I went for the amateur sound. When it comes to the small dance club, maybe it is other bands who will find it hard to compete.
It’s a quiet morning, so come along for a glimpse at the underbelly of the music management process. I already know we will be up against some of Polk’s finest. But I know all these bands and they are overkill. They formed a lot of my decision to get back to a basic “amateur” duo sound. These bands put on a damn good show, if that is what you want and even if that is not what you want. See where I’m going with this?
By noon, I’ve identified the three serious contenders, and they have all the prime time slots parceled out between themselves. The are two family bands and good of Etta from Boss Hogg, who doesn’t really have a band. Family bands are the only type of band you can never really quit. The Good Stuff is one guitar player with his wife and daughter. See also the other photo of Two Smooth, husband & wife. These groups both use heavy backing tracks or else sound rather thin. Great harmonies, but I like to point out most people can’t dance to that.
It amuses me when bands that use tracks claim they can adapt to any room. My next task is to go on-line and find where possible what tunes they play. If there is overlap, I deal with that separately. I’ll plan my approach around what these bands do and emphasize we do not use tracks, because if I don’t people think they hear them. Both these bands will slip broadway tunes (like “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” into the mix if you don’t watch out. Another sure sign of backing tracks in a massive song list. The duo lists over 140 tunes on their page.
It sure looks like the Democrats are going to try another election steal. Their attitude is that they got away with it and that gives them an historical precedent. Bad thinking, that assumes they can keep pushing the limit and it will turn into acceptance. No, it smolders like forever and then you have a big bang.
Taking stock, the Fulton County case has resulted in charges against the prosecutors, the New York hush money case is headed for a mistrial, the J6 case has been zapped by the Supreme Court, and today the Secret Document case has been put off indefinitely. The Democrat goal to make Trump into a felon so he could not run for office has completely fallen apart. If they do manage to pin something on Trump, rumor is he would rule from jail. The walls are closing on the Deep State. They have to do something fast but they are out of steam. I wonder which of them will break and spill the beans? It’s not as simple as charging them, because all the people who would arrest them are on the take.
The one I would like to see fall is that sinister Jack Smith. He just plain irks me. I’ve not followed the details, but it seems due to a bureaucratic delay at his end, somebody started filing charges against Trump before the alleged stolen documents were shipped to Florida. Ooops! Now evidence emerges that the Feds put fake “Top Secret” stickers on Trump’s storage boxes. Remember these are news headlines, I don’t always have time to go review the full articles.
Tornado siren.
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Looking for AlkaSeltzer and kept finding this aisle of cold medicine that does not work? And it costs $11 a box? Don’t give up, the real AlkaSelter is over in another shelf, keep looking. They must like it when they make you keep looking. The only active ingredient is ASA, which I am supposed to take daily as a blood thinner. Regular AlkaSeltzer is my choice—when you can find it.
What, you didn’t know that trick? Squirrels hate the smell of vinegar. Spray their haunts and they will move. The aroma goes away overnight. Later, the fence cleanup took longer than expected. I finally had to get out the electric chain saw. I can assure you those weird fig-like bushes are not coming back in my lifetime. I sawed them down to stump level. Hours later, I still have not raked up the last of the debris. I retreated to the much cooler work shed and finished more of the recording box. It was an eighth inch off square. Strange, since the pieces were cut on a sled using a jig.
You know the rules, and sometimes the top story is a dud. Since the last kava gig, I can’t find my blue scribbler. It contains the latest song lists and gig information. I usually know where things go missing but I was about to give up on this one. You know that metal tool box where I store the PA cables? It has a large lid, which you clamp down over the cables and snap it shut. You see, the cables spring back once the lid is closed. If you slip something inside there of exactly the right dimensions, it can get pressed up into the cavity and hold itself in place as it tried to spring back. And unless you haul the box out of the van and fully open it, you are unlikely to see any inside that lid. Found it.
What is this noise at 3:15AM? Two fire trucks and a police car at the house across the way. That place has been the trouble spot of the neighborhood for years. It’s the lady, she’s nice enough, but the daughter not so much. I’m not going out there, but I did see a mass of smoke and a bit of flame from the back part of the building. There are some sheds back there. It’s always something whenever that daughter is around and I saw her car there this afternoon. When I say daughter, I believe she is at least 60 years old.
ADDENDUM
The following was written for another discussion, not this blog. I’ll chance you might find it amusing. I’ve known for some time there is a demand for country dance music, yet could not figure out why the bands did not exist around here. Now I know at least partly why. There is small group with a tight grip on the comparatively tiny live music circuit from east Lakeland to Winter Haven. Hire outside and you could find yourself stuck with disk jockeys. The music coordinator told me he met with woe trying to find bands that fit.
The music market since COVID has tightened up considerably and the bands that survived have a distinct manner about them, playing a lot of the same material. This evolution really began around the same time as the Internet was taking off. Call it 1995. After that, the availability of multi-track recorders and the ready-made on-line distribution system changed bands forever, giving rise to the indie (independent artist) period. Many musicians remember the great pay from the old days but have no real clue that it is the times that have changed, not the competition. They did not keep up. If anything else has changed, it is the composition of the poor people who now consider themselves middle class, a group most bands thus no longer represent.
We are in a new age of management-based bands. The old ways are gone, and what I mean by old is their attitude. Before 1990, you’d be hard pressed to find a band that was not based on a class for their support. Most bands played middle class music to middle class audiences without giving it a second thought. It was the other way around, most of those bands could not have existed without that basis of support. And today, such bands all sound alike.
Another example is Blues. That era is over, but that doesn’t mean nobody plays it. Rather, a different sort of musician plays it. When the Blues artists died off, there were no new bands to replace them, rather you saw the rise of the aficianado, the artist who could clone to perfection, but could not create. Rock and country have both undergone the same transition. There will always be exceptions, but that is not what I’m discussing.
The topic here is the changing band philosophy, the area of music management. Many still ignore it or claim it has no weight, but they are not paying attention. It now takes twenty-five years to be an overnight success. Once the clones take root, you are unlikely to find bands that shoot to the top by riding one talent to death. You know, the way Clapton and Hendrix did it. Instead, the success stories are those who have dozens of small advantages—and that is where management comes into play, not in the music itself, but in the successful organization of those often-invisible nuances.
This comes in many forms. Easiest to recognize is what many call a “sound”, and even management-deniers correctly know without it the band will flop. This factor is only a starting point and there are countless failed bands who thought otherwise. While there is no ultimate correct answer, bands have now moved from class-based to management-based and those that take this into account have a much better chance of success, however that success is defined.
