I lied. I need to get this off my chest. You know I mentioned a thing about a competition in the last post? Well, I succumbed and enquired about it. I wish I hadn't bothered and stuck to my guns about doing no more competitions.
The e-mail reply went something like this;
Hi Vick.
We'd be delighted to include you in the competition. We have a p.a, we just need you to be available on an allotted night and to do a thirty to forty minute set, although it is a competition for songwriters, we'd like it if you could include two or three pop songs as part of your set, something for you to put your mark on. You can have one person accompanying you, as we are running a battle of the bands separately.
Hope to hear from you soon. Skinflint landlord with zero actual interest in promoting original music, but wanting free entertainment in his pub for a few weeks. (that's not his actual name by the way).
POP SONGS!... What the proverbial fuck!? A songwriters competition that strongly urges covers!? Is there any hope left at all? This is meant to be a fairly good music pub too.. Or not, perhaps, unless you love listening to endless chewed over cud music. I have nothing against cover bands, some of them can be even better than the originals and fair play for their patience in actually learning someone else's stuff. My gripe is that competitions such as this are no better in their intent than the spam churned out by reverb nation, luring in naive bands, desperate for a gig, in the pretence that they are actually listening to their songs. The reality is of course, that times are tight. How many pubs have the money to fork out on paying bands for their time? An easy option is to organise a competition, drag it out over three nights a week for three months, offer a prize of five hundred euros at the end, but you've saved an absolute fortune in the meantime.
This sort of shite is even putting the cover bands out of business! And makeing the songwriters amongst us feel like we need to sell bits of our souls just to be heard. Well, this one at least has been there done it, not won and spent her own money for the pleasure.. And I'm not doing it anymore.
Why does everything in music feel like its a Weird competition anyway? In fact, there are various competitions in all the arts? Why is this? Why are we made to feel like we're competing against each other? You don't get competitions in the cleaning industry, or for IT workers ( though I may be corrected by a code of ye). You don't get shelf stackers having to prove themselves in front of judges, or council workers competing against each other for golden brooms. You'd think the arts community would encourage and embrace everyone's work, not bitch about it or feel the need to make a hierarchy out of it... Oops.. Think that's what you call a tangent.
I think the answer is as simple as "Supply and Demand". So many people want to do it that it's easy to exploit them and, if they don't go along, there's more volunteers arriving right behind. Not so much with the shelf stacking industry.
ReplyDeletePoetry is riddled with competitions of all kinds. It means lots of poets spend all their time writing and talking about who's winning what, who's shortlisted for what. It's draining! I understand why it all goes on (poets need prizes - they earn very little) but I don't think it's really good for writing on the whole... partly because if you're not writing the kind of thing that is currently winning prizes then you're kind of out of whatever loop there is...
ReplyDeleteMake your cd. Send it to some good radio DJs. Quality (sometimes) will out.
x
Right on. After a year of making enquiries from time to time I've decided pubs are not where music is at, at least not in England.
ReplyDeletePub gigs are problematic, aren't they? I wish to avoid making sweeping, unpleasant generalisations, so I'll say this. I've known some very likeable landpeople but, statistically, the group of people who devotes itself to selling as much alcohol as possible to as many people as possible is unlikely to contain an unusually high proportion of the scrupulous and discerning.
As for competitions, the arts are plagued with goings on designed to enable, develop, promote and flatter the ego - to help people climb what is in effect an imaginary greasy pole.
Ah, but we IT workers do have these things - only mildly disguised as annual reviews they're acually a "Who Can Talk The Most Crap Competition" - winner gets a better review than the quiet chap in the corner who, oh i don't know, just gets on with doing a good job rather than spending all their time yelling about how great they are and doing f&*k all
ReplyDeleteWhen we live in a world where Bob Dylan can advertise I-phones and John Lydon can advertise butter - anything is possible
Yeah, in IT, there is a bit of competitiveness amongst the more geeky of us to see who can write a faster bit of code sometimes and to show off our cleverness, but apart from what DFTP said, not really.
ReplyDeleteI guess in these difficult times it must be very tempting for a landlord to go down the competition route to get virtually free entertainment in their pub.
The pub scene here's not great as Dominic pointed out. You've got afew places doing open mics (nobody getting paid) and the odd place hiring established artistes - there dosn't seem to be a middle ground where bands that are starting out can get a paid gig.
ENGLISH:
ReplyDeleteYou're completely right. The are tons of young fellas and some ole fellas that are only too delighted to plough out some wonderwall for free. The way of the world I'd guess. As for shelf stacking, I'd only be too delighted at this stage to work that job, at least you get actual money for doing it :)
RACHEL:
It is a strange phenomena isn't it? I wonder why humans feel the need for competition, I suppose you could compare it to a weird form of evolutionary strategy, we no longer think we function on a basic 'survival of the fittest'. Level, so we create for ourselves a strange version of it in the form of testing our talent. I suppose it's true that the most successful in these areas get to have more sex, meaning that success attracts more mates... I'm not sure I could handle all the males throwing themselves at me, so it's just as well we're obsolete really :)
DOMINIC:
If I won the lottery, the euro millions for instance, I would be seriously tempted to open my own music pub. All the musicians would be paid good money.. Like, at least 200 quid per band member, I would make it clear that assholes were not welcome, I would only allow music lovers as my patrons, I would only serve Guinness, gluten free beer and French cider and artisan whiskeys. It would be the best music pub that has ever been and become legendary for its lock ins, sessions and fairness to musicians. It would have it's own recording studio in the basement which I would let bands I thought were worthy use to record albums. Only unsigned bands would be allowed to play, except Joel's holland, Peter Gabriel, patti smith.
D.F.T.PS:
ReplyDeleteI guessed that there would be IT tests ;) basically, the world is fecked! How I would love to go back in time when everything was shiny and new and amazing and there to be discovered..... Even just for a day.
ARGENT:
Tere are loads of music venues over here for the middle ground, if you live in Dublin. If you have the ability to move there, you could play a gig every night of the week.. Not for much money, but at least you can gain a following if you go down well at all. . Well.. I suppose the thing is, there is no point in complaining. I should be delighted I can play the guitar at all! Six years ago I didn't even think I would even sing in front of anyone, that should be reward enough, the in great that I am! :)