If you played the guitar in High School during the late 80s and early 90s like I did there is an excellent chance that you were in a band. Somebody had a drum kit. Somebody played bass. And somebody screamed into a mic. Maybe there were keyboards (Yamaha or Roland only, please), maybe not. Odds are pretty good it was a four piece and you played pretty loudly. Loud is a really good definition of bands at that stage and in that place in time. I know my band was loud. Really loud. And we played pretty fast. Most songs sat around the 138 bpm mark or higher and moved at a good clip. Did I mention that we were loud? Especially in my mom’s basement or in our singer’s garage. Really, really loud.
While setting up for practice or tearing down there was always at least one 10 minute break where the “what ifs” broke out and we’d go on at length about how cool it would be to get a record contract and tour. How much money we’d have. How many guitars I would be able to go through in a show. How we’d remember the tough times and help bands like us make it big. We’ll set aside the “rough life” of living in a college town in northeast Ohio for a little bit because, well, with nothing to compare it to your first bite of caviar is just salty sacks of nastiness.
Since those days in the basement I have learned that life as a touring musician isn’t for everyone. It’s hard work that requires dedication and sacrifice. My life took me to different places and my journey with music was on an entirely different track from that of the kid wailing on his Strat. I’m glad I did what I did. No regrets there. But something that I have come to realize is that the dreams of that era are fading into myth and legend. Record contracts don’t work like they used to (or like we imagined they did). Touring isn’t about private jets and fancy hotels (not that it ever was for most bands). The time of the megadeal is dying out. Things are smaller now. The world is a different place.
At 16, I dreamed of being on a stage in a huge stadium with tens of thousands cheering for every guitar solo I tore through. Today, you couldn’t drag me to a stadium to hear a concert. It’s crowded, noisy, and generally not fun. It’s a “me media” world now and artists have to fight for space on an iPod and not for top billing at a show. There are many who disagree with that, but among the people I know (my tribe if you will) this is exactly the case. When I release a sketch or an album, I’m hoping for a person to listen to a tune all the way through and then toss it into the vast random shuffle of his or her music library to be doled out in the context of playlists or at the mercy of random. On occasion I’ll go to hear a good band or to support someone I know. That’s cool. It’s usually a smaller venue and a good time is had by all. There is a connection that carries the experience. It’s good. It’s fun. But the big Rock-with-a-capital-R shows are a dying breed and will be all but gone in five years’ time.
This isn’t a lament.
Someone mentioned to me the other day that if Back to the Future were made today, Marty would go back in time to 1980. That was a kick in the head. In 1980, no one that I knew had even heard of the Internet. Well, my dad did, but he wasn’t talking about it. No browsers. No “social media.” None of that. There were cultural gatekeepers everywhere. Today? It’s all but gone. Get some free web hosting and jump on the site of the minute and you’ll have a platform for your work. And that’s any work. Books, music, paintings, sculpture, crafts, all of it. Of course, that means that everyone gets a smaller and smaller slice of the attention at large. That’s great if you have adjusted your expectation.
There aren’t many seats at the table for bands like U2. Who is the next U2? Will there be another U2? There’s an entire industry hoping that there will still be a table at all, but for msot musicians I don’t think it much matters. If you can be content to have listeners who number in the hundreds, you’re doing very well. Get to the thousand mark and maybe you can make a living with your art. I wish you luck! I’m aiming for it myself in a skewed sort of way. But the big rock and roll dreams are all used up. It was a powerful and wonderful time, but check that verb tense. It’s in the past and that’s OK.
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