There are some venues and promoters here in Arizona that are really setting a new low for the music scene.
Here’s their game: They get a bunch of inexperienced high school bands to buy tickets, which they then sell to their friends (I call this “friend rock”). The promoters may also get clever and try roping an older band that hasn’t experienced this trick yet. They tell everyone to show up at, for example, 6 p.m. for load-in.
The promoter won’t tell you what time you’ll play. That’s a ploy to get all the bands and the fans they bring to stay there the whole time. If the standard of music was high, that wouldn’t be so bad. But typically, these gigs burst forth with the most god-awful noises and shambolic performances you’ll ever see. Since they’re mostly kids, these bands will use amps that sound like Africanized bees living in an empty keg of frat boy beer, and drums that sound like discarded septic tanks.
Let me be clear on this: Most of these young bands stink. But some have some potential to improve, and I’m glad they’re getting out there on-stage. I just prefer gigs with other seasoned bands, not kids that look like the Jonas Brothers dressing up as Cannibal Corpse for Halloween (and why is it that each of these bands has at least one member that looks like the fat kid from Superbad?). It also really cracks me up that they’re acting all gruff and playing angry music, while their supportive parents (who are usually Judas Priest fans!) are smiling in the audience, sometimes with the grandparents!
Getting back to the promoters, it’s a cynical but effective way to make some money. The kids have built-in audiences at their high schools. But woe to the post-college band that gets suckered into one of these gigs. Oy vey.
