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Post by The Curmudgeon on Oct 27, 2015 11:14:21 GMT 2
As I write this, and apologies for vanishing for about four straight days, I'm preparing to see a band I discovered online about seven or eight years ago. Mates of State, an indie pop band that no-one has ever fucking heard of, are playing near me for the first time in nine years. This is an event.
And it got me thinking; I've been going to live shows for years, clocked up over 160 gigs, and there are still live venues where I live that I've never heard of. I'm seeing Mates in State in some super-hipster joint that has live music but specialises in "Asian inspired Vegan cuisine." You can almost smell the long scarves.
Where I actually live is in the country, so there is no live music where I live, unless you count the odd cover band that sometimes shows up in old men pubs that usually just have old guys shouting angrily at the horses on television. It's a half hour drive away before I hit the town. Glasgow, to be precise, and that's pretty damn good for live bands. Like I said, there are still venues I've never heard of or never been in that usually have the kind of bands I like.
There's also world famous venues "King Tuts" - voted best live venue more than once and where famous bands play before they break through to a crowd of about 150 lucky punters. The stairs you walk up have the names of the bands who've played their in the past. You name it; Radiohead, Blur, Manic Street Preachers, Florence & the Machine (we saw her before she even had a record deal) and Oasis famously played their first ever show there, apparently threatening to riot if they didn't get on the bill. The Barrowland Ballroom is just as famous; a market during the day but one of the very best places to play at night, it's a complete fucking shithole but there's an undeniable mad magic to the place. Bands will go out of their way to play "the Barra's."
There are hundreds of tiny to medium sized venues and a few for enormous stadium shows like Prince and Bowie (we're going to see two WWE shows next month). That's just Glasgow. I'm kind of lucky because even though it doesn't have the hipster value of, say, Camden in London, but if there's a band playing the UK, you can almost guarantee they'll play Glasgow.
So that's mine. How about you, what's your local scene like? Are you able to see shows easily? What kind of stuff is popular? Is it smaller shows only or just more mainstream bands?
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Post by Ben on Oct 27, 2015 16:52:11 GMT 2
When I still lived in the Twin Cities the music scene was prime. But in a metro area that's home to a few million people, that's to be expected. I could catch bar bands in the suburbs or major acts downtown. There were also enough small venues that I could see the likes of Machine Head, an internationally known metal band, in a venue that can only hold a few hundred. Pretty damn slick. I took advantage often.
Now that I live in small town Iowa, there's not even bar bands within a half hour of me. A few notable acts swing by the city south of me, but it's mostly pop-country and the ultra-mainstream around here (there I go sounding like a hipster).
The only thing worse than not having a music scene at all was living in a college town where EVERY act that comes through is an underground indie wannabe or some local amateurs who couldn't cut it in school. I went to a metal show at a bar venue one time in that city to support a friend, and I got reprimanded for moshing because it was disturbing the "hardcore-dancing" hipsters. Rule number 1 at a metal show last time I checked was "if you want to watch the band and not get swept away by the mosh pit, stand to the side or in the back." But apparently not at this venue. I got thrown out of the show. After that, I never wasted my time on anything in the college town except the occasional local act where I knew one of the performers.
Big cities are where it's at, for sure.
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Post by trashcanman on Oct 27, 2015 18:49:35 GMT 2
Thrown out of a metal show for moshing....just......just.....no. I live in CenCal and that is kind of the pits right now. And not the metal/punk show kind of pits. I'm not really involved in the local scene anymore, but it was mostly all punk and metal; the real shit mostly, not what passes these days. And that's about all we get aside in terms of good music aside from at County fairs or Native American casinos where you'll get some classic rock artists like Heart or BOC or old hip-hop like LL Cool J now and then. Country is a different story. Guys like Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard used to actually play in my home town when I was too young to appreciate that fact, but now it's the massive garbage acts playing in Fresno (about 45 minute away).
I think Fresno's reputation as the place NOT to play has grown even beyond when the crowd was tearing down Slipknot's stage curtain before their set or pelting Warped Tour bands with frozen hot dogs after turning over the cart. The Foo Fighters were scheduled to play and they canceled. Just that date. No reason given. Last big show I went to was Prince and that was forever ago AND he only played a third of a set. It's pretty dire. Bands like Primus and the Vandals used to stop by pretty regularly, but they aren't active all of the time anymore. I am going to see Exodus there in a week, though, and they played there last year too, so there's that. I missed them last time, but my coworker says if anyone starts hardcore dancing, they'll probably stop the show and yell at them to go back to karate class. I will throw money at the stage if that happens.
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Post by Ben on Oct 28, 2015 0:50:08 GMT 2
Oh man, am I jealous! I saw Exodus when Dukes was still fronting them and not only was he encouraging pits, but he yelled at the crowd multiple times to "sweep these pussies in the front off the barricade" and actually got pissed off at the audience because no one had climbed up on stage to dive into the crowd. I don't know if he realizes that kind of shit really doesn't fly at venues anymore for obvious security reasons (at least where I'm from), but thanks to him Exodus was the most intense live band I've seen aside from Slayer. Somehow I doubt it's gotten any lighter with Zetro. But speaking of hardcore dancers and Karate moves, funny story... one of my favorite thrash bands is Havok from Colorado. They wrote a song about what to do with people who bust out the Karate moves in the pit (the main lyric is "throw 'em in the afterburner"), and I was wearing this epic t-shirt...  ...when I got tossed out of that lame show, so I wrote a quick thing about it on Havok's Facebook page and their lead singer commented to personally congratulate me on a job well done. |
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Post by The Curmudgeon on Oct 30, 2015 11:14:38 GMT 2
No moshing at a metal show is about the dumbest shit I've ever heard. That place is still open?
I'm not into that sort of thing, but when I've been to shows (Slipknot, Manson) where it happens, I follow the rules you just set out, I stand at the side. That's usually where I go anyway, you get to the front, but you don't get mangled to death. Mrs C is very small, so I wouldn't want her to get some elbow in the face by some guy in shorts. Saying that, she once jumped from a balcony and crowd surfed from the back right to the front of an Andrew WK gig, so she's way more hardcore than I am.
Trashy's story surprises me. Maybe I'm brainwashed by TV, but I would have thought California would be fucking IT for live music. I thought everybody and anybody would play a place like that.
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Post by Ben on Oct 30, 2015 16:43:49 GMT 2
The venue is primarily a bar, so shows are just side action for them. I boycotted the damn place the rest of my time in that city, not that there's any chance at all they felt the effects of my lost business.
I've seen some short girls get mashed pretty good at metal shows. Some are just vicious though. I was at a show one time where we were all packed in like sardines and this tiny girl behind me put two elbows straight into my back to get some space. When I turned around she told me she'd punch me in the face if I didn't let it happen. Jeesh. Props to Mrs C. for crowd surfing. I've never attempted it because I've seen tall dudes like myself go down head first onto the concrete before, and if we're being realistic I can't spare the amount of brain cells something like that would kill off.
I really don't mosh anymore just because I always hated all the bigger, older people in the pit when I was younger. Give the kids their space, I say.
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Post by trashcanman on Oct 31, 2015 1:24:25 GMT 2
I won't crowdsurf because I'm afraid somebody will pickpocket me or yank a shoe off. I heard the singer from Everclear had a dude thrown out of a show in Fresno because someone stripped his shoe off and threw it at the band. Any punk singer should know better than to assume someone took off their own shoe to throw it. Dick. Cali is a big place with a lot of space and different cultures. Places like LA and Frisco are live music Meccas, but that's at least a 4 hour drive. Out in the center where all the farms and Republicans are we have to make our own music for the most part. Hence the trend towards underground punk and metal.
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