A Desperate Plea and Rant

TheWinterSnow

TheWinterSnow

Den Mørke Natt
Oct 22, 2008
3,087
4
38
34
Sacramento, CA
This is just sad, sad among levels I never thought possible. How is it that a city of 5+ Million people lack so much musical talent while at the same time having the most elitist music management personnel ever in existence? It fucking boggles my mind.

Its been 6 years since I started my band, 6 years of either putting up with shit musicians that either quit or have to be kicked out, and putting up with fans an venues that write you off. My band has been posting on the internet to our closest friends and fans, classified and even through a physical word of mouth that we have been looking for a bassist and vocalist for almost 3 months now. We have not gotten a single hit period. Now I find it hard to believe that their isn't a single bassist out there with at least a half stack and the skill and desire to play melodic metal band that has influences such as Lamb of God, Trivium, Machine Head, Arch Enemy, Scar Symmetry, Nevermore, Dream Theater etc etc, but it seems like we ask the impossible.

Either that or our music is rate shit like most seem to treat it. I know my music is not the best, but at the same time its not shit like most seem to treat it. We are fucking ignored by local bands, venues, management/booking companies you name it, listeners just put in one ear out the other. I am sick and tired of being ignored and I am sick and tired of not being able to find somewhat skilled band musicians who want to play more traditional metal in a huge fucking metropolis. This city can't have such a lack of talent, I must be dreaming, but that is what it seems like.

Now I know a lot of you have never been to my corner of the world and only a few of you are somewhat close to here, but I plea, if any of you know a bassist or a vocalist that lives a driving distance from Sacramento, PLEASE tell them there is a metal band(with influences stated above) here that is looking for a bassist and a vocalist. At this point I don't even care if its temporary, I just want to play shows long enough so that the local fanbase can't ignore us anymore and local music companies are aware that we mean business and can prove more traditional metal is not dead yet in the US.
 
Sounds like you live here in Vegas ......

Dude, your music is not the problem, your "stigma" as a band is. Change your name, find some new guys, start a new band. You guys can write the greatest music in the world but the second you guys get a rep as being "hard to deal with" due to member changes, not playing out, drama ..... Your band is over.

EDIT: Oh ya and the style of music you guys play is not whats "popular" in the US right now. Especially the west coast.

EDIT2: Any particular reason they need to be within driving distance? You know that Al Gore invented this thing called the interwebz and you can do things like make a band with guys from all over the world and release an album without ever stepping foot in the same room right? Just find ANYONE willing to play the stuff. Periphery made it work, so did Tesseract. Find a few guys you like and get on with and just go do it.

Honestly playing live in your city is probably a waste of time. Peoiple in the US really dont listen to much of this music and those that do are so few and far between you wont do well at shows. Concentrate on making your first album DIY and see if you can get picked up by a small label. Get put on tours and do your thing.
 
The problem is a stigma has not been created. We are in that weird gap where no one knows who we are and when we actually try to get people to know who we are (playing shows) we are getting cold shoulders, cold shoulders from the local venues. Around here that are not many venues that put on shows, we have one company that has two locations here that lets just about anyone play there regardless of fanbase and skill but they are ran by a christian church. No real metal fans or bands want to go there becuase there is no alcohol, and we get heckled about how we should be straight edge, you can't swear, all these stupid rules that only scene kids care about. Only bands and fans that like the place are "straight edge" My Chemical Romance scene kids, the rest of us, hate dealing with their (the christian venues) rate shit booking, sound and general service.

There are only three decent bars here that play shows, two of which we really like, fair size, run by people in larger positions, including management and sound guys of papa roach in on location downtown. My uncle works there and has been getting us in on guests lists to mingle with the crew their. He had been heckling the booking guy to take a listen to our demo and he asked if he could get a copy. We haven't heard from him since, I was talking again with my uncle and he said that he was going to ask him what was going on and if he had any plans to put is on. Put it this way, the place is not a local venue but does national acts, however about 3 to 4 times a month they have a local band night. I have seen the lists of bands put on before and have listened to demos, and not to blow my own horn but our demos where more polished and the music was more solid than most of those bands, the only thing we don't have or never had was a vocalist, but we have presented ourselves as instrumental and we are fine with that. Since our demo submission, they have booked about two months worth of bands and we still haven't even gotten any form of contact saying if we suck (which most music people don't) or if they were even interested in booking us sometime as either an opener for a national act, which they brag all the time about how they need bands and to "hit them up" or just a local band night, but nothing.

The problem now lies with the fact that we are trying to get a show lined up with three other bands that are fairly large around here and have very similar sounds to us for the most part. I have an indefinite yes on one band and still have to talk to the other main second band, the third band we are up in the air because the other bands that we are friends with and have played with before have not gotten back to us because they are all trying to figure out if they can commit at least that was what my guitarist was telling me which is why I am handling the booking now. Still the difficulties of getting the bands the venues still arises. We as the booking band do not have the connections to said venues as we have never played there, the other bands have. We know that said venues really stray away from booking new bands and that means that we would have to trust the other bands that have played before the ability to work with the booking and for the most part, those bands have more than enough live experience they aren't hungry like we are to book a show soon, or at least they don't seem too enthusiastic about it. My uncle was even telling us that the venue he works at ignores anything unsolicited that they don't know and that he has to know in advanced to give them his good word on us before anything, booking, job hiring for the bar itself or the promotion company.

And it seems that the promotion companies around here are powerful men who desire to book as my uncle put all the bands that are booked by him (the booking manager) "sound exactly the same...just skinny jeans screamo".

Its not like we have been around, we have been through a few new members, new band name every few years and this year 2011 is the first year that we have actually focused on networking with venues and bands, we are reaching out as much as we can and having our friend with new connections we want give us a good word so that we aren't unsolicited when we contact a new possible network. Our ethics have been assertive but polite and it just seems like no one cares. All these years later and still no one knows who we are or what we are capable of because the few people that can allow us to play out WILL NOT give us even a chance to prove ourselves. There's no one that I could think of that would be bad mouthing us to said networks because we have very FEW enemies and they have even less gravity in control of the local scene and would be ignored even faster than we would be. The only person that has ever bad mouthed us that we know of is our ex drummer, who has never been in a decent sized band and is currently doing nothing and all his shit talk have been to his non musical buddies in person and on our facebook.

What I am trying to say is that we have never done anything to wrong anybody in a way that would constitute everyone and their dog to not give as one chance to prove ourselves. It seems far fetched to say the least.

In terms of starting an internet band, that's fine. When I made the mention of that in a thread before, I was shut down on every idea other than finding local members to play out locally and that things like album and getting well known would be as I quote another member "putting the carriage before the horse" which I high agree with. Having an internet band however would prevent us with committing with a label because unless the guys who sessioned on the album want to commit to the band and tour, we are back to square one with the struggles of finding local members or perhaps out of state if people in the the rest of the US know who we are.

The problem is with us is just getting an audience that can at least listen to the music, whether it be from our album or from a live show, we don't care we just want that audience. We have an EP out, almost 40 minutes of our best songs in both writing and production, we have been trying to get that thing out there but again, we just keep getting ignored, even on this very forum, we are not getting the audience and the small audience we do have don't care. Fuck we don't even have any rumble going on about us around here, I would prefer there to be rumble about how much we suck over nothing at all, at least we would be talked about.

In terms of labels we know that deep down the music was meant to not be instrumental, and a scout/agent would notice that. I have asked before on this forum to be a guess vocalist, we have asked our friends if they knew anyone and we have even asked our fans on facebook, but we get nothing. We promised ourselves that as soon as we got vocals to a few songs that we would begin shooting out our demo to labels even as going as far to fork out money by any means to get an Entertainment Lawyer to get talking with larger labels if the small guys weren't having it. Still at the end of the day, we don't have a full band to sell and if we can't get those remaining members and at least some hype, we are doomed.
 
i think i've been there, what fixed it for me was changing my own way of thinking.
i came to the conclusion that getting attention and live gigs are not the primary reason i'm in it, i'm in it because i simply like making music. if i get attention and money for it thats great, but its not a necessity, i had forgotten that.
i'm not trying to create a product that becomes successful, i just wanna express myself. of course i like to be successful, but its secondary.

i also thought i'm doomed if noone listens to my stuff, but i'm not, i still achieve what i wanted in the first place
of course you could be totally different, if you plan on making a living from it or something, this probably doesn't apply to you at all, most other people on here are also in a different situation as producers/engeneers, but if you have a day job and are doing this as a hobby, do you really need to be successful?

and for finding band members, i read on your myspace that you're only 2 guitarists, and i think thats the biggest reason why you're not finding somebody. if you already were 4 people you would be way more likely to find a fifth one.
honestly if i was a bassist, i would not join a band without vocalist and drummer cause lets be realistic, those are the hardest to come by.
 
I have been a bedroom warrior my whole life and am quite burned out on it, to the point where I haven't written anything in a very long time without struggling horribly. I really want to mix things up at this point and getting out and getting some form of attention seems to be just the thing. Simply put I love playing shows, its fun for me, its fun for the fans, so why the hell not. The money we make at this current level from shows is about as worthless as dog shit so there is no way it could be about money.

We have a drummer, he just hasn't been announced yet, other than that, like I said before, the music has been instrumental dude to the pure EXTREME lack of vocalists around here and the music does just fine without it, for the most part. The only thing we need to get back up to the "lineup" structure we had before would be to get that bassist.
 
Not a whole lot constructive that I can add here, aside from a bit of "I feel your pain". Started my current band in 08, with members of the previous project. It was supposed to be a name change initially, but became a complete reboot. Figured a little time off and the name change would be enough to kind of let us make a few musical adjustments. 3 years later, we're finally starting to get the odd show. In the meantime, there have been 3 lineup changes and a constant bumping from rehearsal spot to rehearsal spot...that sort of crap. So, our "reboot" became more of a "rebuild".

Have you considered singing?
 
We did that before, but I had little support from my bandmates and family about getting practice/lessons and eventually realized that the music is too technical for me to do both about half of the time. It still seems like the only viable option though, even though my voice needs at least a year or two worth of training to even be somewhat decent enough.
 
if you wanna play out you can make a band on the side that covers the side of your music scene that will get you on shows if you have the musical talent it should be easy , Keep things up with your band gain some awareness if you can .
 
If you're this upset and are really devoted to becoming more than just a "bedroom warrior" or whatever, consider doing some networking over the comp. You can find other musicians like guitarguru said, and go about your stuff that way, or just relocate or something.

One thing that would help is playing what everybody is getting into nowadays. If you do that successfully and shit works out, after a couple albums, start writing shit you actually want to write.
 
MaellaJohn said:
If you're this upset and are really devoted to becoming more than just a "bedroom warrior" or whatever, consider doing some networking over the comp. You can find other musicians like guitarguru said, and go about your stuff that way, or just relocate or something.
Click to expand...

That's what we have been doing. We have actually been trying to support other local bands by trying to get them more fans like what most local bands are doing no a days, however, the kindness hasn't been reciprocated. However, our amount of traffic has become quite insane since the August 31st which is from said networking. W will just have to see if it people are noticing or just ignoring in the future I guess. Still no luck on the classifieds. All that's left is just to keep networking and hope someone contacts us soon.
 
MaellaJohn said:
One thing that would help is playing what everybody is getting into nowadays. If you do that successfully and shit works out, after a couple albums, start writing shit you actually want to write.
Click to expand...

Please for the love of god don't do this. The last thing the world needs is 1 more uninspired deathcore knockoff.

Your music isn't the "in" thing right now. I've only heard it with no vocals, but it has potential. I think you could find ways to make it more catchy or exciting without chasing trends. Look at a band like Insomnium. How long did it take for them to get noticed? It won't happen overnight.

Just keep working on your music and networking. You need to find the right vocalist, and you need to keep writing music that pushes your boundaries.

An internet collaboration could be cool, but then again you need a vocalist that you can play shows with and/or tour with.

You could always relocate to somewhere that isn't Sacramento.
 
Relocation isn't even remotely possible unfortunately. I don't expect anything to happen overnight but 6 years and still never a complete lineup and only two shows, its a little ridiculous.

I agree though, I will not write what is in just to get popular, and even if we did an online collab we still need to find live performers.
 
guitarguru777 said:
Sounds like you live here in Vegas ......

Dude, your music is not the problem, your "stigma" as a band is. Change your name, find some new guys, start a new band. You guys can write the greatest music in the world but the second you guys get a rep as being "hard to deal with" due to member changes, not playing out, drama ..... Your band is over.

EDIT: Oh ya and the style of music you guys play is not whats "popular" in the US right now. Especially the west coast.

EDIT2: Any particular reason they need to be within driving distance? You know that Al Gore invented this thing called the interwebz and you can do things like make a band with guys from all over the world and release an album without ever stepping foot in the same room right? Just find ANYONE willing to play the stuff. Periphery made it work, so did Tesseract. Find a few guys you like and get on with and just go do it.

Honestly playing live in your city is probably a waste of time. Peoiple in the US really dont listen to much of this music and those that do are so few and far between you wont do well at shows. Concentrate on making your first album DIY and see if you can get picked up by a small label. Get put on tours and do your thing.
Click to expand...

i agree with this ^^^, i think the threadstarter should get his bassist and vocalist from the east coast
 
AudioPhile777 said:
If you really want to play out live, consider hiring a session bassist and/or vocalist...
Click to expand...

Around here "session" members expect to be paid.

We are trying to book a show in the near future and in a worst case scenario I have an ex-guitarist that said he would play bass temporarily if need be. I have to hit him up and see if he would still be interested.
 
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