Touring Discussion (part 2)

Helloween and Gamma Ray did piss poor in Chicago.
While I was personally ecstatic as hell over seeing them together, it's not like there was much cross appeal. Sure, Helloween has some older fans who were probably witnessing GR for the first time, but on the flipside, a good majority (if not all) of folks who primarily were interested in Gamma Ray would go see Helloween anyhow.

As Claus said, touring together definitely gave both names a boost again in the states, as there was a lot of buzz about these two touring together.

Now one double bill which I believe was brilliant was KAMELOT / EDGUY. This show (at least in Chicago) was packed as hell. While Kamelot has a lot of the standard power metal fans, they also have that fanbase who only likes specific bands (IE - Nightwish, Sonata Arctica, etc) Bands who have a lot of non-metal fans or fans who aren't really into power metal. This show had a lot of cross-appeal in looking around at the crowd and the age ranges. There were some VERY young kids, as well as older prog and power metal fans.

As said before, Zero cross appeal if you had Edguy, BS, and whoever else was mentioned who I can't remember. Sure, its a better supporting lineup that might get older Edguy fans back to the shows, but wouldn't expose Edguy to crowds who don't already know about them.
 
It is my observation that the one European Band that does really good in the US, is Nightwish. They can tour with the likes of Sonic Syndicate, and sell out almost every show. Then turn around 3 months later, and tour with Sonata Arctica and sell-out almost every show again. In the Oct 2007-May 2009 Dark Passion Play world tour Nightwish hit the US 4 times, granted May 2009 with Volbeat was a make up for cancelled dates in Sept, Oct 2008, but they did really good on all 4 tours. I went to a number of shows in Different cities and it was always the same sold-out or near sold-out, and most venues were in the 1,000 to 2,000 capacity range, there may have been some smaller i don't really remember.
 
I know I’m a little late in interjecting a thought here as I’ve been reading this for several days with great interest, but back to the original topic. I think everyone’s theories are sound, but by testing any hypothesis to these would probably result with a paradox of sorts, or rather inconclusive ones at best. I think we all agree that it’s pure speculation on the “Why”, but we can also agree that everyone that visits this forum is far more in tune with what is going on in the music world than the average Joe music consumer, and sadly, the average Joe music consumer (or as I like to call them, “Surface fans”) in the U.S. makes up more than 90% of the population. It’s rather difficult to create a tour with any financial benefit, or without loss, when only 10% of population that is spread out over 3000 miles will attend a show. The U.S. in general is a demographical nightmare to tour regardless of where your from.

We should either consider ourselves blessed for taking advantage of all that is out there being offered up musically… or cursed, depending on your point of view.

I really hope I’m not repeating something that’s been over discussed, but one factor that has lightly been touched upon, is how MTV, the media and radio seem to overlook the other metal genres (Progressive and Power metal) outside of extreme metal here in the states. I’m going out on a limb here, but I would be under the impression that not having these outlets giving said genres the same amount of exposure in the U.S. as a lot of extreme styles of metal (which seems to be highly popular here) is possibly why it’s hard to get any quality tour packages with the prog/power metal genre line up.

Back in the old days, however far back I can remember, which is not too far -the way we found out about any bands coming to town was on the radio or in the newspaper. Sadly, those mediums of communication are no longer relevant for most underground acts. Either it is too expensive for promoters to use them, or no one listens/reads them that would be interested in said tours. Just as an example, I haven’t listen to the radio in over 15 years, and when I have, It was not out of choice and much to my chagrin. Those that DO use these mediums, probably don’t even know or care about these possible tours/bands, and are still stuck on what they are familiar with. (referring back to the Iron Maiden tour set list discussion)

As an example, nearly all the radio station where I live are corporate owned, have outrageous advertising breakdowns, and their formats are simply terrible and geared to an audience that has no interest in hearing anything “New” in rock or metal music. To add insult to injury, even though most of the local population listens to the radio, advertising with them for an upcoming tour is a moot point as most club/small venue touring bands don’t get airplay, and as a result, those that listen to the radio exclusively would have no interest in say, a tour with Edguy/Pagans mind/brainstorm coming to town, in fact they would assume it’s just local bands and blow it off. I have seen this happen far too many times where I live, and as they say ignorance is bliss.

However, if these bands were in regular rotation for airplay, I would bet dollars to donuts it would be a different result – once again, it’s boils down to the exposure thing. But the bane to this? Because the radio stations are corporate owned, there is an insurmountable level of red tape and bureaucracy to get through just to get some program director to consider the idea, and even then, their big question would be, “what is in it for us? what’s our incentive? Will our advertisers still use us if we play this band? Is there an audience for this?” it is a brick wall that would take a moon-sized wrecking ball to knock down. It’s not just record labels that are scared to take risks, it trickles all the way down the ladder…

Where I’m from, we’re lucky just to get a well-known tour to stop in. It’s 8-10 hours to the next big city from my location, so it’s no surprise bands just pass us up and use it as a “day off”. In fact, you could fit our population 3-4 times over in places like Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Houston and so on, thus most clubs/promoters won’t come close to satisfying most touring bands riders and just pass on them, and visa versa… and those that don’t and actually take the plunge and book a tour package here, endlessly lament about how they keep loosing their ass when they book touring bands.

However, as a music fan, I’m looking at things from where I live demographically to the rest of the U.S. or even the world… I’m sure it’s different in other cities/states/regions, so take it for what it’s worth.
 
Here's another reason that I didn't think of until now why 'extreme' metal gets more publicity than prog and power metal.

Extreme metal:
death
black
doom
thrash
metalcore
deathcore
folk/viking

Prog/power:
progressive
power

HEY, WHY DON'T YOU SEE PROGRESSIVE AND POWER METAL GET EQUAL EXPOSURE AS SEVEN OTHER STYLES OF METAL COMBINED?
 
As an example, nearly all the radio station where I live are corporate owned, have outrageous advertising breakdowns, and their formats are simply terrible and geared to an audience that has no interest in hearing anything “New” in rock or metal music. To add insult to injury, even though most of the local population listens to the radio, advertising with them for an upcoming tour is a moot point as most club/small venue touring bands don’t get airplay, and as a result, those that listen to the radio exclusively would have no interest in say, a tour with Edguy/Pagans mind/brainstorm coming to town, in fact they would assume it’s just local bands and blow it off. I have seen this happen far too many times where I live, and as they say ignorance is bliss.

However, if these bands were in regular rotation for airplay, I would bet dollars to donuts it would be a different result – once again, it’s boils down to the exposure thing. But the bane to this? Because the radio stations are corporate owned, there is an insurmountable level of red tape and bureaucracy to get through just to get some program director to consider the idea, and even then, their big question would be, “what is in it for us? what’s our incentive? Will our advertisers still use us if we play this band? Is there an audience for this?” it is a brick wall that would take a moon-sized wrecking ball to knock down. It’s not just record labels that are scared to take risks, it trickles all the way down the ladder…

Where I’m from, we’re lucky just to get a well-known tour to stop in. It’s 8-10 hours to the next big city from my location, so it’s no surprise bands just pass us up and use it as a “day off”. In fact, you could fit our population 3-4 times over in places like Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Houston and so on, thus most clubs/promoters won’t come close to satisfying most touring bands riders and just pass on them, and visa versa… and those that don’t and actually take the plunge and book a tour package here, endlessly lament about how they keep loosing their ass when they book touring bands.

However, as a music fan, I’m looking at things from where I live demographically to the rest of the U.S. or even the world… I’m sure it’s different in other cities/states/regions, so take it for what it’s worth.
Click to expand...

I totally agree with Dustin on these points. Especially the Location aspect, In El Paso we are just like SLC in the middle of nowhere, but on a direct route from Phoenix to either Dallas or San Antonio where all the tours stop, and what happens we get passed over all the time, bands sometimes use El Paso as an off day to rest. Nightwish did it in Sept 2008, and where at a hotel about 1/2 mile from my house. So, location, location, location, does matter.
 
I didn't say anything about tours. I said publicity. Media coverage.

And yeah, I was talking about the darker side. The death/doom, the drone, etc. Wouldn't really consider a band like Pentagram 'extreme.' My point still stands.
 
Shit, you guys post all day and night. No way in hell I can keep up.

To the responses to my earlier post...
This is distinctly a non-Blackguard touring thread. I figured there would be a distinct-ish difference?

I was kind of joking about the pop thing, but yeah, I hate it with a passion. There's no real redeeming qualities to it for me. If some of you guys are into some of it...well, different strokes.

As far as regarding IE, Evergrey, CoB as random, it's mostly the CoB part. They don't, in my opinion, mesh very well with IE and Evergrey. It was a brilliant package though. I already agreed with that when I mentioned how I left as a newly minted CoB fan.

Along with everything that everyone else has been saying, and I think this has been mentioned already too, it's not all that easy to hear about tours in the first place. The extreme tours get a pretty big publicity push, but the more prog/power focused stuff really doesn't. The best thing to happen in this regard lately is Enter The Vault. I don't know how many tours came near me that I missed simply because I never heard that they were coming. I know I missed a Dio/Hammerfall matchup once a long time ago. At least I think that was the package. I generally read BW&BK's site and get ticket alerts from Live Nation/Ticketmaster, but that doesn't cut the mustard for getting the word out.

Also, I'm in on the location issue. Very often the nearest stop to me is Houston, 4 hours away. I certainly can't do that on a week night. If I'm lucky, they'll hit New Orleans, which is only an hour away (thanks In Flames!), but that seems to be something that's happening with increasing infrequency. I'm even going as far as Dallas, 8+ hours, to see Scar Symmetry next weekend (Maybe that show will make an Epica fan of me. They haven't grabbed me too hard yet). If you don't live in or near a "metal city," making it to tour stops can be pretty tough.
 
Jasonic said:
Helloween and Gamma Ray did piss poor in Chicago.
While I was personally ecstatic as hell over seeing them together, it's not like there was much cross appeal. Sure, Helloween has some older fans who were probably witnessing GR for the first time, but on the flipside, a good majority (if not all) of folks who primarily were interested in Gamma Ray would go see Helloween anyhow.

As Claus said, touring together definitely gave both names a boost again in the states, as there was a lot of buzz about these two touring together.

Now one double bill which I believe was brilliant was KAMELOT / EDGUY. This show (at least in Chicago) was packed as hell. While Kamelot has a lot of the standard power metal fans, they also have that fanbase who only likes specific bands (IE - Nightwish, Sonata Arctica, etc) Bands who have a lot of non-metal fans or fans who aren't really into power metal. This show had a lot of cross-appeal in looking around at the crowd and the age ranges. There were some VERY young kids, as well as older prog and power metal fans.

As said before, Zero cross appeal if you had Edguy, BS, and whoever else was mentioned who I can't remember. Sure, its a better supporting lineup that might get older Edguy fans back to the shows, but wouldn't expose Edguy to crowds who don't already know about them.
Click to expand...

Had no clue about that in terms of the GR/Helloween show. Then again, I did see that show at Progpower that year. The only thing I remember hearing is that some people left early because Andi Deris was smashed? Any truth to that Jason?

Yeah, the Kamelot/Edguy tour I think is the benchmark for good power metal tours. I am hoping though that the Helloween/Stratovarius tour comes here, though it does have less crossover appeal than the aforementioned tour did.
 
J-Man said:
It is my observation that the one European Band that does really good in the US, is Nightwish. They can tour with the likes of Sonic Syndicate, and sell out almost every show. Then turn around 3 months later, and tour with Sonata Arctica and sell-out almost every show again. In the Oct 2007-May 2009 Dark Passion Play world tour Nightwish hit the US 4 times, granted May 2009 with Volbeat was a make up for cancelled dates in Sept, Oct 2008, but they did really good on all 4 tours. I went to a number of shows in Different cities and it was always the same sold-out or near sold-out, and most venues were in the 1,000 to 2,000 capacity range, there may have been some smaller i don't really remember.
Click to expand...

They definitely do well on tours. The question though is how well will they do on the next tour. I think the two legs they had here for DPP were a lot of people curious to see how they did with Annette, so it'll be interesting to see if people come back. I'm not trying to make this an Annette bashing thread, but I honestly don't know if I would go see them again after the performance I saw. I think a major part of this is the female fronted genre gets some crossover of males and females. From what I've heard Epica on the previous tour definitely upped their attendance as well (though I'm not sure about the current tour).
 
Mardoch said:
I'm even going as far as Dallas, 8+ hours, to see Scar Symmetry next weekend (Maybe that show will make an Epica fan of me. They haven't grabbed me too hard yet).
Click to expand...

On a side note regarding Scar Symmetry,I'm not sure if you're aware or not but Per Nilsson posted on their facebook page yesterday that the other guitarist Jonas Kjellgren broke his arm and will be in a cast for 6 weeks. So they are going to play with just Per for the rest of the tour.
 
dcowboys311 said:
Here's another reason that I didn't think of until now why 'extreme' metal gets more publicity than prog and power metal.

Extreme metal:
death
black
doom
thrash
metalcore
deathcore
folk/viking

Prog/power:
progressive
power

HEY, WHY DON'T YOU SEE PROGRESSIVE AND POWER METAL GET EQUAL EXPOSURE AS SEVEN OTHER STYLES OF METAL COMBINED?
Click to expand...

That is a good point. Never thought about it like that but yeah. Though some of those genres have bands that are and aren't extreme. Like I would list Kreator on more of the extreme side of things, but a band like Megadeth definitely isn't extreme metal. Same with some doom as I think traditional doom like Candlemass would be on the other side. But still, there definitely are more extreme genres than not, though a lot of them sort of blend into each other.
 
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