OFF: PT and tribute bands (was: Totally random wandering thoughts)

[Jon Jarrett]

On Thu, 17 Apr 2003, Henderson Keith wrote:

        <massive snip>

> Porcupine Tree: tiny club in Zurich (should have swapped
> halls with Guru Guru...more people wedged into 1/5th the
> space)...sold out and sweaty.  New rhythm guitarist/backing
> vocalist makes a huge difference in the overall sound.
> Very loud, nearly metallic show...and really quite amazing.

        I hadn't gathered there was another guitarist on board, that does
make for an interesting show. I passed up the chance to see them last time
they came near me, though I was very impressed with _In Absentia_; I
didn't expect to get what I used to get from PT shows from the new
incarnation somehow. Now I'm thinking I should give them another try. It
will be a different band though. No longer head music really.

> They have always been *much* heavier in concert than on
> disc, but this show indicates that they're trying to ramp
> up to an eventual planned tour with Opeth in America (who
> Steve Wilson produces...deathish-metal aus Norway?).  And
> although I really disliked both Dimbulb Sun and Recordings,
> I think In Absentia (on Lava/Atlantic Records) is really
> a very good album and things like 'Creator had a mastertape'
> were just stunning.  And "Tinto Brass" likewise.  They did
> "Darkmatter" as one encore, and even it was rather heavy
> as well.  Richard Barbieri obviously has diminished in
> importance to the bulk of the performance, but there still
> remain quiet bits where he at least should still continue
> to show up.  Very surprising that this band has seemingly
> bucked an oh-so-obvious sell-out trend, but I always
> retained some faith that SW was still and will always be
> an 'artist' first, even if he becomes very wealthy in time
> (still some doubt about that).  I still don't care for his
> "artificial discography-padding" (in the guise of offering
> special 'collectors' items' (Hint: if it *says* "Collector's
> Item" on the package, it's not.) that all the fans would
> just *love* to have, just for that one extra special out-
> take track of the band tuning their instruments.

        I too thought _In Absentia_ showed heavy metal influences (though
not as heavy an influence as Opeth's new PT-style chord sequences that I
couldn't help noticing arriving between their early material and the
current more Wilsonian oeuvre... ). I'm not sure it's an avoidance of
sell-out exactly, but it's certainly an avoidance of the *previous*
sell-out trend which well, wasn't selling very well. This stuff, as the
first person I played it at said, is targeted straight for MTV2 and is
doing well enough there. But knowing that I couldn't really feel that this
had hurt the songwriting or the skill involved in both arrangement and
actual playing at all. I thought roughly the same of _Lightbulb Sun_ once
I settled to an opinion on it, it's clearly targeted to a market but it's
still very well done. Steven Wilson can write good stuff in several genres
it seems. Although he does hawk every last drop out of it. I didn't buy
_In Absentia_ when it was frst available as an import because of the
amount of hype I was getting from the Freak Emporium about buying it
before the European release. Aha, I thought, and waited till the
inevitable European bonus edition finally emerged as it eventually did.

        _In Absentia_ has some very good stuff on it, but I'm not sure I
want to see them do so much stuff that's only recent. There is, with the
possible exception of `Creator' and `Heart Attack in a Lay-By', nothing
*great* on there like `Voyage 34' or `Radioactive Toy' and for this reason
I wish he'd get an IEM line-up gigging which would allow me to stop hoping
for the wrong thing from what PT now is, which is the cash cow that allows
him to do other stuff in the same way that No Man was meant to be and that
working with Fish and now Opeth has become. I'm glad to see him doing so
well though because he really has worked for it.

> Coming up in the neighborhood is...Fish, Y&T, Jethro Tull
> (Montreaux Jazz), Burg Herzberg (Nektar, Man, etc.) and/or
> Kloster Cornberg (Damo, PTree, others), and maybe Wurzburg
> for either Magma or Anekdoten/Paathos.  Oh yeah, and I'm
> going to be in the London area on May 3rd-4th for absolutely
> no reason whatsoever (given that WotW was cancelled), so
> I thought maybe I'd go to Dover to see this band called
> "Tea for the Wicked" that might be interesting.  Anybody
> know them?

        If I'm thinking of the right band, I gather they're kind of like a
more arty Led Zeppelin, but I've never heard any. I don't think I can make
it to London that weekend either (hey, come to Cambridge instead, not
that there's anything rock on here either).

> Other shows in the UK that weekend seem to be by tribute
> bands...what the hell is the deal with tribute bands?  OK,
> I'm guilty of seeing-in-the-past/having-interest-in-seeing
> tribute bands of *Hawkwind* (and indeed their recordings...
> see HWCA thread above), but out of all the bands I like,
> I can't think of *any* other target-of-tributization-band
> I would care to hear being 'recreated' by a bunch of
> pretenders...

        <snip>

> Anyway, what's the point of all this?  I thought when this
> all started a decade ago or so (ignoring for the moment
> the existence of Beatlemania-type offerings in the deeper
> past)...I mean, the *rampant* tributization...it would just
> be a 'fad' or 'phase' like that ridiculous 'unplugged'
> nonsense, but here it is 2003, and it's still here!  There
> are two Pink Floyd tribute bands touring/playing in the UK
> at the same time in early May!  (Off the Wall and Think
> Floyd if you *must* know.)  WHY?  I love Floyd, but even
> if these groups *could* play the songs better in some way
> than the group (of senior citizens) itself, it's still just
> not right.  With music (IMHO), the original artist playing
> their own tune at even just 50% the 'ability' (assuming
> some loss of virtuosity based on mere age) of that possibly
> by a younger "mimic" is still far and away more preferable
> in my mind.  Well, when I say it's not 'right,' I don't
> mean that they 'can't' or 'shouldn't' do it, just that I
> would hope that most people wouldn't give a sh*t about it
> unless that was *their* favorite of all time...and so in
> that case the whole fad should have been gone a long time
> ago.

        I can see both sides of this one. Certainly one or two of the Pink
Floyd tribute bands (Pink Fraud especially) are reputed to be *really*
good at it. And the argument is that you'll never see Floyd gigging and
even if they do it won't be like that, the classic line-up. And Nik has a
similar argument going with Space Ritual.net of course, that the current
HW isn't like the HW that was so he can do that (not that I think he can
actually but anyway). Likewise Hendrix and so on (though you could go
see Outskirts of Infinity if you could ever find out when they were
playing). When you get to bands that are gigging, especially Thin Lizzy
for example, the argument is that they won't come to your town or the pub
just down the road, and then you have to ask, well, how much effort should
people be prepared to make? I myself have no objection to bands like this
encouraging people to get off their backsides and go see some live music,
and if that's what they do then good. They may even allow a venue to keep
going with other unknown acts because of having a more bankable income on
the tribute bands. The Standard in Walthamstow seems to work like
this. I've seen some great gigs there but their main fodder is almost
always tribute bands unless something big that they can connect to a big
enough name, like the various ex-Hawk combos playing there or the Bevis
Frond gigs will draw enough people in by strength of the connection to
compete.

        And from the other side, though I would have thought it was really
painful being rated on how closely you managed to copy that solo that's on
the album. I mean, you can't be allowed to vary it at *all*, because
people are going to hear what someone else did the way someone else did
it, no? Worse than playing to a backing tape I'd have thought... But I've
had it argued to me that some people will never *be* in the new exciting
band that plays original stuff, because there are more people out there
who can play decently than can write songs, and also the same interest in
playing stuff you can get gigs with must be there.

        Where it all goes wrong of course is that the market gets in and
says, "you can make more money from tribute bands than you can from
struggling real bands" and thus the tribute band gets the gig over the
real talent and originality, and the more people adopt this safe thinking
the fewer slots there are for new bands trying to break into the
circuit. That said, there are very few bands I've been in contact with who
really *can't* get gigs, though there's an awful lot who are too
disorganised to sort it *out*. And there's some comfort here in that more
and more of the places that do these gigs also seem to be doing nights for
unsigned bands or local bands so there is clearly a market of people who
want to hear stuff that's actually new. But the space in the middle,
between unsigned youth and grizzly copy-cats, where there is skill, new
material and a paying public but not enough of one to fill a pub, that
isn't getting the space it needs. I guess people need to know a band
either as a known quantity or else one that no-one knows? Who can say. But
yes, I don't go to tribute shows myself. Except The Hamsters who tread the
edge of my distaste for it very nicely. Yours,
                                                Jon

ObCD: Star Nation - _The Silver Age_
--
"I recognise that I have transgressed many of the precepts of the divine
law, and that I am subjected by various vices and iniquities, disobedient
to the words of the divine mystery brought unto me and a worshipper of the
delights of this military age." Marquis Borrell of Barcelona, 955 A.D.

             (Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College London)