A Spirited Defense of an Utter Lack Of Skill...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
In my normal Sunday morning trawl of the NYT (which differs from my daily trawl of the NYT inasmuch as I generally don’t read the op-ed shit on a weekday) I came across this amusing piece. In it, the author describes his participation in the Really Terrible Orchestra. While the concept is reasonably sound (paypal me $1 for that pun, please) I find their intrinsic realism about the whole thing quite refreshing. The founder is quoted, in Classical Music magazine, as saying “[w]e also discovered there’s a place in the market for a really bad amateur orchestra. After all who wants to go to a concert by a good amateur orchestra when you can hear a professional orchestra?”
This brings to mind an interesting point. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, even a tiny bit, it’s the incredibly earnest bar band. Bar bands are, by their very nature, amateur, and the people that play in them are never very relaxed because they don’t get on stage enough to treat it like the workmanlike entertainment job that it is. Thus, it’s an uncomfortable experience for both performers and audience. Now, if a bar band was named “We Fucking Suck” or something, (“slaughtering the classic rock hits since 1995!”) I’d have a whole different opinion of the matter, and could actually revel in the parts they got right.
Note to aspiring bar-band performers: take a page from the Really Terrible Orchestra’s songbook, and plainly wallow in the inherent humor of your position. It’ll make things much more pleasant, and you might even actually get somewhere with it. After all, look at Ween.
10 comments
Hey, you should paypal ME a buck, for that pun, as punishment.
Oh... wait... I guess we're even.
Of course, Gavin Bryars' Portsmouth Sinfonia did the 'worst orchestra in the world' thing nearly 40 years ago - with sell-out gigs at the Royal Albert Hall! A certain Mr. Eno played clarinet in the Sinfonia and produced their first album.
I remember being deeply impressed by the Portsmouth Sinfonia ca. 1973 at the tender age of eight. Luckily, I haven't achieved any discernable musical ability in the ensuing 35 years. Makes playing my 14 guitars all the more rewarding ...
Good to hear the people of Edinburgh (my home town) are keeping up this fine tradition. Perhaps it's a sort of atonement (pun intended) for inflicting the world with Franz Ferdinand ...
I've been a private, amateur music for decades (and perfectly happy with it) until a good friend gets a mid-life crisis and wants to do covers in a college town. Jeez, it was everything bad described above and more. I didn't tell my other friends due to embarrassment of them coming to the shows.
Finally I took a page from the songbook called "I Suck, I Don't Give A Fuck, I'm Here for Beer and Pussy, What's Your Name?".
I've been having a much better time...
Do you mean Franz Ferdinand the archduke of Austria-Hungary? I wasn't aware he had anything to do withEdinburgh. Or is there another one that I'm not aware of? Nevermind, I just googled it and discovered that there is an undoubtedly crappy indie rock band of the same name. (I suppose saying "a crappy indie rock band" is kind of like saying "a catholic pope," but I digress)
I made a fair chunk of a skimpy living for about three years playing mostly Irish trad music in bars. Once or twice a week at a hundred bucks a night. Add in playing often awful music at weddings when the opportunity arose, teaching a few students, and sometimes busking on the street, and it added up to somewhere in the vicinity of the poverty line. I know some folks who still do that, and who definitely have a professional level of skill, even if they might sometimes have trouble making rent.
I am by no means deriding the average working musician. The vast majority of us make our living in exactly the manner you describe. I'm talking about a particular breed of bar band; they're the ones that bring printed lyric sheets and chord cheats on stage, and are, well, incredibly earnest, as I said.
They invariably consist of, like, a 60-yr-old guitarist that plays some Schecter jobbie through a Crate lo-budget half stack, and an 18-yr-old lead singer that grips the mic stand like it's the only thing keeping him from floating away. That sort of thing. I've seen lots; I'm thinking of one in particular, but I won't bore you with the details as I can barely remember them myself.
-CR
... Do they maintain a vibe of still trying to "make it," despite playing to a half-empty bar for beer money on a Tuesday night? Because i think I used to be in that band.
/jibblies
The "trying to make it" vibe still makes me nauseous, no matter where I encounter it.
I would argue music at this point in time is infested with a flood of sheer pretentious earnestness. If some people think think that's expressing their soul then they have some fucking boring souls.
You know what i'm talking about..this glut of folk indie rock. It's revolting and drippy in the extreme.
Booji Boy for Prez peeps.
I have the Portsmouth Sinfonia record, and it always puts me in a good mood. I would describe it as gleefully out of tune. Highly recommended.
I think there's at least one bigger orchestra around here that take pride on playing really really bad too. Considering how bored and lifeless some of the professional symphony orchestras (not all of them) sound today and how the players pretty much sound they've lost interest after a few years ... "After all who wants to go to a concert by a professional orchestra when you can hear something that doesn't make you fall asleep?"
FWIW, I've heard only the debut album from Franz Ferdinand but that one was pretty damn good. They weren't all wimpy and whiny, they knew how to write a pop song and they also knew when to stop (at under 40 minutes). Then again, I wasn't getting sick of indie rock yet back then.
(And the author of that article, Alexander McCall Smith writes The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency book series which is damn nice btw.)
I agree taht the overwroght sappy sentimentalism you here in most indie and all emo and indie folk stuff really rubs me the wrong way, even if it's very well executed.
Take radiohead for example. I would really like their music, if their singer's voice, singing style, and lyrics didn't drive me up the fucking wall. His keyboard playing and compositional skills are great, and he's technically a perfectly good singer, I just can't stand anything with the faintest tinge of "emo." That doesn't make them a bad band, it just means I'm not in their target audience.
Comments are closed on this post.