I’ll summarize this entry into one phrase – “Metal is killing the music scene.”
Its dramatic, not 100% true, but it is the main culprit of the situations. If you go back and read a previous entry, I blame the current economic climate and a saturation of promoters.
Then I realised something. If there’s a dedicated fanbase, the people will come, regardless of the venue, promoter, or at times, the line-up. Take my local venue. The Imperial is mostly populated by the same 20-30 people every month. If that’s not a dedicated bunch of fans then I don’t know what is.
The problem with this is that there’s a sense of narrow-mindedness where people are refusing to get up on their feet and rock out with some really good bands because the bands in question are either not regular players in The Imperial, crap, not enthusiastic enough or not metal enough. The latter choice being the most common reason for dead crowds.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love metal. Its my favourite genre. The problem is, there’s too much of it. Nearly every new band in the area is metal. A couple of years back, The Imperial was frequented by Punk rock heavyweights One Room Down, Heavy Metallers A Murder In Motion (rip Cons.), Indie Rockers Persona B, the good old Rock-N-Roll stylings of The Devils Answer, plus a variety of other sub-genres of the music GOD that is Rock And Roll. Any month, you could say you were going to a rock show, and for your fiver you’d get something for every rock fan, bit of indie, bit of punk, bit of metal etc.
Today, The Imperial is ‘that metal venue’. The prevailing genre there is metal. This is no fault of the promoters, they can only work with what’s around, and what’s around now is nearly all metal. Metal and Dubstep (ew.) are the two most popular genres around here right now, so most people looking to get into bands and such are going to be playing metal and dubstep. So when the odd indie or punk band shows up, the crowd is mostly dead. The metal fans have stayed and continue to show up once a month for some really good metal, but the indie and the punk and the rock and other fans have vanished, and new non metal fans won’t come because its mostly metal. Two piece band Wibble, who are brilliant and impossible to put a label on apart from ‘insane’ is a band which can make a crowd move. We need more bands like this. Not “Wibble” style, but of different genres, playing venues across Pembrokeshire on a more regular basis to attract people who have been alienated by metal into the venues once again. Its a license to print money. We need a resurgence in these sub genres for the gig industry to survive and go on to the next chapter.
Otherwise, its going to be more of this. I’m actually one of ‘those people’ who sit down and only get up and rock out to the metal, but that’s because I don’t want to be “that guy” standing on his own at the front. Seriously, its that bad. I used to go to gigs and regret going the next morning because my body felt like it went through hell and my head was only being held up by a thread. Now I wake up and regret going because I paid a fiver to do nothing all night because I was sucked in by the dead crowd.
Once and again we do get a really good crowd, and we have a really fun gig. The Metallica tribute, the Hate Gauge CD launch and Picture Frame Seduction gigs instantly spring to mind as gigs that give me hope that we can have some more life in the scene, even though those gigs were all Metallica, all metal and all punk respectively.
The Back To The Future gig of 2009 was the last time I remember a true mixed bag. We had Jazz rock fusion for fucks sake!
*FAKE EDIT*
(I saved this as a draft on Monday morning to continue writing in the evening. Its Friday evening now and I only remembered I had this half finished entry because I logged on to write a new post about something unrelated. Stay off the weed, kids.)
As the above bracketed Nugget Of Knowledge™ said, this is a continuance of a draft, but I’m going to leave it there. I’ve said all I wanted to say, and I now remember that I left it to continue because I had no idea how to finish it off. I still can’t think of any way to finish the OG entry, so I’m leaving it as it is because I was starting to come across as a bit of a dick anyway. I still stand by what I say though. The great thing about having a blog is that its a lot easier to broadcast unpopular opinions on a barely read blog than air them in person and get heat for it. If people come across this, reading it softens the blow. However, for all I know, this could be a popular opinion, I don’t know. I don’t really discuss this stuff with my friends because most of them aren’t interested or have no idea what I’m on about.
Oh yeah, you get two entries today. Lucky you!
I dont see this as a very metal i killing the music scene more that its the local scenes fault, if the crowd is dead move and make the crowd move, if the indie people dont have enough fans at gigs build a better fanbase and promote to them simple as. its less metal is killing the music scene more the people dont go to gigs around the area, if you look at cardiff and swansea there music scene are well established and still going strong all genres of music, feel free to disagree but its more the area then the genre
Hi, thanks for the comment. I like it when something I post gets replies because I enjoy discussion.
I probably should have worded the post a bit better, I was mostly referring to the Pembrokeshire (Queens Hall aside.) area and I do agree with you that it is the more the area than the genre. However, I do believe that because there is such a high saturation of metal bands who play most of the gigs around here and the platform for other genres to perform and build their own fanbases is smaller than ever and the crowds will continue to be small and lifeless for non metal bands. I wish our music scene was like Cardiff or Swanesa’s where bands of multiple genres have their own fanbases and can work together in a well established scene, but in order for that to happen, metal needs to step back a bit to let the other genres have their time to shine again.
I HAVE NOTHING NICE TO SAY, PLEASE RAPE MY FACE
but if you notice in the pembrokeshire area metal bands cant back down from gigs though plainly because then there would be no gigs. its a choice of have just metal or nothing at all. yes we get rare jems like wibble from down here but no one down pembrokeshire really want to go to an indie gig. its moving towards the dubstep now if you have notice where no one will go to a gig unless its a big dubstep gig otherwise its going to be small time metal gigs as that is the only local scene that we have so we should embrance and enhance rather then say they should hold back
fuck u pope metal aint killing music next time i see u your dead u backstabbing cunt.
-Owners Edit- I’ll just leave this here, so everybody can see how retarded you are. How does this constitute as backstabbing? Judging by your spelling, you seem to be backstabbing the entire English language, but that’s just like… my opinion, man. By the way, your IP address is logged (as are all comments as a WordPress security measure), so I know that the 14 comments of you calling me an “asshol” are also from you. Thankfully, comments don’t show up automatically, I have to read and approve them to filter out the bot accounts that send spam. I sent one “asshol” through the wordfilter, and decided to trash the rest because only one “asshol” is enough, asshol. -PopeTomJohn
PEMBROKESHIRE MUSIC SCENE CLICKY AS FUCK!!! enough said…:)
I see what you’re saying. As a non metal fan, I do believe that there’s too much metal in the area. Its going through a really popular phase right now. I’ve been doing this 20+ years and I was saying exactly the same thing as you ten years back. These things happen, you’ll have a dominant genre, then other genres come in, then you’ll get another dominant genre, wash, rinse and repeat. Scenes come, scenes go, scenes come back again. Next time I see you around, we’ll have a chat over a pint or five and I’ll explain in more detail.
Many people who read this think its a negative piece. I think you’re an intelligent, thoughtful and opinionated writer who isn’t afraid of sharing his feelings, no matter how controversial or unpopular.
This is a brilliant article as it gives the thoughts of a fan, rather than a professional who will take one look at this and think “pfft, what does he know?”
Just don’t go all hipster on us all.