Many of the male singer/songwriters in Sarasota might very well know quite a bit about music, but Justin Layman, Dylan Jon Wade Cox Smith Miller Delorean Jones, Tim Sukits (pronounced soo-kits, lay off the name, he's probably heard it all by now) may as well be those middle-aged guys you see playing covers at all the bars littering the Siesta Key Village. So why do they choose to write mediocre music? The music lacks any edge or element of danger in it, which is I guess the problem with most singer/songwriter dudes nowadays. Of the three dudes mentioned Tim has the best voice, although it ends up coming off a little bit like this:
Justin Layman seems to show the most chops on the guitar, but his voice sounds like an even more constipated John Mayer. It's way too stylized and fake to sound like actual singing. Sing in the same voice you talk in, buddy, you're straining way too hard to get nowhere.
And here's my synopsis of Wade Cox (thanks again to Family Guy for saying things in ways I can't dream of):
But at least this guy sings in key.
Is this post way more dumb than the others? Yes. Did I just learn how to embed youtube videos in my blog? Yes. Writing is time consuming. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then videos are worth millions of words. I basically just wrote a book.
As usual, the comment stream will most likely be way better than the post, so have at it. Do you think these guys kinda suck too?
Deadalus Aflame (whose blog is becoming self-aware)
I wish Mine Canary would add vocals to their live show.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what kind of haircuts Mine Canary will get next. ????
ReplyDeleteWhat do yall think?
SERIOUSLY - PLEASE ONLY POST ABOUT MINE CANARY IN THE MINE CANARY THREAD. LETS ALL TRY TO BE SERIOUS ABOUT THIS.
ReplyDeleteOhhh. An s/fart/q reference. That was William Ball, Nicky Larson, Wesley Bayard and Puffin Thomas-Carlson.
ReplyDeleteNow it all makes sense.
Ohhh. An s/fart/q reference. That was William Ball, Nicky Larson, Wesley Bayard and Puffin Thomas-Carlson.
ReplyDeleteNow it all makes sense.
Ohhh. An s/fart/q reference. That was William Ball, Nicky Larson, Wesley Bayard and Puffin Thomas-Carlson.
ReplyDeleteNow it all makes sense.
I think the female acoustic singer songwriters here are way more annoying (and more numerous) than the male ones. There's only two kinds: boring, croony hipsters or loud, stomping hipsters. Quit trying to sound like Regina Spektor. Quit trying to please your peers by only writing what they already like. And quit wearing feathers. ALL OF YOU.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=132801252639&v=wall&ref=ts#!/group.php?gid=132801252639&v=wall
ReplyDeleteyep. mystery over.
your grasping straws, dude I couldn't even finish reading the post
ReplyDeleteThe male singer/songwriters at least have an excuse. They're trying to get laid. And from what I gather, it works rather well. Female singer/songwriters don't really have that imperative, chances are they could just walk around staring blankly and get boned just as frequently. Unless they're fat and ugly, then it just doesn't even matter if they play and sing.
ReplyDelete"S-FART-Q is an artist collective that positions it's self against...those who play ball with the system. We refuse to hop on bandwagons and gravy trains, alike. We mean DIY when we say DIY. It is not a phrase to us, it is a mode of existence."
ReplyDeletehaha. wonder if these douches see the irony in these words appearing on Facebook.
You forgot Bud Buckley and James Cademan! These guys define the other, none hipster-indie side of the Sarasota music scene.... unfortunately
ReplyDeleteS-Fart-Q never did have that "coming soon" event. too bad, i bet it would have been great. i really like Thomas-Carlson's work.
ReplyDeletehahahahahahahaha
I heard William Ball and Nicky Larson were the original members of Mine Canary.
ReplyDeleteOhhh. An s/fart/q reference. That was William Ball, Nicky Larson, Wesley Bayard and Puffin Thomas-Carlson.
ReplyDeleteNow it all makes sense.
Woah. If Nicky and Wes are writing this blog, then that means Neil P must be in on it too. Right?
ReplyDeleteSo wait, Robbie and Nicky were in Mine Canary and now they hate it? Why? I cant understand.
ReplyDeletewow, most of these comments are really lame
ReplyDeleteYeah. Worst post so far. Though I guess all of the posts suck. So, worst comments section so far.
ReplyDeleteGROW UP YOU HOMELESS F..K! Quit sponging off everyone, get a job already and become a member of the working society, i'm sure someones toilet needs scrubbed Get a Job and Leave everyone alone, enough is enough!! Anyone supporting his ass and buying him food etc.. feed your families first then worry about him...he's def. not doing you any favors hanging around or bar!
ReplyDeleteBTW can you sing or play the guitar? maybe you could whistle thru your stinky earholes!!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous (10:52 AM), you are my hero.
ReplyDeleteyou can hear all three of these guys (and others) perform holiday songs live tonight -6p -10p simulcast on SarasotaMusicScene.com and form your own opinions.
ReplyDeleteOops, did I just say that out loud?
call me suspicious, but I'm beginning to actually think that this blog is actually propaganda for SarasotaMusicScene.com (and all of its sheeple supporters)... have we all been duped?
ReplyDeleteWhy didn't I take the blue pill?
^if so, that's actually kind of genius, if you think about it... what better way to promote a site than through a viral "smear" anti-campaign..
ReplyDelete****head spinning****
hmmm, It is curious that Daedalus has never spoken ill of sarasotamusicscene.com In fact, IF you recall he was immediately welcomed to join the site. hmmmmm
ReplyDeleteSMS is the same people behind the Noise Ordinance show, go back and look at the previous posts and through the comments. It does seem a little suspicious.
Nah, I think you're all just forgetting how absurdly tiny Sarasota is. If this was in LA or NY or Atlanta, I might think differently. But everybody in Sarasota is going to run into each other eventually...
ReplyDeletethat live radio show has the worst sound quality I've ever heard form a streaming music show. Hell, its worse sound than I've heard from a streaming ANYTHING show.
ReplyDeleteFirst you defend the cock and bull and now you're telling me you think Tim Suckits is the best singer out of all the lame singer songwriters in SRQ? Dude, you've lost all credibility. FUCK YOURSELF IN ONE OF YOUR GAUGES YOU FAG.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm totally bored I might just tune in to witness the trainwreck firsthand.
ReplyDeleteI fucking LOATHE CHRISTMAS MUSIC. MAKE IT ALL DIE!!!
ReplyDeleteI just looked at the lineup. I'm actually kind of looking forward to hearing Twinkle, RaeF, and Passerine do some holiday tunes! Maybe I'm just in the holiday spirit (among all you grinches on here - haha).. I really hope the sound doesn't suck as you say. That would be a shame. But hey, I don't even have to leave the house, so there is that.
ReplyDeleteSARASOTAMUSICSCENE.COM ..... BAH HUMBUG YOU HIPSTER FUCKS.
ReplyDeleteClaire and Eddie are in their 40s, so they must be the oldest hipsters ever.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, thank god Mine Canary's 15 minutes is finally over. That was getting really tired.
jealous much?
ReplyDeleteDiscussing our ages? Now you've really gone too far! LOL (I'm 39, by the way. Thanks! ;) )
ReplyDeleteHey thanks for the mention, Anonymous!
ReplyDeleteMind Canary
ReplyDeletePS. looks like I got here just in time to dispell any rumors..Certainly wouldn't want THAT to happen. Don't make me older than I am, please!!! Mother Nature is cruel enough hehehehe.
ReplyDeleteOh and Hi, RaeF! see you tonight!
Wow. Reading these comments has made me grateful that I no longer live in the cesspool that is SRQ. The city itself is beautiful and artistic, but the people inhabiting it make it disgusting. I know a few good people, but 80% of you are assholes.
ReplyDeleteYou call each other names, everyone has fucked everyone, and you initiate social wars. You guys can't even handle a single blog that delivers one person's criticism.
Way to go you dumbass fucks, you've turned on each other instead of uniting.. When you could have made the city a more open and evolved hub of interesting activity.
Keep it up, you tattooed douches; it makes me glad I'm never coming back.
^ We're glad you're never coming back, too
ReplyDeleteI take it you're unfamiliar with the internet and the effect anonymity has on people.
ReplyDelete"I take it you're unfamiliar with the internet and the effect anonymity has on people."
ReplyDeleteYes, I'll bet he's unfamiliar with the word HYPOCRITE too.
Nice try, out of town asshole. You critized us for being mean and name-calling and proceed to do THAT VERY SAME THING. Thank you for moving away. Obviously you have no spine nor sense of humor. Sarasota, even with all its flaws, is still way better than whatever stupidass town you fled to, so suck it.
pete hansen is right. straws, dude. pick on someone your own size.
ReplyDeleteDecember 15, 2011 12:14 PM
ReplyDelete^ We're glad...
December 15, 2011 12:49 PM
"I take it..."
Thank you for proving my point.
Just because you claim your point is proven does not make it so
ReplyDelete"pete hansen is right. straws, dude. pick on someone your own size."
ReplyDeleteGrown men aren't his own size? Are we talking about midgets here? Did I miss something?
"Thank you for proving my point."
ReplyDeleteA point was made? I'm guessing it got lost in the total suckage that is your face.
Pete Hansen's a fucking nobody. Who cares what he says?
ReplyDeletethis blog went from attacking the biggest acts and institutions in town to targeting guys who get up on stage alone with a guitar. indeed a coward's journey. backwards and boring.
ReplyDelete"this blog went from attacking the biggest acts and institutions in town to targeting guys who get up on stage alone with a guitar. indeed a coward's journey. backwards and boring."
ReplyDeleteIn a town that's nothing but 70 year olds living in suburban sprawl, how many big names can one take on?
That and those lonely guys who get up and cry into a mic by themselves really need to do some self evaluation. Does anyone actually like them? Sit on the lawn of your school like the loser you are, don't take it to the bars and ruin my night of drinking.
December 15, 2011 1:29 PM
ReplyDeleteJust because...
December 15, 2011 1:33 PM
A point was...
You continue to validate my argument again and again. I am not an "out of town asshole", I was born and raised in Sarasota.
You are young, angry, and ignorant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVdGyaI1FZ8
I agree angry critic...those guys really do suck bad. I can't remember a time when people were listening to Justin Laymen sing and not cringing or laughing at him. He is a decent player....he just needs a singer. Every time I hear him sing i feel like i need to take a dump.
ReplyDelete"Applause" to Anon at 1:49pm
ReplyDeletei haven't laughed this hard in days. I LOVE this blog. The best part is the response war. I like the video adds by the way.
ReplyDeleteStfu and enjoy yourselves! quit talking shit. Don't like it here? MOVE.
ReplyDeleteDon't like "the scene"? don't partake.
Don't like someone or their music? don't associate with and don't listen.
EASY.
Just because your life is miserable, doesn't mean you need to bring others down too.
Quit being a douche. :)
Ha. I like it how people say they hate this blog and Angry Critic sucks...but they can't stop coming here and reading every post he makes. Ha...you guys are lame. Go back to your hip hoppin "music scene" and slap you cocks together.
ReplyDeleteJustin Layman is awesome, I don't know what you douchebags are on about. Jealousy much?
ReplyDeleteHi, Cool idea for a blog. I would first say that in Sarasota like it or not it comes to this as far as being a professional musician. You either play every night or near that in a cover band, or in a band that plays ...60-70% of cover tunes, depending on if you can work in originals into the set to make it flow well. You play day gigs in season... etc. Or you have a day job and do original stuff at night..Many musicians in town often mistake music professionally in the sense that it is a business and job as much as an art. And if you were a truly working pro musician you realize this. I would also say that in at least my opinion Justin Layman, and Dylan Cox are hardly middle aged. That being said I have played with many bands around town and in that experience have to understand different bands/musicians their attitudes (which in sarasota, can be a good or very bad experience). Justin Layman in my opinion is more of a Band front guy than playing Solo gigs. But in sarasota if you want to make a living its pretty hard to have a 4 pc band and play all originals. I mean if everyone has day jobs sure. Why play a band show make $40 or do a solo gig doing $200. Justin has more gigs now than he has in the past so he must be doing something right, at least he always is posting new ones. And I agree with someone above, Justin is sick with a band. Its hard to stand in front of a mic and sing alone. Hes great at it. Good or bad in your opinion it is unique, and if your trying to have style and be unique you are getting somewhere!! At least out of hipster/metal/punk scene of getting paid tips and living off mom and dads money. And I wouldnt compare him to JM hes more of a ray lamontagne mixed with bob dylan,floyd, and some funk. Kind of like Ben hammond or matt gerhardt. He has tons of studio time and is pretty respected throughout the musical community here. Dylan is a very new musician. I think his album was recorded horribly and it needed alot of revision and arranging. Not the recording, but the playing, singing etc.. sloppy! That being said who knows what his $$ is like so he could have had to do his first cd cheap..but he is too new at being a player to analyze...when he has as much stuff as layman or the others out then yes. Cool blog to have for Sarasota... a Critic is needed! lol but I just disagree with this post with those regards.. but thats just what i think..
ReplyDeleteOh come on step it up Angry Critic. How am I supposed to come here and get my rage on if you don't give me anything thought provoking to work with? A couple of Family Guy links?! Can we please go back to talking about Mine Canary?
ReplyDeleteGuess what. That's not just Sarasota. That's the entire country. Only a handful of people are ever capable of living off of just playing music. It seems to have been more in the past, but the music industry is in a glut. There are significantly more bands now then there ever have been and people seem to be less interested in music now then they ever have been.
ReplyDeleteThere are fewer competent recording studios then there ever have been, and more amateurs who have no idea what they're doing. There are more venues now, but fewer people frequenting them.
This is more than just the economy, it's our new attitude on music. People raised in the eighties, nineties, and aughts are familiar with music as background noise. It plays in every grocery, mall and ipod as we walk around distracted by other things. We don't LISTEN to music anymore, it's just THERE.
So we just seem to EXPECT it now. We expect to have free music wherever we go, because we steal it online and we don't pay cover at bars. You want to know why local bands can't play competently, why they write shitty songs and release fucked up recordings? Because they can't afford to do nothing but play and write, they have day jobs. There is no industry gambling with their money. They don't provide advances hoping to catch the next big thing. They just create it in a studio with a hot ass and autotune. Jimmy Page perfected his chops from a young age working as a studio musician, those aren't used anymore. Stevie Ray Vaughn grew up away from home living in poverty but improvising in every bar with any band he could, now the scene is just covers. Recent studies indicate it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill, any skill. That's 3 hours a day for 10 years. Who has the time to play that much with a day job?
The death of music is our fault. It's the public's complacency and willingness to compromise. It's because we think an mp3 has sufficient sound quality, because we think a CD is worth less than $10, because we have no interest in seeing original shows, because we're simply content to move to any beat even if we've heard it in a thousand songs before.
First off, props to Marty, AKA "Daedalus Aflame", for having the courage to continue this blog despite his actual identity having been revealed. My skepticism even doubted his "outing" at first.
ReplyDeleteThank you Marty, for this fun and somewhat controversial blog where we are free to come and express our ideas/opinions on in a delightfully uncensored fashion.
Thank you for also acknowledging how awesome some have these comments/comment fights have been. True troll gold :)
Now then.. for the sake of relevancy..
ReplyDeleteLulz at the Family Guy clips. Seth MacFarlane may be a massive self-important asshole who has capitalized on the dumbest most watered down form of low brow humor but these clips were funny.
I couldn't find everyone's music who Marty mentioned here. Perhaps I wasn't looking hard enough but some of the names seemed to have run almost concurrently together. However I did find 3 names in particular from what he listed:
Regarding Justin Layman, he does sound too much like a raspy John Gayer copy, however like Gayer, he does know a guitar fairly well. His soloing is a nice touch on "Last". I have to say he's good at that. Though he obviously can't touch the same level of guitar prowess that Gayer has reached despite the fact that I dislike him (but hey, at least I'm still acknowledging John's talent).
Tim Suktits I must say has some range and a powerful voice unlike any of the singers from all the shit hipster bands like Cat Shits In The Basement. Granted I found his music and subject matter boring except for "2 Shots", I can at least admit the guy has talent for what he does. Listen to "We All Fade Away" to hear his vocal chops. All this despite an incredibly dumb last name that I'm sooo tempted to make a "suck tits" joke out of (not like several of you haven't already thought of that).
Lol oh damn, my mistake. I just noticed the typo I put in Tim's name at the beginning of that paragraph. It actually wasn't intentional. I'm a bit tired. Correction: "Tim Sukits". There we go.
ReplyDeleteMoving on:
All I found for Wade Cox was this big fat ass guy who was actually really good for what he did with his song "Back to Virginia". He had emphasis in his singing, a nice voice and a strong rhythm with a country/folk/blues style. Not my style.. but still.
I know that since I've affectionately been dubbed the "eye stabber" :) this will seem odd, but I think Marty is going a bit hard on these guys. Their music really isn't bad, some of it is fairly good, albeit not my genre(s).
Hey y'know, at least these acoustic young to middle aged kinda' boring guys actually have some singing and guitar playing talent to varying degrees. Unlike piece of shit hipster douche rock around here such as The Equines, whose vocalist sucks and sounds dead in terms of range (completely flat and tuneless). Or how about Fancy Ratass? Whose only good/memorable song is "jubilation" while all the others are so incredibly sleep-inducing and lame. P.S. being a tall anorexic hipster ass stick isn't original anymore.
Someone please also relay that the to mustached penishead singer of CAT SHITS IN THE BASEMENT which has to be the WORST HIPSTER TRASH I've EVER heard!!
That is, the worst alongside Terror Pigeon Shit of course.
"God is love, love is sex, sex is death." Wow... this is the intellect, or should I say, pseudo-intellect we're dealing with huh? "Dude, broad concepts when randomly strung together in a vague and even contradictory association make us sound intellectual!" No they don't. They make you sound random and not very intelligent at all for having resorted to such chance wordplay as opposed to even somewhat consistent song meanings. Ass nuggets.
So many animal fecal bands.. Dear God.
How about this,
"Hipster's shit, shit is brown, brown is dark, dark is night, we're all right!"
Look! I just wrote the most intellectual hipster lyrics in Sarasota! Band time!!
:D
Btw sorry for the unusually long posts and Mr. Dubya up there makes some points that are really intelligent, valid and tough to refute.
ReplyDeleteFamily Guy sucks
ReplyDeleteJustin Hyman having alot of gigs shows why this "scene" here is ridiculous. He can't sing to save his soul. The fact that he has regular gigs and plays his original music places shows some of the problems that needs to be addressed before we have a vibrant productive music scene. The owners here don't give a crap about the music. They either hire crap singers for jukeboxes where nobody ever cares what they are hearing, or hire the same people again and again because they have a look or act like a musician...instead of looking beyond that and looking for something with substance.
ReplyDeleteTrust me...Justin Hyman will have no long term career and be stuck here playing the Cock and bull if he is lucky. Tell him to goto NYC and see how his "talent" does up there.
I still think the SarasotaMusicScene.com folks are behind all this. Am I really the only person who thinks that? Doesn't Marty work with them? HELLO??
ReplyDelete"I still think the SarasotaMusicScene.com folks are behind all this. Am I really the only person who thinks that? Doesn't Marty work with them? HELLO??"
ReplyDeleteWhat does it matter? The content is in the comments. The main posts have been shit from the start, but they're enough to get people talking. And if a community actually starts communicating, then who the fuck cares who started the conversation?
Btw lol at the irony over one of the "Anonymous" individuals way up above here who calls 80% of everyone on this blog an asshole for calling each other names.
ReplyDeleteWhat an asshole.
:D
Btw Pete Hansen is an anus.
ReplyDeleteMarty I'm surprised you haven't smashed up his car or sprayed him in the face with Raid over him outing you in such a spiteful dick way, just because he didn't like your criticism.
Wait a minute... no I'm not.. you actually sound calm and reasonable. Pussy.
"Btw lol at the irony over one of the "Anonymous" individuals way up above here who calls 80% of everyone on this blog an asshole for calling each other names."
ReplyDeleteWhat's wrong with calling people assholes, douches, pussies or cocknockers anyways? The descriptions tend to be apt. I'll admit to being a pretentious asshole. How far wrapped up in your own anus do you have to be to be blind to the fact that humans are all assholes, douches, pussies and cocknockers? Well, at least those that aren't total retards. They get a pass since, well, they're retarded. And when a retard starts to act like an asshole it's just a bit sad, they don't have the mental capacity to do it properly.
But really, come on, it's endemic to our species. Gandhi was a racist fuckface and Mother Theresa was a eugenics loving murderer. Your mother only loves you because she's biologically bound to, so go ahead and cry.
Hey Dubya!
ReplyDeleteYou better be careful calling us all assholes you asshole!
You're the asshole! NO YOU'RE THE ASSHOLE! POLICE OFFICERS ARE ASSHOLES TOO!!
FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!! AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!
Also.. big time lulz at the tards comment dude.
XD
I wish you were the former president instead of the real inbred mongoloid Dubya. Not that President Assholebama is much better. I guess he's slightly better than the Sarasota music scene though... nah, not really.
Who else thinks the girl from Mine Canary should play naked?
ReplyDelete"Who else thinks the girl from Mine Canary should play naked?"
ReplyDeleteShit, I'd claim to love any band's music if the hot girls play naked, or close to. For example: "I LOooOooove Otep and t.A.T.u, they're such amazing musicians."
If the "hot" girls play naked? Who the fuck would call anyone in Mine Canary hot? And why the fuck are people still calling that garbage music?
ReplyDeleteThis blog is fucking done son.
Dubya at 8:44, wow. excellent analysis.
ReplyDeleteAt least this blog hasn't stooped so low as to bring up the drugged up mess that is Mind Zion. I heard them on WSLR at 3am a while back.. FUCK. The FCC would have literally shut down that station if anyone actually listened to WSLR at 3am.
ReplyDelete"If the "hot" girls play naked? Who the fuck would call anyone in Mine Canary hot? And why the fuck are people still calling that garbage music?"
ReplyDeleteWhich is why I qualify my statement with "hot". I did not bother to look up the band's pictures, I only listened to the unmusical nonsense on their bandcamp page(I think that was the one). Now after looking through some pictures, she's not hawt hot, but she's not bad. She could do without the clothes. At least it's not like she'd have to play naked save a paper bag on her head.
Mine Canary, stop posting shit anonymously to get us to talk about you again. Like it's not totally obvious it's you. Puh-lease
ReplyDeleteYou had your own thread. You had your 15 minutes. We are done with you now. Now, you're just desperate and pathetic. All future posts about Mine Canary will be totally ignored. Thanks.
My music name is "Dylan Jon Wade." If y'all are gonna talk shit at least get my name right. www.DylanJonWade.com #folknroll
ReplyDelete"At least this blog hasn't stooped so low as to bring up the drugged up mess that is Mind Zion. I heard them on WSLR at 3am a while back.. FUCK. The FCC would have literally shut down that station if anyone actually listened to WSLR at 3am."
ReplyDeleteWhy would you bring them up then? Why would you subject me to looking them up and listening to them? Why do you hate me so much? Their banjo player has got to be the worst I have EVER heard. If you're going to play that instrument like it's a guitar, just don't pick it up. Please. It's not a pleasant sounding instrument(it was invented for volume, that's why there's a drum head on there, to help project the instrument to compete with drums and brass instruments), hence why it only sounds awesome with chicken-pick'n. So when you strum it stoned like it's a bad sounding guitar, you make puppies cry and God send aborted babies back to hell where they belonged until Pope Palpatine said otherwise.
And their stuff on reverbnation was recorded through a laptop microphone. I swears.
We were told to go back to this blog because we were still a buzzword.
ReplyDeleteWe promise we didn't post any of these. We've been out of the loop for a while. We'll consider playing naked. We don't like family guy. <3
dylan jon wade.. when i listen to this guy's album.. I end up feeling like an Old Flag That's Been Tattered and Worn
ReplyDelete"My music name is "Dylan Jon Wade." If y'all are gonna talk shit at least get my name right. www.DylanJonWade.com #folknroll"
ReplyDeleteYour name is a mishmash, how are we supposed to remember what order of first names it is?
You're actually not bad. You're a pretty good example of how a little drums goes a long way in making this style not just sound like a tool, a guitar and one too many drinks. You croak your voice a bit much though. Why did that singing style make it out of country anyways? It didn't sound good then, we forgave Pearl Jam just because they were so awesome regardless, and Creed should have just nailed that coffin shut.
Fuck, made it to the next track while typing this and now I have to be mean. Sing in tune. Please. Or are you tone deaf and you didn't notice you were singing sharp? Usually people do another take when they sing out of key. Did you record this with a bunch of cowards or were they just incompetent?
Damn. Again, this time I read things. The decentness was the lead guitar, there's that Layman guy again. He has some chops. I can't really comment on your rhythm playing because it sounds like you're just strumming, not doing anything technically interesting and I already commented on your singing.
How dare you guys talk badly about DJW? He served me the most fantastic coconut shrimp at Outback, and refilled my water without me ever asking. He is def. going to make it as a waiter, I just know it.
ReplyDelete"How dare you guys talk badly about DJW? He served me the most fantastic coconut shrimp at Outback, and refilled my water without me ever asking. He is def. going to make it as a waiter, I just know it."
ReplyDeleteSee, that's just uncalled for. Lambasting wannabee musicians music is alright. First off they're not really musicians and secondly they're putting that shit out there with the implicit assumption that they're the bees knees. So when in actuality they blow, they deserve to know because music is meant to be heard by others and others don't deserve to have their ears molested. Their private lives on the other hand isn't anyone's business.
Trolls gonna troll bra
ReplyDeleteI'm just bored at work, bra. And bra, the trolls on here really suck compared to what I'm used to, bra.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of bras, that's one thing the flower movement should have kept strong on. That bras were The Man's way of keeping the proletariat down, by tucking away the bouncing, hard nipple pointed bundles of squishy goodness.
http://youtu.be/G75-u-fk9LU <--- this is the banjo player for Mind Zion putting his banjo to much better use, beating up dirty BRo's on Siesta Key Beach.
ReplyDeleteBWAHAHAHAHAHA.
Hey Angry Critic...mucho praise for keeping this blog going even after you were outted. I was going to buy you a beer before. Now i will buy you a beer and a shot.
ReplyDeletewow people suck, why would someone say something is bad because its not their taste. i think the music is pretty good, certain parts need work but i believe their a new group. to all the haters your shitting on our own brain with bad energy. to the band DJW keep trucking on these funking mugs bwahh bwahh bumbooooo!
ReplyDeleteI love this blog. My only comment is that I've seen Justin Layman play several times and he does a great job, a solid performer with solid material, one of the better acts in my opinion. Too bad everyone's reaction to this blog is so negative and defensive--it's only one blogger's opinion, and anyone is welcome to retort, so why do the replies have to be as negative as the blog? Let the guy blog--reply if you wish, but keep it clear and to the point.
ReplyDeleteI know the Mine Canary music sucks but the naked comments were funny. And did Kristen used to go topless on the beach a few years ago or was that somebody else? If so then she had different hair and no tattoo.
ReplyDelete^That was the beached whale I saw a few years ago! Thanks Anon.
ReplyDeleteMine Canary, quit posting anonymously. We are totally done with you. Guess what? No one actually fucking cares. And don't pretend it wasn't you. It's so obvious. Do you think we are all retarded? seriously. I've lost ANY tiny shred of respect I had for you at this point.
ReplyDeleteBlog on, Deadalus Aflame, blog on! In a town so small you can't fart without word getting around about it, we need shit like this. I could personally give a fuck how shitty these bands are, but the fact that you are expressing your opinion makes me want to care!
ReplyDeleteYou are poop. If you think that this applies to you, your right!
ReplyDeleteJustin layman is cool.
ReplyDeleteJustin Layman is a douche
ReplyDeleteIt's never too late to stop being hateful. None of us have to listen to music we don't like but there is no reason not to show respect to others. It makes me sad that shows like American Idol have given everyone the attitude that it's normal to go around judging everyone and that their opinion is wanted. Sometimes it's better just to let those who enjoy it enjoy it. Let's all just move on.
ReplyDeleteWhat? American Idol has given everyone the attitude that it's normal to go around judging everyone? I believe human history has given us the attitude it's normal to go around judging everyone. Because it is normal. You walk down the street and glance at people, judging them instantly. It's a social survival mechanism.
ReplyDeleteNo, American Idol has given the public the perception that shitty autotuned singers are perfectly acceptable. When they're on TV. Most of these local bands have just as decent/crappy voices but they're quicker to judge because they're not on TV and don't have millions of dollars behind them giving you the illusion of some sort of authority. So many of the people on there have had no formal training, just like your average local band, and have only been doing it for a few years. Sure, there's natural talent but that can only take you so far if you don't have the experience. Just like local bands.
All truly great bands in history got their start playing locally in their hometowns... Everyone has to start somewhere. Most don't make it, but some do and there's no reason why the next great band can't come from Sarasota, even if they are new, inexperienced, and kind of suck right now. Rock on, Sarasota! The fact is we have hundreds of bands in this town, so there is something for everyone. If you haven't found 1 band you like here, you're not looking hard enough.
ReplyDeleteThis article makes me want to throw up http://www.thisweekinsarasota.com/content_content_detail.cfm?ContentID=755
ReplyDelete"All truly great bands in history got their start playing locally in their hometowns..." ... yea, pretty sure you made up that statistic. Many bands that "make it" start when people move to a music mecha to be a musician and find a band (L.A., Seattle, London, Austin), in fact, I'd say the majority don't come from "playing locally in their hometowns..." they come from musicians seeking out where the good music is and where the scene is actually real (and full of talent unlike SRQ)
ReplyDeletereview more bands!
ReplyDeleteThe worst statement in that article, in my opinion, is this one:
ReplyDelete"Sarasota bands have skills beyond being experts of their instruments and beyond being performers. Bands also act as "somewhat of a sound person and know a little bit about booking and how to promote. You're kind of doing it all yourself so you really have to wear all the hats when setting-up shows." "
If you want to know WHY you suck, just examine this statement with an objective mind.
First, you want to be something beyond being an expert at your instrument? Get a real job. Turn music into your hobby. Otherwise, focus on your instrument. If you don't, you'll be shitty at your instrument and everything else you do.
Second(still all related to that first point), is his statement about band members becoming sound guys. Well guess what, you're not. I have NEVER met a musician who was an even remotely decent Audio Engineer. Why? Well because to become good at that takes just as much time as it does to become good at playing an instrument. And if you're not a fucking 60 year old genius who's spent the last 50 years doing BOTH, then you're going to suck at one of them or more likely, both of them. And it's not about gear, it's about the fundamentals of sound design. Shit musicians think that because they can now buy an m-box that means they can write, produce, perform, record, and mix all by themselves. BULLSHIT. Guess what, your song is going to suck because instead of focusing on arrangement and your performance you decided to spend hundreds hours fiddling with knobs to get "your perfect song" after hacking your takes apart and tossing them into a blender ending up with something that has no continuity and crap quality from the beginning. HOME PRODUCED MUSIC SOUNDS LIKE ASS. EVERYBODY KNOWS IT. It's not more "cool" to cut out the teamwork it takes to produce something fantastic, it's obsessive lunacy and it's going to come out like crap.
And on to the last part. Booking and promoting yourselves. Well this is why you've played the same shitty bar the last 15 times you've managed to even get a booking. This is why nobody has any fucking clue who you are except through years of persistence. This is why you're stuck playing in Sarasota, not because you "really want there to be a scene and not just to be a band that's good enough to move away." That's just backpedaling bullshit because you've failed at success time and time again. You want to know why Led Zeppelin got huge? His name is Peter Grant(look him up on wikipedia). He was their manager, he got them their massive deal with Atlantic, he ensured the band got 90% of the gate money, he pushed for the album format and disliked television performances. Do you seriously think they would have gotten as big as they did on their talent alone? Are you so blind to music that you think that it isn't a BUSINESS?
booo go make art and stop being a critical little shit.
ReplyDeletethe only reason your getting attention is the bands and artists your trying to crit are popular and have fans.... unlike you.
ps get good at something if you want to try to look down on people dipshit
ps m murphy and dj wade are badasses.
I was humbly hoping that someone would make fun of me on this rag, and all i get is that the interview 'makes me want to throw up'? Come on, i want details!
ReplyDeleteA bit on the anonymous who criticized Claire's statement. Even taking that last post I made into account, I'm going to have to disagree with you. Yes, clearly there are places better to start a band, LA, NY, London, however that doesn't mean that scenes can't spontaneously develop and become national. Seattle wasn't known as a music mecca until grunge arrived, people weren't going there for the music. Same with Austin, that's another relatively recent scene. Some cities in England also weren't known for their music until a few bands made it big, Bristol being one of them. Frankly, in the US if you're going to move to a scene purely to join the music scene, you might as well try LA. 10 million to 1 you're going to crash, burn and come home all depressed, but if you seriously think music scenes are locked to geographic locations, that's the place to make money.
ReplyDeleteExcept scenes aren't locked to cities. Even less so in the internet age. They are locked to the mutual respect of the bands, musicians and fans. However if a geographic location wants to have an actual scene, then they need their own sound. Not just repeats of everything else you hear in the local bands of every other city in the country. Oh look, another indie pop group. Oh boy, 80s SoCal punk. Whoopee, yet another lonely singing tool. Oh I like this band, I heard their doppelgangers playing the same exact shit when I lived in LA. I've droned on a bit, but you get the point. If you sound like every other city, you're going to get ignored like every other city.
please share your work with us it sounds like you are a master and we should all respect you.
ReplyDelete"I was humbly hoping that someone would make fun of me on this rag, and all i get is that the interview 'makes me want to throw up'? Come on, i want details!"
ReplyDeleteWhy are the claps off beat in the intro to Inanimate? Why does your singer constantly slip out of key? What's with the poor tuning job on the intro to Dear Alobar? Why are your horns so heavily distorted? Did your drummer actually tune his drum heads? Why's the ambiance on all the tracks sound so bad? Actually, that I can answer, you recorded it in a bedroom, the early reverberations are rather loud and there are no reverberations of any significant length. The balances are okay.
I have to confess, I actually like the arrangements and style. It's the execution that's off.
"Many bands that "make it" start when people move to a music mecha to be a musician and find a band (L.A., Seattle, London, Austin), in fact, I'd say the majority don't come from "playing locally in their hometowns...""
ReplyDeleteI never said a lot of bands don't end up moving to larger towns. I said that every band starts off somewhere as a local band playing local shows in their hometown-- wherever they happen to live at the time the band was started. Obviously.
Are you seriously suggesting that only musicians that live in cities like LA can form bands that will eventually become successful?
No, you guys don't seem to understand, INDIVIDUALS move to big towns to become big musicians and find bands. Its not always, or as often as you think, their hometowns. I never said a town can't BECOME a music hub, but I don't see it happening in Sarasota. I'll never count it out though.
ReplyDeleteIndividuals move to music hubs because they THINK that's the only place to make it big. But without the connections they'll be one of the thousands of meandering hobos of the streets of LA. You're actually better off starting someplace where you can get an actual following instead of moving somewhere where there already are thousands of bands(I doubt you realize just how huge LA is) hoping that your "raw talent" and "WILL TO SUCCEED" will get you by.
ReplyDeleteI find that hard to believe, your best bet if you are a talented musician but not a singer/songwriter is to move to a place where you can find writers to support and bands to join.
ReplyDeleteIt may have worked the past, but there's an overload of musicians in LA. They're jokes, just like actresses. Like "I met an actress the other day"
ReplyDelete"yeah, what's her rate?"
"$20 a job, $100 full service"
What it mostly comes down to is, you're not that talented. Nobody is. Success in a big city is how many people you know and how many dicks you suck. If you doubt me, just scan through the musicians craigslist in LA. Three pages of new posts in one day, and it's only 2:30pm PST. Do you really think you can compete with the Sunset Strip when you're playing at some dinky bar in Hollywood that has maybe 15 people in it? No. Doing that is just hoping that you get "found". Which doesn't happen anymore, labels aren't interested in finding the next big artists. They're dime a dozen and they'll play for weed. No, labels can just hire whoever they so wish(their daughters best buddy) and have a ghostwriting songwriter put together the next hit.
OK, picked five bands... these are seriously the first five off the top of my head. All either formed in a major city (not all members if any were native) or near to a big city music scene but played their early shows in those close big cities. Include huge band, alt bands and shitty indie bands.
ReplyDeleteRed Hot Chili Peppers is an American alternative rock band, formed in Los Angeles in 1983
Incubus (formed in LA County)
The Smashing Pumpkins are an American alternative rock band that formed in Chicago, Illinois in 1988
Clap Your Hands Say Yea The band, whose members met years earlier at Connecticut College, formed in the beginning of 2004 and played shows in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Franz Ferdinand are a Scottish post-punk revival band formed in Glasgow in 2002.
Oh boy, small lists of examples instead of rational thought. I think everyone can play this game. And have you forgotten that the Tampa Bay area is the 19th largest urban area in the nation? Miami is the 5th and Orlando is the 30th. If you think those places are oh so far from Sarasota, then you haven't tried driving from Burbank to Huntington Beach. Generally considered in the same "city". LA is actually dozens of cities...
ReplyDeleteIggy Pop and the Stoogies were formed in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Seriously, Michigan.
Pantera is from Arlington, Texas.
Sepultura is from Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
Deep Purple is from Hertford, UK.
Bob Dylan is from Hibbing, Minnesota.
Both lists go on, and on. But most of these are also old. Including your examples. But who tops the charts now? Not bands. But a lot of bands still seem to make money and have success, such as Opeth from Sweden(not really considered a cultural capital until Death Metal) without ever topping charts. How did they get popular then? I think we have this new thing called "the internet", geography is not so important anymore.
Never said there weren't lists of both, my whole point was calling out Claire who so matter-of-factly said "all bands"
ReplyDeleteWas going to post this on my band page but I figured I'd dump it in this toilet instead.
ReplyDeleteI released one of the most sonically interesting albums this year of any local musician/band, I have played nice and tried to not be reclusive and go to shows, I have supported my fellow locals in their efforts, played at least one show a month...I have put countless hours, blood, sweat, tears, and thousands of dollars into creating a live music experience designed to bring Sarasota into the next level of audio/visual entertainment. I always give thanks where it is due, I make myself available to help out where I can. I know we have press in this town, and I have asked nicely. I have asked directly. I sent a link to the single off my new album to a local "journalist", asking him to please listen. My stats indicate he/she listened to less than 10 percent of the track. I have earned nothing and I am owed nothing, and I can only toot my own horn... I am trying very, very, very hard to be nice and have respect for the free will of other professionals. Soon, my kindness will fail. Soon, the reviewers get their reviews.
Talk all the shit you want, guess my identity, whatever. Just please realize that I do not give a fuck before you start pulling your hand out of your pajamas to start typing.
"I have put countless hours, blood, sweat, tears, and thousands of dollars into creating a live music experience designed to bring Sarasota into the next level of audio/visual entertainment."
ReplyDeleteguess it didn't work
Sven?
ReplyDelete@ 5:04pm, I haven't given up, cocksucker.
ReplyDeleteOK, but even if a band is from a large city their first shows were still LOCAL shows in LOCAL clubs, right???? Or did they just decide to go straight to national tours? THAT WAS MY POINT. I consider a band's hometown to be the town (or city) the musicians are in when the band was formed. But EVERY musician starting out, no matter what the size of the city, starts out in LOCAL venues. For Pete's sake, people.
ReplyDeleteOh, and while I have your attention let me jump up on my soapbox for a minute and say this:
Professional critique usually involves something constructive. Point out a band's flaws so they can deal with it and improve. There is absolutely nothing constructive with attacking someone personally. Also, yes a recording in a professional studio obviously sounds way better, but did you ever stop to think that the home-grown recordings are out of financial necessity? I can't imagine any band turning down the opportunity to record in a pro studio in favor of a home recording. But the truth is that the pay is so shitty around here that is rarely an option. So you do what you gotta go and keep moving forward.
While I'm on the topic of shitty pay, most of us do this because we love to make music and play music. We don't care if you happen to think it's good or bad because we love to play! I'm certainly not going to go sit out on a golf course and heckle all the golfers who aren't that good or aren't total pros. "OH, you haven't won a tournament? Get the hell of the course! You'll never amount to anything, LOSER!!" Yet, you all find it perfectly acceptable to treat musicians this way??? Do none of you have any hobbies you love to do whether or not you are good at it? Seriously, no one is forcing anyone to listen to something they don't like. Find something else to listen to and get over yourselves.
I think the female acoustic singer songwriters here are way more annoying (and more numerous) than the male ones. There's only two kinds: boring, croony hipsters or loud, stomping hipsters. Quit trying to sound like Regina Spektor. Quit trying to please your peers by only writing what they already like. And quit wearing feathers. ALL OF YOU.
ReplyDeleteYou're a feather hater!
ReplyDeleteThat's right, I said it.
"You're a feather hater!
ReplyDeleteThat's right, I said it. "
oops, sorry. that was me. I accidentally chose the Anonymous option and didn't notice. Not that it matters, but I don't post anonymously so I had to make that correction for my own conscience.
Pay generally coincides with draw, and that is why most bands in SRQ don't get paid very much if at all. If your band does in fact draw a fair amount of people, then by all means use that leverage to demand more money, and they WILL pay it, provided that the fee is reasonable. For example, 100 heads at $8 per head should warrant no less than a $500.00 guarantee plus points. If your band means anywhere from 50 - 100 heads and can command an $8 door price, then a reasonable deal for the promoter would be a $250.00 guarantee vs. 60% of the door (whichever is greater). This way, if you do the numbers you will get paid for it. Any deal which involves percentages should involve a band rep. clicking or counting at the door. Make sense?
ReplyDelete"Also, yes a recording in a professional studio obviously sounds way better, but did you ever stop to think that the home-grown recordings are out of financial necessity?"
ReplyDeleteIs it really? There are dozens of decent live rooms all over this state. Some you can rent out for $30 an hour. So let's do some math, shall we.
An Avid M-Box(without software, you can use Reaper) is $600 on Amazon, Samson overheads(C02) are $70 for the pair and a Samson vocal mic(C01) is $60. That is the absolute MINIMUM to record a band. And that's a disgusting minimum, there is no way in hell that would sound good. So added up that's $730. That gets you 24 hours in an actual studio at $30 an hour. TWENTY FOUR HOURS. If you can't track and mix 5 songs for a demo in that time, you needed to practice more. Twelve hours if you hire a competent engineer.
So no, if bands are spending a thousand bucks on absolutely shitty gear that anybody with any decency would PISS on then their failure to enter a studio is NOT financial. It's either ignorance or arrogance. If they're like most of the recordings I've heard then they have even nicer gear. Gear that bands do not need to have. Instead they could get themselves a decent instrument and some studio time. This just indicates that they're not interested in sounding good, they're not interested in making the best music they can, they're just interested in wasting months of their time on something that'll never be anything more than a hobby because they just have the wrong attitude to succeed.
"Do none of you have any hobbies you love to do whether or not you are good at it? Seriously, no one is forcing anyone to listen to something they don't like. Find something else to listen to and get over yourselves."
If it's a hobby, then stay home. Play to your friends, play to your dog. If it's a HOBBY then why the FUCK should you expect people to even WANT to pay you? Why should you expect that the venues will fill for anything more than beer guzzling? There is a difference between a hobbyist, an amateur, and a professional. Professionals get paid, and they get paid because they're dedicated. Amateurs do it for the love of it, but they're still dedicated. Hobbyists do it because its fun, fuck dedication.
Why does some of this piss me off so much? Because I've worked as an audio engineer. I've seen musicians that are working their ASSES off to get somewhere, who are sacrificing everything they have for that slim chance. And I've seen just bands who make outward gestures like they give a shit, act they're doing it out of love for the music, and then don't put forth that effort. They drag their knuckles about rehearsal, they spend their time partying and goofing off and making general nuisances of themselves in a scene that then gets cluttered by an overload of mediocre bands that the few good musicians get lost in. Not me getting lost in it, I'm just an engineer. Not me, but my friends.
Oh, that is loaded with grammatical errors and poor phrasing. Rants really do flow better with a bit of proofreading...
ReplyDeleteI should add that considering the local shows I've attended, it's difficult to assess which bands are drawing the lion share of the crowd because there are no defined headliners or supports. So, it's difficult to put a marquee value on a band when they are sometimes supporting the same bands that they have previously headlined over. If you want to know what your core local fan base is, then headline a local gig on a Monday or Tuesday night with 1 or 2 unknown supports and make sure you have good advertising. If you can draw a fair amount of fans on a Monday or Tuesday on your own merits, then a clear picture begins to emerge as to what kind of loyal local fan base is there. That is your foundation. If you don't know your worth in terms of a dollar value, then you'll never make money doing this. On weekends, you'll obviously have more people but it's more difficult to assess who is there solely to see you. I hope the above is of some help to all of you.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to studios and gear: Yes, it certainly helps to have good gear, but good gear will not make you sound good without a competent producer and or engineer behind the desk. I've heard bad recordings come from good studios and vice verse, so make sure you thoroughly peruse the recordings from each studio and producer / engineer before plunking you hard earned money down.
ReplyDelete"With regard to studios and gear: Yes, it certainly helps to have good gear, but good gear will not make you sound good without a competent producer and or engineer behind the desk. I've heard bad recordings come from good studios and vice verse, so make sure you thoroughly peruse the recordings from each studio and producer / engineer before plunking you hard earned money down."
ReplyDeleteOh, of course. But instead of even trying to find a decent engineer bands instead have the gall to think that with shitty gear and weeks in front of a computer that they alone have something acceptable. How could you possibly think that no experience combined with crap gear will get you something you appreciate? At least with decent gear somebody might be able to fiddle a knob until it sounds decent. Advice on finding a competent engineer: If s/he graduated from Full Sail, try someone else. A good engineer will work with you and explain things, and if they don't want the producer to sit in during mixing, they're hiding something. Also, have a dedicated producer to cut down on arguments and dick waving. Having all band members at mix down usually results in everybody wanting their parts showcased at all times instead of what's best for the song. You have to do research for whatever you do, but researching a studio is easier then researching all of the technical details of recording and mixing.
You make some good points regarding "too many chiefs" in the control room, production, and so on. Perhaps some local studio (producer / engineer)recommendations would make for good discussion on this board.
ReplyDeleteI'm awesome. Why am
ReplyDeleteI the only one who likes my bedroom dribble?
DAEDALUS: please write your next entry. sure, the comments are the content, but each new fuse has a different color firework. it's been almost a week dude
ReplyDeleteA note, I've reread a few of my comments and they're looking mighty sexist. It's unintentional, it's English vernacular. Dick waving can be substituted for clit waving if you so wish. However I feel I've noticed fewer ego issues with women in music than men; I'm guessing it's a product of our species. Just think of it this way, if we were spiders I would be dead many years ago, disemboweled and eaten after a foolish sexual encounter with the first female to have granted me a so called safe passage. This should also be an example to the irony of tiptoeing, an apology seems objectively even more sexist.
ReplyDelete"Perhaps some local studio (producer / engineer)recommendations would make for good discussion on this board."
Any artists with studio experience, go ahead. I'm new to this region and haven't worked in any of the local studios. And even if I had, it just seems unprofessional to hit that close to my field, you might think I'm just talking down the competition.
A lot of the local bands are going to Science Recording Studio. I have not, so I cannot speak as to the value there.... Personally, as far as local studios that are decent and inexpensive go, I've worked with Mike Badalamenti at Audio Images in Bradenton (total pro - he's been doing this a long long time) and Rick Duncan at Paradox in North Port. Rick isn't the best engineer ever, but he's really easy going and very very comfortable to work with. I've recorded 3 albums and 4 demos (with 3 bands) with him over the last 20 years. It's been a pleasure every time. If you want to drive north, Morrisound in Tampa is the tried and true (but a bit on the pricey side). For mastering, Mike Fuller in Miami has worked with the best.... this is off the top of my head based on personal experience. Of course there are a lot more studios around, so I'd love to hear some other's feedback on this! I'm currently looking for someone to mix my band's upcoming album. Yes we recorded it in my studio and I engineered and produced it, but we send our tracks to a pro studio for mixing and mastering - another possibility for a low-cost option to get something to sound quite decent.
ReplyDeleteOh, wait... does this mean I also might possibly know what I'm talking about? I thought I was just a silly hipster running a stupid website and using iTunes to normalize the tracks for Noise Ordinance and giving myself mastering credit.
Sorry, can't help a little snarkiness. I think this blog brings it out of me.
Science is awesome
ReplyDelete"Yes we recorded it in my studio and I engineered and produced it, but we send our tracks to a pro studio for mixing and mastering - another possibility for a low-cost option to get something to sound quite decent. "
ReplyDeleteThis is actually the opposite of the best low-cost way to get something to sound decent. It's due to a rule in life called "garbage in, garbage out". All of the sonic problems that crop up during tracking are UNFIXABLE in post. A few technical reasons so I don't seem like I'm talking out of my ass:
Poor microphones: Using microphones with bad transient response and an ugly frequency response results in gnarly sound. Transients can SORT OF be adjusted in post, but it wont sound good. However you can't EQ a microphone after the fact until it sounds good, boosting raises the noise floor in each band and cutting sounds best when done in small notches; mics don't boost in small notches.
A bad sounding room: in my opinion, this is THE most important part. You can add digital(meh on the sound quality, but it works) reverb after the fact, but you CANNOT remove the reverb of room in post. This is why most bedroom recordings sound like ass, tiny rooms have sound waves bouncing all over the place, muddying up your signal. The louder you get in a small place, the worse its going to sound. Which is a problem when using amps, amps(tube ones) sound best when the master is cranked. You start to get nice second order distortion when power tubes are run hot and the cabinet and speaker start to lend their character with high SPL. Not even going to go into how bad drums sound in small rooms. Oh, also forgot to mention standing waves. Put your bass cab in the wrong spot of the room and watch your low end just vanish.
Then there is user error. Poor mic placement introduces phase inconsistencies that can't be removed after the fact except by muting mics. Phase problems cause the levels to continuously vary along the track as the two signals start to cancel each other out, so if you're using the mics in stereo it's going to cause the illusion that the source is ping-ponging back and forth from left to right.
Mixing is not such a hard thing to do if the tracking is done splendidly, unless you're doing copious amounts of midi programming. But complicated EQ'ing and heavy handed compression is just not necessary if the takes sound good from the start, this means if the musician played with effective dynamics and it was recorded in a good room with good microphones. It just becomes about balance, and if you're a musician you can figure that out, since it all comes down to just what sounds good. If it sounds good, print it. I've had musicians with me behind my console just moving faders until they liked it, and most of the time it sounds good. Mixing isn't magic unless the original tracking sounds like balls, then you have to begin the arduous process of trying to fix the poor sound, off beat musicians, and other such malarkey.
So my advice is to track in a good room with somebody who knows what they're doing and take the stems home with you to mix yourself. You'll find that once the balance is done and you've maybe thrown a little compressor on your 2-bus that what you have sounds awesome.
Quick snippet on mastering. I would not bother unless you're actually planning on PRESSING CDs, not burning them or just putting it on the internet. That's what the mastering engineer is good at, getting it into a format ready to be pressed at a CD duplication place. They might add some compression or do a mid/side split and adjust the balance of the stereo field, but just like with mixers what they do isn't magic and it's not going to make or break the song. Radio quality is pretty much the final mix you have, once a radio station has it they're going to put it through a bunch of processing anyways before it ends up on air, Bob Orban has an article called radio ready that's about what they do.
"Why are the claps off beat in the intro to Inanimate? Why does your singer constantly slip out of key? What's with the poor tuning job on the intro to Dear Alobar? Why are your horns so heavily distorted? Did your drummer actually tune his drum heads? Why's the ambiance on all the tracks sound so bad?"
ReplyDeleteI can't speak about the recording process of the album, cause I wasn't in the band yet. However, it seems that all of your comments focus on the idea of musical perfection for it's own sake, which isn't really what we are about. It's not a new approach, using music as a language to tell a story and convey emotion been going on for a long time, and has been recognized in writing since the early 1700s (for more on this go to new college and read my thesis :-P).
You could just write songs that have all perfectly balanced dissonance and resolution, but that's been done before, better than i ever will (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4VoKso5ERI). Also, it doesn't really reflect the imperfection of most of the ideas that we all have. Sometimes we are upset for no good reason and we want to work through that, in that case an out of tune sound is perfectly appropriate. (I think that's why a lot of us play music, and some people relate, which i think is why people keep coming to the shows). (Also, the guitar isn't out of tune, it's two notes right next to each other with one of them bending). Same goes for the clapping on 'inanimate' (you're possessions stick with you even when you do stuff poorly, get it?).
We have a different drummer since that recording, and he tunes his drum heads more than almost any drummer i've worked with in the past, but that's a different person than the one on the recording. I didn't notice it, sounds fine to me.
My favorite part is that anyone in the band might have a completely different take on all of this. That's why playing music is so much fun, you get to take different approaches to the thing and stick them together and see what comes out. You get to try to get things that don't gel together and figure out something that lets them coexist. It's like a whole lesson on life n' shit. Groovy man.
I think that the horns sound cool that way. I guess you could make the same comment about any tom waits album with horns in it. I guess we are all unprofessional dummies.
Sloppily yours,
John
ok, I know I'll be skewered for this and no I'm not just trying to shamelessly promote my band, but here are examples of songs we recorded in my studio - engineered and produced by me, mixed and mastered by Rick Duncan.... why do I have a feeling I may regret posting this ... LOL
ReplyDeletewww.myspace.com/elysiansexdrive
of course keep in mind, that this is through myspace's awful mp3 compression process, so there is a bit of quality loss from the original tracks on the cd. Let the games begin.
"Like Artists Do" doesn't count. That will be on our next album, so what you hear there is the demo version... but the rest of the tracks are from our last cd, so fire away!
ReplyDeleteI'd rather rip my scrotum off with a plastic spoon than visit myspace
ReplyDeleteI guess my point to all this is: There is no one single right way of doing things. Each band needs to find what works best for them. I know a band that spent $30,000 on a big-name producer and studio and HATED the result, so they went back to their method of self-recording and pro mixing/mastering. It's what works for them. But everyone is different and no matter how amazing the quality of the recording, at the end of the day it's the energy that is captured on that recording that counts. Go back to old recordings of the 50s and 60s. They are the best sounding things either, but what was captured is magical and a lot of those songs are still played today! A producer who was setting up to record Julio Iglesias at the time (bowls of fruit and scented candles, yo) once told me that if you capture gold it doesn't matter whether it was recorded on a boombox or in a multimillion dollar facility. It's that moment you cannot recreate and cannot get back.
ReplyDeleteNow, with that being said, there are many options out there for musicians to explore... find what works best for you. And if you are fiddling around with your equipment instead of playing your ass off with no inhibitions - that is a problem you need to take a look at. Maybe your approach isn't the right fit for you.
Just my 2 cents.
"I'd rather rip my scrotum off with a plastic spoon than visit myspace"
ReplyDeleteOh for the love of god, here then:
http://elysiansexdrive.bandcamp.com/album/a-note-to-the-alchemist
(although I admit that comment did make me laugh coffee through my nose)
Oh, there is just so much to respond to, now I'm feeling like a proper internet warrior. I also apparently went over the character limit with this, so now it's two posts.
ReplyDelete"However, it seems that all of your comments focus on the idea of musical perfection for it's own sake, which isn't really what we are about."
No, for the sake of the music. Perfection is an impossible goal, but to not aspire to it due to that fact is a cop out, it's laziness. And I feel that laziness is apparent to people even if they don't have analytic knowledge of music.
"You could just write songs that have all perfectly balanced dissonance and resolution, but that's been done before, better than i ever will "
I hate balanced dissonance and resolution. Ending every song with a a V - I cadence drives me insane, it's boring. But these are all stylistic choices, something that as an engineer I distance myself from. I primarily listen to progressive metal and 60's psychedelic rock, but there's no way I'll tell a pop musician that their song needs more theremin space noises or Arabic scale shredding.
"(Also, the guitar isn't out of tune, it's two notes right next to each other with one of them bending)."
There's a difference between out of tune and dissonant. Perhaps it's the poor bending, but there isn't an even ratio difference between the notes and when the electric guitar comes in there's a more slightly off dissonance. I listen to a lot of blues also(alright, I'll listen to pretty much anything, otherwise I wouldn't be posting here). But blue notes are taking a flattened fifth or fourth and bending it close to a step up, creating beats. To do this well takes a very good ear and a lot of practice. If you do it right it invokes an emotional impact instead of just thinking "oh, that sounds off".
"Same goes for the clapping on 'inanimate' (you're possessions stick with you even when you do stuff poorly, get it?)."
Uh, off beat is not the same thing as poly-rhythmic. Especially if the the driving rhythmic content then just has random off parts, that's not being clever. That's a rationalization of laziness, not an expression of odd rhythmic genius. If you're curious about poly-rhythms and things that sound off but just seem to FIT, listen to more Frank Zappa. His use of super bizarre n-tuplets(7 and 9 and other nonsensical numbers) that are then executed flawlessly by Terry Bozzio and Vinnie Colaiuta creates music that is sublime.
"We have a different drummer since that recording, and he tunes his drum heads more than almost any drummer i've worked with in the past, but that's a different person than the one on the recording. I didn't notice it, sounds fine to me. "
ReplyDeleteWell good, not much bugs me more than out of tune drums. They sound bad, they worrraanng all funny like and pop out of the music since they end up with too many frequencies that collide with the rest of the music. Poor tuning seems systemic among drummers too, some of the best drummers I've ever met come in with out of tune drums that they just dampen to all hell. Dampening doesn't take away that ring and I've tuned more drumsets than I can count at this point.
"You get to try to get things that don't gel together and figure out something that lets them coexist. It's like a whole lesson on life n' shit. Groovy man. "
I appreciate musicians that put thought into their work, but so many hipster bands just DO with tone deaf hearing and then try to justify it after the fact. Frankly the only thing here I see as a blatant rationalization is the out of beat claps, but that's because rhythm is just THAT crucial to music that sounds good, people dance to beats, they feel that more then anything else since harmonic content takes analysis, rhythm you just move to. Not to say off beat is ALWAYS a bad thing, listen to Keith Moon's tom and snare fills, he drags and rushes all over the place. Ah, but it FITS. It drives the emotion. But it does that because it gets lost in the intensity, the frantic nature of his playing takes the music into a different realm. One clap on each beat and then a random, drunken off clap doesn't do that, it just makes you think you're at a frat party where nobody gives a flying fuck.
"I think that the horns sound cool that way. I guess you could make the same comment about any tom waits album with horns in it. I guess we are all unprofessional dummies. "
How much I despise Tom Waits is neither here nor there. There are different levels and qualities of distortion though, nice sounding distortion is even order. Odd order distortion can sound good but it takes context, Jimi Hendrix was a huge fan of odd order distortion, it's what happens when you push a transistor really hard(fuzz faces), it's that flattened top clipping as opposed to smooth compression. That flat topping needs to be carefully used since it introduces dissonant harmonics, so when you play it and then other somewhat dissonant notes like thirds and sevenths you end up with rather haphazard ugly sounding high frequency content, which most people find distasteful.
Though like I said earlier, I like your guys style. I also appreciate experimentation and I've lately been getting into micro-tonal music. You just have to be able to tell what sounds good and what just sounds DIFFERENT. Once you do both, you've innovated, otherwise you've contributed to ear bleeds.
You guys don't mind if i plug my shitty website in here?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.WhereToSRQ.com/
bring on the hate haha
- kim jung il
leave it to Dubya to discover there is a character limit on here... hehehe
ReplyDeletekim jung il: you do realize you're taking your life into your own hands, don't you?
I already dead
ReplyDelete"ok, I know I'll be skewered for this and no I'm not just trying to shamelessly promote my band, but here are examples of songs we recorded in my studio"
ReplyDeleteHonestly, other bands should aspire to this as they try shit at home. The quality is pretty good. But before you start feeling like the poster child for DIY, I'm going to guess that you've spent many thousands of dollars on gear and since while there's room sound in there it's not bare-wall offensive that you've also done some acoustic treatment. I'm also guessing you have significantly more experience than most other local bands, like, say, the Fancy Rat guys above. Ah, but before you go on about how professional studios are no longer necessary, I'm going to dissect a bit of it:
First, and as always, the sound of the room. It sounds small, early reflections that were then attempted to be covered up with a bunch more after the fact reverb. I'm also going to go a bit more into why this is important. It's about size and localization. Your brain makes guesses as to location and size from a few different components of sound. You have volume which tells us distance, you have delays that tell us part of where something is and also you have frequency content that helps the the brain understand the delays. If you're in a theater the sound field is VERY complex, if you move your head a bit from side to side you get wildly different sounds due to the wavelengths of different frequencies and your proximity to reflection points. Now, we can't ever replicate this with a couple microphones and then two playback speakers but we can add tricks that help create an illusion. That's what reverb is for, to create the illusion of space through a bunch of EQ'd delays of the sound. Poor reverb just sounds like mud since the delays are covering up the following parts, and this is most prevalent when the delays are short, our brain gets confused since a delay of less than 10ms can be interpreted a second source.
Other than that I don't particularly care for the buzzing on the acoustic guitar or the sound of the drums. The cymbals aren't quite washing out, but they do sound thin. Drums are one of the hardest things to get to sound good.
The vocals sound great though, but again other than the sound of the room. Your voice is fantastic. The balances are pretty good, sometimes the guitar sounds a bit loud and the piano a bit distant, but most of the guitar that's too loud is that high frequency buzzing. The bass gets lost at times except when they're playing high and the kick sounds like it was EQ'd not that great.
"There is no one single right way of doing things. "
True, but there always are wrong ways of doing things. $30,000 on a record is an absurd amount unless a label is paying for it. Did they consider that the producer just wasn't the right fit? I can't really comment much more without knowing WHY they hated it, some people don't like the time constraints of a studio however like you say later it's about capturing a moment. That moment happens quickly and I contend that spending months working on something on your own wont get something that's more magical than one well rehearsed take in a studio. I have my own problems with the way a lot of studios are run and I've had so many bands tell me that pretty much every time they go into a studio that they hate it because they get stressed. Some get a bit too commercial and sometimes what a musician really needs is to wind down with the engineer and smoke a little weed. Something that's a bit hard to pull off if the day you're recording is the first time you've met the engineer. But the reality is that if bands want to create the best music they can, they generally need a little help. Technology has gotten easier, but it really hasn't been sounding much better since the 70s.
"leave it to Dubya to discover there is a character limit on here... hehehe"
ReplyDeleteWorst part is that while I know long ass posts tend to cause people to nod off and drool on themselves, I'm just too verbose and this topic is so dense that I can't help myself.
"You guys don't mind if i plug my shitty website in here?"
Spandex party? Is there a scale at the door?
Thank you, Dubya, for investing the time and effort to give an honest and professional critique. I completely agree with everything you just said about the ESD recording (that's not my voice, though, I'm the drummer).
ReplyDeleteYes I did invest a few thousand dollars into some decent equipment and have since upgraded, so we are hoping our next cd sounds a lot better. I've learned a lot in the last 3-4 years since that recording was made. The room wasn't small, though, so I will pay closer attention to that this time around - mic placement maybe? Or possibly the effects applied during mixing weren't quite right.
Thanks again!
Now I want to hear this Dubya persons stuff. I would love to here a true master.
ReplyDeleteDubya, I do want to ask about the high frequency guitar buzzing, though.. is it just on certain tracks? Is it like a fret buzz or something else? Any idea what that could be from? I'm trying to pinpoint what the source of that could be. We used 4 different guitars on the album, so if you can tell me a little more specifically where you are noticing it I would really appreciate it.
ReplyDelete"Now I want to hear this Dubya persons stuff. I would love to here a true master."
ReplyDeleteSuccess as an engineer and producer is just as much about politics as it is about skill. For artists any press is good press, but for guys like me upsetting a few influential people can spell the end of a career, mine's still just starting and I haven't been very PC.
"The room wasn't small, though, so I will pay closer attention to that this time around - mic placement maybe? Or possibly the effects applied during mixing weren't quite right."
Well I knew I should have just said "your singer", but she really is great. A lot of dirt in her voice that goes over really well. If the room was over 12ft x 12ft for the vocals and treated then it's probably the reverb effect. Most digital reverbs have volume adjustment for early and late and I tend to like the early verb a good 12db lower than the late. It's not very natural but I just don't think digital early reverb sounds good, at all. But if the room is good, reverb should only added as an effect, not a necessity, but something that you have to automate the levels of so you bring it up for long notes or the end of a phrase. Otherwise the room should be enough. I find it's a bit overused since musicians tend to think it makes them just sound better due to the smearing it does of your timing.
"Dubya, I do want to ask about the high frequency guitar buzzing, though.. is it just on certain tracks? Is it like a fret buzz or something else? Any idea what that could be from?"
At first I thought it might be fret buzzing but it's on pretty much every track except Emptiness and it's less pronounced on Wool and Cashmere and The Answer is Why. Now since it's 4 acoustics and they seem to sound rather similar to me I think it might be overzealous boosting of the 4-6khz range; maybe a bit higher, I'd have to sweep it with an EQ to find exactly where. Honestly I'd have to hear the tracks in solo to know precisely what it is I'm hearing. But if it is the EQ it might be because the mixer was trying to create a pocket for the acoustics since the rest of their harmonic content gets a bit lost when everything else gets rather loud except for the buzzy sound. Without knowing the process though this is just conjecture.
Once again, thank you Dubya! fantastic feedback. I really appreciate it. Based on which guitars we used in which track, this is certainly curious indeed. Sister Blue, W&C, Why, and Shine are all the same 12 string. Morning on 4th is all electric guitars. The rest is all the same 6 string. I'll definitely go back into the tracks and see if I can find it. I'm almost wondering if it was something that got introduced during mixing. Emptiness definitely was left the "most raw"... I'm not hearing it, but now that I know the Freq range and songs I'll go take another look.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much!!!
Claire - On the buzzing: I noticed it as well, I've found that it tends to happen with a lot of acoustic guitar pickups. I don't have an acoustic with a pickup so I'm not sure if it's something that can be fixed with the guitar's EQ or if it is just something that a lot of those pickups do unavoidably, in any case you might try using a mic on the guitar rather than using the pickup. Just an idea.
ReplyDeleteNice songs! I haven't heard these before.
Thanks, John!
ReplyDeleteOh my god I just went back and re-read all the comments on this thread again -- yes I'm that bored right now -- and I laughed my ass off! Is it just me or does this shit get funnier as it ages? Like a fine wine.......
ReplyDeletehttps://www.facebook.com/events/313085855378351/
ReplyDeleteAmazon Woman, one of the handful of talents in this town is playing their last show. I love how their front man says in the comments "the scene is a tad too divided" ... so fucking true, fuck SRQ's shitty music scene and the plentiful pool of assholes in it.
As a general rule I stick a LDC mic in front of an acoustic. DI acoustics are for live purposes, unless you're going for some crazy single coil distorted acoustic/electric. And then the amp can't really be in the same room. I haven't used any acoustic/electrics that weren't in-body mics except a Taylor T5 and that one is definitely not buzzy. I've never actually used a sound hole magnetic pickup and no one has ever brought one into the studio.
ReplyDelete"Amazon Woman, one of the handful of talents in this town"
ReplyDeletewho else? according to you, of course
I totally hear what you guys are saying now... And I think it is less obvious on Emptiness because she is fingerpicking the strings instead of using a pick on the quiet parts in that song. Thank you, Dubya and John, for all your feedback. It's been invaluable.
ReplyDelete"who else? according to you, of course"
ReplyDeleteAmazon Woman
Fancy Rat (though they are in desperate need of some new/different material... getting a little stale)
Completely From Mountains (full band, solo sucks)
Dune Train
Wallies
... that's about it
personally, i think the issue with 'original' music is that it's typically not so original. while i understand that musicians learn through imitation, and many work to create a new offshoot of their own influences, it seems at face value that so many are content to simply pick someone else's hard-forged style and co-opt it. a great example of this in current form is the black keys - they have worked years to bang away at their style and songmanship... there are more than a handful of bands on the gulf coast of florida playing slight variations on basic blues-based black keys songs.
ReplyDeletesame goes of course to the folk acts. i think many of you do a legit job giving it your own voice in small ways; yet where is the variety you find in national acts such as ryan adams, rocky votolato, old canes, two gallants, and pete yorn?
if you obsess over a particular artist, and spend all waking day and night listening under the equivalent influence, you might just want to wait and temper those urges to pick up your instrument and write. chances are, once you level out you can find your own voice a bit more easily.
overall, please just try; push to do something just outside of your comfort zone, even if it's painful. i truly believe if your art is an effort for catharsis, it most likely will not be easy for you. i feel you'll find you learn more about yourself, your craft, your art, and that the end result will sow more success and distinction for you.
Hi, it's me again. Here to promote my shitty websites.... Just wanted to let you all know that I have put up a suggestion box on SarasotaMusicScene.com . It's right on the front page, you don't need an SMS account to submit, and we don't need your name. So, HAVE AT IT! Just remember, it's a suggestion box for the site and SMS team, not a place to tear down the bands and stuff (that's what this blog is for).
ReplyDeleteAlso, as a reminder the Noise Ordinance suggestion box is up and running at NoiseOrdinanceCD.com. Same deal. anonymous posts. We've been getting some great ideas and feedback there!
Ok, thanks guys.
Awesome! I got an "honorable mention" in this thread. Thank you for calling me "non-hipster". That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.
ReplyDeleteAs for me, reading these posts has made me reflect on the material I am producing and I apologize to you all. I am definitely guilty of producing sub-par material. It was in my effort to get "something" out there. Realizing that music is very "subjective" and that beauty really is most often in the eye of the beholder, I also realize that there is no excuse for sub-par music....not in lyrics, music, video or production. So, thank you to the Angry Critic for these posts and, as crudely as it may come across, for setting the bar a little higher. -James
Yawn... DEADalus ablog...
ReplyDeleteNot my birthday, not my problem. That's what I say.
ReplyDeletetldr
ReplyDeleteDavid Daly = Dallas Green?
ReplyDeleteflatline--------------------------------------
ReplyDeleteCats in the Basement = Islands?
ReplyDeleteI can't think of anything new to rant about, there hasn't been a new post and everything else winded down.
ReplyDeleteHulk need trigger to smash puny musicians perceptions of reality.
Anyone catch that Equines video that the Ticket folks posted on Facebook? Scott Braun did a nice job but JESUS the band is terrible. The only thing worse than her voice is her hair.
ReplyDeletehahahaha! But, her voice is way worse than her hair.
ReplyDelete"Anyone catch that Equines video that the Ticket folks posted on Facebook? Scott Braun did a nice job but JESUS the band is terrible. The only thing worse than her voice is her hair."
ReplyDeleteOh, wow. That's not even lesbo hair, that's just fucked up whore hair. She's not even particularly that hot even IF she had decently normal hair.
And seriously, what is with her voice? She's TRYING to be that bad. You don't end up with something so horrendously out of key and all over the place with no sense of melody by just singing from your soul, you have to attempt things you KNOW you can't pull off. Her voice cracks all the damn time from her trying pitch changes she doesn't have the practice to pull off and when she tries to add some dirt into her voice it more just sounds like a croaking horse. And the squeaks? Does she think it's sexy to hear what she sounds like when she takes it up the butt?
Also, is their drummer really so poor he can't afford a crash? Really, a ride and a hi-hat? Did he just sell it recently to pick up some more heroin? Though with the quality of cymbals he has it's not like he could have even gotten much heroin, next he'll be selling that single tom he has. Then he'll need to find a more punk oriented band, indie drummers tend to like their toms.
" Anyone catch that Equines video that the Ticket folks posted on Facebook? Scott Braun did a nice job but JESUS the band is terrible. The only thing worse than her voice is her hair."
ReplyDeleteThe music is so goddam band I can't believe the local hype that band has built
"The music is so goddam band I can't believe the local hype that band has built"
ReplyDeleteMy only guess is that maybe they're a New College band and they're supported by everyone they've had sex with.
Wait, so there's a way to gain fans and get laid at the same time?
ReplyDeleteDubya Please Post your music or something you have done.
ReplyDeleteDude that's how it works with all these New College AKA Douche College bands.
ReplyDeleteThey're big fish in a small pond, socially and musically.
They all live/go to class together and have similar holistic vegan uber pro-environmentalist anti-conservative views and thus when one makes a shit band they all hop along supporting it/imitating it. That's how almost everyone at that school is. Some of the parties were fun, but those kids are white upper middle class self-important douche holes.
Let's see a shit band like The Equines hit up Tampa and see how badly they get laughed at/pelted with Bud bottles from drunks, who even in their intoxicated state, cannot tolerate the out of tune flat singing and regurgitated "indie" strumming.
Btw where the fuck is Marty? Tell him to get his tattooed pierced ass back on here. It's getting boring 'round herr. Except of course for Claire's postings and ma' nigga Dubya holdin' it down in the muthafuckin' comments fo' reel.
Dubya, you're quite the sexist asshole, you know that?
ReplyDeletekinsella, great post. a lot of people could benefit from reading that - SRQ or otherwise
I hate to say it, But after watching that video I understnd why you would say her voice sounds like a goat. Lol. Other than that warble thing I actually do like it though.
ReplyDeletethat video was FILMED in Tampa, dumbass.
ReplyDeleteyeah, I do believe that video was filmed at New World Brewery in Tampa, so obviously they have a decent following there. That place won't even book my band, so they must be doing something right.
ReplyDeleteHow can any of you dismiss a band based on the audio picked up from a camcorder? For real? The Equines are one of the hardest working bands in Sarasota. No, they are not rich college kids. Quite the opposite. I like Erin's voice because it's unique. I love her songwriting and think she has a lot of talent...
But it's not for everyone and that's totally ok... Just so you know I'm being honest, a couple of things I would recommend to them: I know these songs well and what they are capable of sounding like. It seems you guys get lost in the flashy-showy stuff with the revolving door of musicians and the occasional cram-everyone-and-their-mother-with-an-instrument on stage fiascos. Your songs and music have suffered for it, in my opinion. Get your shit together and pull it back to where it needs to be and OWN it. When you all are ON, it's magical. Same goes for the other Finch House bands. Having a party onstage is fine as long as the music doesn't suffer. And a lot of what you all have been doing lately seems like a big distraction to me.... just my 2 cents, just my opinion.
But obviously, all in all, they have a huge following wherever they go, so they must be doing SOMETHING right.
Huge following? It looked like there was 2 people in that crowd in the video...
ReplyDeleteWow..the Equines really suck. I mean really suck. And they have a following???
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the reasons this scene is complete shit...when fecal matter is setting the bar for quality...
Anyone who likes this band needs to get lobotomized and neutered so they can't contribute or procreate in our society.
yea, crowd didn't look very impressive lol
ReplyDeleteThey're not "setting the bar for quality". No one said that they were the best band here. But they do have a large following, so they have a market for their music.
ReplyDeleteOne man's trash is another man's treasure.
Not for you? that's ok, move on. It's all just opinions anyway.
large following ..... for sarasota.
ReplyDeleteNew blog post please
ReplyDeleteFor the record, none of The Equines went to New College.
ReplyDeleteI eat hay and oats.
ReplyDeleteI really hope attacking someone personally, comparing her voice to a farm animal, poking fun at her hair and looks, etc makes you feel really good about yourselves.
ReplyDeleteIt takes a lot of guts to say that stuff out loud, under the veil of anonymity. I'm sure Erin really appreciates your musical expertise and critiques. Bravo. You must be really proud of your accomplishments here on this blog. Congratulations to you all for your superb professionalism. It feels great to shatter someone's dreams and kick them down and spit on them, doesn't it?
Happy Holidays, everyone! Cheers to you all for a job well done!
PS. That's it for me. I'm out. I can't tolerate personal attacks and bullying. I've said that all along and now I'm done with this. It's not funny.
ReplyDelete"It feels great to shatter someone's dreams and kick them down and spit on them, doesn't it?"
ReplyDeleteIf that's what this does then good riddance. If an anonymous persons comments have enough to break someone's will, they didn't have what it takes to make in this industry anyways. Every year hundreds of bands form and get mediocre followings due to whatever marketing, fashion and image bullshit they manage to portray. Lots of people are tone deaf, I get that. But if the music and the songs aren't there, they're going to fizzle, probably get depressed for a while and then move on to some day job and join the rest of society.
So if the reaction to comments like that are anything OTHER than "well I'll just practice more until NOBODY can say that and mean it" then you don't have the attitude or the stomach for this industry. An industry based ENTIRELY on subjective perception and a willingness to battle the odds. Since statistically, you were fucked before you even popped out of the womb.