Where Have All The Bands Gone?

Friday is good because it’s music. So there are playlists. And links. Today, where have all the bands gone? Hmmm

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It was one of those weeks where I was sent the same thing a lot. This meme, or reel (or both?) asking Where Have All The Bands Gone?

Everything in the charts is by a solo act. Or a duo. But that could actually just be a typo. It might be by Dua. As in Lipa. Otherwise it’s Taylor Swift or Beyoncé or Chappell Roan or Olivia Rodrigo, or a dozen others. And if we go back a year or two it was the same. You could change a few names and keep a few the same. You could add in Harry Styles and Lana Del Rey. Go back further and you can throw Lorde in there. And by go back further, I’m still meaning recent times of course.

The people that sent me this meme/this reel wanted me to comment on it: Was this always the case? When I was listening to new music for the first time in full — aka The 90s — there were solo acts, sure. But Nirvana had sorta changed everything, and they were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off. Well, The Doors had been off for ages, but also making one of many posthumous comebacks, as the CD generation also thirsted after Led Zeppelin and The Who and Deep Purple and all the bands from the 60s and 70s, since it was finally easy and accessible to collect up their recordings.

When I was a kid I sure loved plenty of solo acts — and the pop stars, like Alison Moyet (who I wrote about here last wee) and Prince and Madonna and Lionel Richie and MJ and Cyndi Lauper were predominately solo. Though of course there was also The Culture Club and WHAM! and The Cure and Duran Duran too…

So what is the reason for the alleged death of bands?

Well, it’s simple. It’s money, init. There’s no money in music — certainly not like it was, and not in the way that there was. So there’s less motivation to start bands, because it seems ever more hopeless. Also, sideline on that, but connected to the same game still, we are in a Narcissist Generation Streak.

Ere-body wanna get Insta-famous, want to do things by their selfie, and as soon as you could replace a DJ with a computer, you could put not only the whole band inside your synthesiser, you could pack your synth down onto a laptop or tablet. Where is the need?

Also, what’s left of record companies are looking to save money too — and the solo act is the way to go there. The old-fashioned model, the mythical one that still pops up in well meaning but ultimately misguided fictional music-themed movies, is gone. Long gone.

Bands will still exist. But they’ll grow even more underground, more obscure; people in it for the music rather than the fame. Which is actually only a good thing after all.

Whole genres like metal and jazz will continue to be about the band — for, in jazz, even if it’s only one person’s name on the marque, that one person requires everyone in the band to turn up, to pack their ‘A’ game, to deliver.

Also, where is it written that a band is the secret sauce to good music? Sometimes the wunkerkind at the wheel truly is the real deal, be they Beck or Prince or Todd Rundgren; or Kaki King, or Bjork, or Joni Mitchell, or Esperanza Spalding for that matter. Sometimes the band really is about one person at the front (anything Jack White related) or the one doing the actual creating of magic (Stewart Copeland, he’s the reason I can still listen To The Police) or both of those concepts/contexts (Brian Wilson).

The Police: Synchronicity - 40th Anniversary Edition/s

And what about all those band that were ultimately garbage? Like Garbage. Like Live. Like Nickelback. Like Collective Soul. And like Hootie & The Motherfucking Blowfish (not actually an anonymous group of chums in support of a guy called Hootie, but a band of mates formed from college days with a lead singer named Darius Rucker).

Earlier this week I caught up with the Nickelback doco on Netflix: Hate to Love. Look, it’s kinda interesting, not terrible (like most of their music) but it does involve a great degree of the single white whine. Their pino grievance amounting to why don’t you like me? Which is irrelevant when you’ve been as financially compensated as them; they were making cynically inoffensive music, trying to driftnet fish across radio and TV formats, and the apparent critical backlash hurt their feelings. To which you can shout diddums, but they’d barely hear you from behind their double-glazing.

I also read Darius Rucker’s brand new memoir, Life’s Too Short. And, yes, you’re thinking that title sums up your feelings around why you wouldn’t read it. But it’s a great book. I’ve always been a fan of music books about the artists I care less about. For a start, this is where you actually learn, and you have less at stake.

When Hootie and/or his Blowfish was glowing up all over several screens and every radio station, I couldn’t have hated the band more. I did so without ever really hearing the music; but it glanced my cheek whenever I brushed past a car stereo or walked into certain bars, or student hostel rooms for a while there, 30 years ago.

Cracked Rear View was released 30 years ago, almost to the day. It was basically Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill in a Chambray shirt, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon. It was so entirely not for me that I appear to have blanked from my mind that I actually performed a few of its songs in a covers band the year or two after its release.

In CD collections all over colleges in the mid-90s, Alanis Morissette discs and Hootie Blowfish discs would mate, and watch FRIENDS, then no longer be mates, would have moved out of just the friend zone

This further-dumbed-down Counting Crows was not for me. Even though I quite liked Crash Test Dummies (for the irony and sarcasm in the lyrics, and some genuinely surprising hooks) and the Spin Doctors (for the drummer).

Just as I can tell you I now like Creed (and mostly mean it) but I’ll never care about Nickelback.

I loved Darius Rucker’s memoir. It made a whole lot of sense that Darius was not the enemy when he went country. He is a country singer. And I loved his duet with Lionel Richie. And mostly supported the idea that he had a full blown country career (without ever stopping by to check it out). Upon completing the book, I decided to listen to Cracked Rear View. I honestly don’t reckon I ever had. It’s really not bad but probably still not for me. But what was that hatred I felt at that time? That was just patch-protecting. The way so many people can’t stand Foo Fighters because it feels like some betrayal; the way Pearl Jam went from quite-good to boring to loathe-some so many times that they’re now just getting Longplay/Fairplay awards, like some Gen X Rolling Stones; the way the Chili Peppers were always excruciating save for one single album and a few fun early song-stomps, but again, are some sort of Gen X Small Faces or something? They’re not fit for any of that nonsense. But this is what happens when nostalgia rubs its muzzle all across the steamy windows of the car carrying old music.

Card-carrying fans sign up and stick their banner on the lawn. And ‘band’ suggests ‘Real Music’, means authentic, or something. Solo act suggests “pop”, tells you hair today, but gone tomorrow. Purely a fashion thing. Can’t be good.

Well I’d rather hear Fabiana Palladino —

…than anything ‘new’ by Greta Van Fleet:

Both artists are capable players, both are working in the modern era and actively courting nostalgia. But Fabiana feels real. Greta feels flaccid and silly.

And I tried — once again with The National earlier this year.

Gig Review: The National Pushes Its Songs Through The Squall To Almost Delight All

I tried really hard. Much harder than the band, if anything. I just couldn’t do it. Wasn’t convinced. So what that there was a bunch of them. It didn’t linger, didn’t really mean anything.

Bands, solo artists, duos, trios, whatever works — there’s gold from all of them. Just as there’s some shit. And if you can’t find bands anymore, who cares? Why are you looking in the fucking pop charts for bands?

So it’s a silly argument is what I’m saying, designed only to make you feel morally superior because you paid cash down on the counter for your music when it mattered. And that’s supposed to still mean something. It can mean what you like, when you want it to, in your room when you’re listening, when the world is tucked away out of earshot. But don’t tell the kids of today their music doesn’t mean shit. That’s just a weird flex that feels like a PTSD because your folks once said it to you.

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And of course, it’s Friday, so let’s end on a happy note, or series of happy notes…that means a playlist for you to take with you as you leave. Have this one to start your weekend — or of course listen to it as often as you like, wherever, whenever: