OT - Why Are Bands Mysteriously Disappearing? (by R. Beato)

[Jose EB5AGV]

I know Rick Beato has here some detractors (just skip this 🙏) but, for me, this video has raised some questions and, even if I "knew" it, I was not "aware" of it being that much.

 

If you are curious, just take a look:

 

 

 

[Docbop]

The Music business has always focused on getting music for as low a cost as possible that sells in great quantities.  You had to have a track record of making money to get big budgets.  Then combine with advances in recording since the 2000's.   Then the pandemic and people started honing their recording skills and learning to work via the internet.   Now anyone can get some of the best players in the world to record a track for $$ and send it back a win-win for both sides.     The world moves on and the music business runs in cycles so bands will become a thing again.    As I tell people you can't  make a come back unless you leave. 

[JoJoB3]

1 hour ago, Docbop said:

As I tell people you can't  make a come back unless you leave. 

Ha! That's great

'clicks' are the new currency

[BluMunk]

If folks are curious about the "why" that Beato posits, it's that:

 

1. Tastes have changed
2. Technology makes it easier for individuals to produce quality music from the comfort of their homes without needing to involve other musicians

3. It's maintaining a band and navigating the personal shit that can be involved is not easy (and if you can do it yourself, why suffer through that stuff?)

4. It's cheaper and easier from a marketing perspective to be an individual than a band

 

It all makes sense to me. I'd add onto #3 (based on nothing more than my old-man observations) that "dealing with other people is not worth the hassle, and technology can enable me to get by without direct human interaction" is an attitude that has been changing the landscape of countless corners of our lives for years now. And, it feeds on itself- the more time we spend alone, the less practiced we are in navigating the challenges (and reaping the rewards) of true collaboration, of putting up with other people, of relying on others, and of becoming someone others can rely on.

 

To get philosophical in a different direction: I also think a lot about how the 'ideal state' of music creation/consumption is itself a product of technology, time, and place. There's no reason that rock bands should be forever (not that Beato was making that argument in this video).  

[JamPro]

I am remembering the Jason Aldean's big hit "Try that in a small town" supposedly had eight writers.

[ProfD]

Bands disappeared from R&B back in the 1980s.

 

Mint Condition was the last standing self-contained R&B band.

 

The Roots brought a band to Hip-Hop music. They're now the house band on late night TV. 

 

Otherwise, R&B and Hip-Hop are artist driven. Whenever the artists have to perform or tour, their MD will pull a band together. 

 

Thankfully, if they're not self-taught, musicians have been able to hone their chops  mostly in churches and music schools.

 

Sequencers, drum machines and samplers changed the game in R&B and Hip-Hop music. Cheaper from a music production perspective. 

 

I guess it took a while for other genres to catch up.😎

[Docbop]

14 minutes ago, ProfD said:

Bands disappeared from R&B back in the 1980s.

 

Mint Condition was the last standing self-contained R&B band.

 

The Roots brought a band to Hip-Hop music. They're now the house band on late night TV. 

 

Otherwise, R&B and Hip-Hop are artist driven. Whenever the artists have to perform or tour, their MD will pull a band together. 

 

Thankfully, if they're not self-taught, musicians have been able to hone their chops  mostly in churches and music schools.

 

Sequencers, drum machines and samplers changed the game in R&B and Hip-Hop music. Cheaper from a music production perspective. 

 

I guess it took a while for other genres to catch up.😎

 

R&B has a long tradition of record labels having their own great studio bands.  Stax, Atlantic, Motown, MFSB,  Hi Records with the Hodges Brothers, George Clinton and his assortment of singers and musicians.    

[GovernorSilver]

Some comments seen on other forums are along the lines of "The bands here are so awful, I wish they got the memo from Beato to disappear"

[MathOfInsects]

49 minutes ago, ProfD said:

Whenever the artists have to perform or tour, their MD will pull a band together. 

This was the case for most pop stars too. There was a brief period of time where "bands" as a self-contained concept were a thing, but those were the exception. In most cases, an artist was signed, a hit was produced, and a band was assembled to $upport that hit. This was even true with "girl groups" and "boy groups," where all the singing members were hand-picked by a producer to fit the pre-made concept, and the rest was put together by the producer in the studio, until the time came to tour. 

RB just happens to be from the brief period of time--and focused on a specific genre--where bands were a more common phenomenon. Without watching the video (which I'm going to opt of), I'd have to argue that he was just more familiar with the bands back then, so thought there were more of them, and now it's just a wash of pop and rap to him, so it all seems different.

[ProfD]

19 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

There was a brief period of time where "bands" as a self-contained concept were a thing, but those were the exception.

In Rock music, there have been plenty bands across the various styles of it (Punk, Metal, New Wave, Grunge, Alternative, etc.).

 

There's no shortage of 4-5 piece Rock ensembles gigging up to present. 

 

I haven't watched RB's video either but I'd imagine the bands that spoke to his generation may be fading fast.😁😎

[MathOfInsects]

32 minutes ago, ProfD said:

In Rock music, there have been plenty bands across the various styles of it (Punk, Metal, New Wave, Grunge, Alternative, etc.).

 

There's no shortage of 4-5 piece Rock ensembles gigging up to present. 

 

I haven't watched RB's video either but I'd imagine the bands that spoke to his generation may be fading fast.😁😎

Right, I put that confusingly. There was a brief period of time where bands were what people thought of when they thought of pop music--where if you named an act, it was understood to be a band. But that time came and went. 60's and 90's mostly. And even then, a lot of groups we thought of as bands, were put together to tour and we thought of those people as the "band." I don't think the proportion is really any different right now. (Meaning, I agree with you.)

[ProfD]

1 hour ago, Docbop said:

R&B has a long tradition of record labels having their own great studio bands.  Stax, Atlantic, Motown, MFSB,  Hi Records with the Hodges Brothers, George Clinton and his assortment of singers and musicians.    

Sure. R&B studio band/musicians worked heavy in the 1960s and 1970s. They were replaced with technology.

 

There were also self-contained bands like Earth, Wind & Fire, Isley Brothers, Ohio Players, Maze, aforementioned Parliament/Funkadelic, Lakeside, Con Funk Shun, Slave, Blackbyrds, etc. They were also replaced by technology. 

 

I admire the fact that Nashville didn't fall into that trap with Country music.

 

Then again, the economy of Nashville is dependent on working musicians and ancillary businesses tied to the music industry.

 

Nashville literally cannot afford to replace drummers with MPCs and musicians with sequencers. Strike up the bands.😎

[Stan Martin]

Locally, there are usually a few people/agents who sell to bars and clubs, when they would get something, they'd go thru their phone book and hire the pieces that they need. I still get calls from SoFla occasionally for gigs, and I haven't lived there for years.

[El Lobo]

Everything he says is true – he has the data – it's a fact about how recorded music is made today. There may be no bands in the top of the "charts" (read: plays on Spotify) and it's mostly solo artists now. But there will always be bands, not in the top of the pops, but they will always be around – because there is nothing more fun than playing good live music with other musicians, except maybe one thing ... but that's hard to come by (pardon the phrase). 

[YashN]

It's more about what's in the charts than live gigs. Live gig bands aren't disappearing.

[ProfD]

24 minutes ago, El Lobo said:

...because there is nothing more fun than playing good live music with other musicians, except maybe one thing ... but that's hard to come by (pardon the phrase). 

I approve of this message in its entirety.🤣

 

Thankfully, the hard part is still easy to manage too.😁😎

[cphollis]

Very interesting discussion for me. 

 

I put my band together on the basis that people would enjoy seeing talented musicians performing and interacting with each other.  It's a powerful human experience you just can't get from recorded media.  I'd describe us as a project band that stays local and avoids bars.  We'll play once or twice a month during "season" in FL -- no more than that.

 

That which is scarce is often valuable as well.

 

Caveats: we're doing this for fun, no one is trying to make a living, and if I wasn't personally funding some "band expenses" there would be no band.

 

As others have noted, I think the pendulum has reached its apogee and and now starting to swing back.   Good live music by ensemble performers -- at reasonable volumes -- creates a social experience that many people crave whether they're young or older like me.  It's a blast to see a bunch of 20-somethings vibing to older songs that their grandparents dug.

 

Acts that are only one or two performers, or use backing tracks, lots of rap, unrehearsed, etc. -- never get any traction in our local market.   Good drives out bad.  People want to think they're seeing something special.  I'm aware of two newer projects in town that are copying liberally from our format and set lists.  More power to them.

 

Great live music has always been associated with destinations: Nashville, Austin et. al.  I think that's going to be a model going forward -- Disney doesn't come to you, you travel to see Disney.  The majority of our FB fans are people who vacation in our town, and we're part of their experience.

 

Whether anyone can make any money at this stuff remains a work in progress . 

 

 

[Old No7]

17 hours ago, El Lobo said:

But there will always be bands, not in the top of the pops, but they will always be around – because there is nothing more fun than playing good live music with other musicians, except maybe one thing ...

 

Amen to that.  But it's "3 things", if you include my black Lab and a pour of Jack Daniels.

 

 

5 hours ago, cphollis said:

Good live music by ensemble performers -- at reasonable volumes -- creates a social experience that many people crave whether they're young or older like me.  It's a blast to see a bunch of 20-somethings vibing to older songs that their grandparents dug.

 

+1 to that too.  We have an active "school of rock" type of program near me (I am in one of their adult bands, getting back into it after way too many years off...) and it's terrific to see the song selections the junior bands choose...  They just don't listen -- they're playing those older songs!

 

Old No7

[AROIOS]

Beato click-baiting as usual.

 

His question suffers from a typical logical fallacy called "Loaded Question". These type of questions are "loaded" with unproven presumptions. By answering the question, you fall into the trap of agreeing with their premises. An example would be "Why is Beato losing bladder control?

There are plenty of new bands around these days. Being a producer in a major city, there's no way Beato doesn't see that.

 

The simple reasons fewer bands show up in Pop charts are: 1) the channels/gatekeepers aren't promoting them; 2) consumer taste is largely a result of channel/gatekeeper conditioning.

 

If the channels/gatekeepers bombard today's kids with Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, that's what you'll see dominating charts 10 years down the road, not just bands, big big bands!

The technical aspect of music production contributing to fewer prominent bands is incidental. It wouldn't explain the success of popular bands in the 80s~00's.

 

Again, there's no way Beato doesn't understand all that, having worked in the industry for so long. He purposely narrowed his focus to the meaningless charts to generate buzz and traffic for his channel.

[SamuelBLupowitz]

Lots I agree with in the above replies, and I just want to offer another perspective: 

 

The cost of housing is exponentially higher than it was 30 or 40 (or even 10) years ago.

 

That impacts having a place to rehearse without pissing off the neighbors, and/or how much money folks have left over to rent a rehearsal space after covering that major segment of income. And I know everyone on this forum has been a part of the "the club gig rates haven't gone up since 1983" discussion -- if the gigging income hasn't gone up, that's even less you have to spend on a place to get together and make noise, never mind all the equipment (instruments, mics, PA) that goes along with that. 

That gives the monied corporate tastemakers even more of a voice in who we hear, and we know if we're seeing a tight band, there's an invisible financial advantage in place, however small it might be, 90% of the time. Surely that's always been the case, but the margins are a lot thinner, so the barrier to entry is ... higher? Taller? You know what I mean.

 

And for an even younger generation, growing up now: how many of us got our start playing in bands rehearsing in our parents' garage or basement? What happens when your parents can't afford to buy or rent a house with a garage or basement?

 

Like so many good things in this world, the issue is not lack of talent or desire or commitment, it's availability of resources.

[cphollis]

+1 to lack of rehearsal spaces inhibiting band formation -- along with lack of suitable venues.

 

As I schemed to put my local band together a few years back, it became clear that (a) we would want a dedicated rehearsal space, and (b) there weren't many local venues that would give an untested band a go in front of their clientele.

 

Rehearsing in residential areas is a throw of the dice -- you never know how the neighbors are going to react.  Some bands in town rehearse in commercial buildings after hours, but that's sketchy as well.  It took me a bit of effort to secure a suitable spot for my project.  Oh, and make sure to bring lots of money -- asking band members to share the rent is a non-starter in most situations.

 

The bigger problem was cracking the "venue wall" -- most venue owners aren't jumping at putting untested acts in front of their paying customers.  We broke through with some nice demo videos and a few "free" gigs.  I figured if people liked what they heard, things would take care of themselves.  That's what happened.

 

Things have improved since then, at least locally.  There are a few civic events that now will put untested acts on stage, frequently with predictable results.  Gotta learn somehow.  The guy who's trying to rent rehearsal spaces is probably finding out that most bands are broke, and can't/won't pay his freight.  

 

The most interesting part of band formation -- for me -- was that no one had really documented about how they went about doing it.  By comparison, if you wanted to start a small business, there's no shortage of online resources.  

[ProfD]

Technology as @BluMunk mentioned above and I'll add, competing forms of entertainment are factors too.

 

Along with synthesizers, drum machines, sequencers, samplers etc., video games, cable TV and sports have becomes alternative forms of entertainment.

 

I don't believe a teenager growing up in the 1950s and 1960s had as many entertainment options.

 

TV was limited to 3 or 4 stations. I can imagine the music being played on the radio prior to the 1960s.😁 

 

So, comfortably bored as f8ck in the 1960s,🤣 it would make sense for young folks to pick up their instruments and head over to someone's garage to make a joyful noise.

 

Bands were born. A whole music industry sprung up  to support it too.😎

[El Lobo]

28 minutes ago, cphollis said:

The most interesting part of band formation -- for me -- was that no one had really documented about how they went about doing it.  By comparison, if you wanted to start a small business, there's no shortage of online resources.  

That's an interesting comment, an idea I haven't seen expressed before. At what I call my advanced age, I can't even remember many of the bands I've been in when they were formed. It's true - there's no rule book, no plan, no place to get advice. Each band that formed was doing it as a first time, even if the members had been in bands before. Some bands never made it out of rehearsal, some gigged for a while then came to a natural end as members moved on, others broke up in unpleasant circumstances, one band I'm in now has been going for 22 years and all the members have turned over except me, another band I'm in is like a collective - members can make some rehearsals and gigs but not others. There's no formula for How You Make A Band. I'm not sure there could be. I could write a book ... but it would be out of date as soon as it was published. 

[MathOfInsects]

I think the struggle to explain the premise ignores that no explanation is really needed. You might as well ask where all the doo-wop groups are now. It's true, there are fewer of them, if any. But they didn't "mysteriously disappear." 

 

Here is the Hot 100 chart from 1967. I didn't pick that year for any reason other than I thought it would be in the sweet spot of "band" days. Guess what? Barely any bands. Yes, some. But not compared to the individual artists, the "X and the Y's" where the Y was put together for X by a producer, and "bands" that were manufactured wholecloth for recordings and tours.

 

The premise is flawed. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1967

[Anderton]

Guess Beato's not into k-pop. Bands like the Stray Kids are huge, bigger worldwide than most (all?) rock acts. They're self-produced and three of the members do most of the songwriting, it's not 8 L.A. songwriters. Like Blackpink, they were assembled by an entertainment group, but assembling groups isn't a new thing. (My old band Mandrake was assembled as a house band for a Philly club, and went on to tour and do three albums.) 

 

Music formats change. The folk boom in the 60s was mostly bandless. When Bob Dylan showed up with a band he was booed. In the big band era, bands were sometimes referred to as "orchestras." Music has always been a mix of different performance formats. Classical music has solo performers, string quartets, symphony orchestras...the only constant is change.

 

I'd love to put together a band. It's just too much hassle. I'm sure I'm not the only person who feels this way.

 

But my main reaction to the premise is Andy Warhol's favorite phrase: So what?

 

 

[BluMunk]

3 hours ago, SamuelBLupowitz said:

Like so many good things in this world, the issue is not lack of talent or desire or commitment, it's availability of resources.

 

2 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

I think the struggle to explain the premise ignores that no explanation is really needed. You might as well ask where all the doo-wop groups are now. It's true, there are fewer of them, if any. But they didn't "mysteriously disappear." 

Yes to both of these. It's no mystery... things change, culturally, which lead to one particular style of music and music-making falling out of favor. Framing the change as a problem to be solved misses the point. Conversely, examining the whys of those changes is not in and of itself a nostalgia exercise of old dinosaurs resistant to change.

To @SamuelBLupowitz's point, I'd say it's more intertwined... lack of resources (or lack of easy pathways) lead to lack of desire, talent, and commitment. If the circumstances don't support creating bands today in the same way they did in the 70s (making an assumption and picking random dates), then of course there will be less desire. Because desire to start a band is not some innate thing born of the soul, but is a response to what's available. 

People aren't sitting around going "I really want to be in a band, but just can't"... maybe it starts that way, but eventually it turns into "why would I want to do that, it's so complicated/resource intensive?"... or even the concept never crosses their mind, because most of the models they have to look to and learn from just aren't doing music that way.

[El Lobo]

3 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

Here is the Hot 100 chart from 1967. ...  Guess what? Barely any bands. Yes, some.

The Box Tops

The Association 

The Doors

The Turtles (studio guys, but put a band on the road)

The Young Rascals 

The Music Explosion

Tommy James and the Shondells (I think I was in a show with those guys)
The Buckinghams  (I knew those guys, we played the same club)

Soul Survivors

Jay & the Techniques

Strawberry Alarm Clock

The Rolling Stones 

Buffalo Springfield 

The Beatles

Jefferson Airplane 

The Esquires

The Happenings (?)

Procul Harum

The Casinos

The Hollies

The Tremeloes (?)

The Cowsills (family band)

Herman's Hermits

The Seekers

The Hollies

Blues Magoos

The Easybeats

The Spencer Davis Group

The Grass Roots

Booker T. & the M.G.'s

The Electric Prunes

The Who

 

 

 

[Michael Wright]

2 hours ago, Anderton said:

I'd love to put together a band. It's just too much hassle. I'm sure I'm not the only person who feels this way.     

I managed our full time band,  gear,  transport, agents, contracts,  clients, money.  I  would never do it again.  

[ElmerJFudd]

Anecdotally it appears to be a pretty spot on assessment of musical trends.   Just reading the title I thought what reasons might be….

 

Technology - you don’t need a relationship with players of other instruments to write, record or perform a song.  You also don’t need to play any instrument particularly well to do it. Pitch flaws in your vocal are also no longer a factor.  
 

Trends in what styles are popular.  The type of music bands create is not at the top of the charts and hasn’t been for a while.  But that’s not to say it couldn’t easily trend another way in the future.  
 

I watched the video - splitting money across more people wasn’t the first thing that occurred to me. But yes, I can see that being a factor - also possibly the complexities of band relationships being hard to manage and their history of being destructive while on tour, ok.  Yes, that may also be a factor in getting backing from labels.  
 

Reasonable assessment from Beato.  

 

[Docbop]

So to play devil's advocate is backing tracks part of the reason bands are diminishing.    Audience just want a show, lights, big sound, dancers, special effects and musicians are just set decoration to them now.  The Boomers seem to be only ones that want to relive band in concert.  Even in small places instead of a DJ they have someone that sings with a keyboard and a laptop and can cover whatever kind of music the audience is in the mood for that night.  Streaming services don't show musician or even have credits to read.  Music video unless a Metal band most are small form movies tell a story based on lyrics.   Has music gone back to just back to just being the singer(s) and music is just there on the recording, no thought about who or how it was made.   When will the next "British Invasion" come to bring bands of musicians singing and playing return.