The band was back out this past week, on Friday night at The Hop in Wakefield. This was our third visit and it's a case of 3 out of 3 good gigs really. The main thing that helps is that the pub gets busy-this is not always the case these days!- also the positioning of the stage makes the band hard to ignore, and people do tend to get involved and enjoy themselves.
This then leads to the band enjoying themselves even more, and it makes the sometimes tough job of hitting the high notes and running about far easier. You may think that a rock band in a pub would be hard to ignore, but believe me some people try!
So all in all a very good night again in Wakefield. There's a few things changing on the gig front for me at the moment. The band has been my main thing certainly for the past 2 years, but I'm feeling that as a means of promoting what I'm doing it's definetly not the easiest! It's time consuming, energy sapping work, and the rewards are skant in comparison to the effort put in. If every gig was anything like as good as The Hop it would be no problem, but of course many aren't so good and that can get you down.
So the band will be being scaled back considerably this year, maybe to the point of going into hibernation, but that's not definiete yet. (it's been a long winter!). It could be that it carries on on a more casual 'fun' basis without the same emphasis placed on progress and world domination and such like. I have to admit I'm not sure yet.
This brings in the wider issue of how much gigs help to further what I'm doing in general. And that includes all gigs, not just the band. I recently read an article in which the results of a survey were very revealing. The survey was of people's musical habits and interests and it shows that all of us can largely be put in one of four categories:
Savants, Enthusiasts, Casuals and Indifferents. The four ranging from people for whom music is everything (also known as insiders and curators) to those for whom it means very little (to quote from the survey: 'Would not lose much sleep if music ceased to exist).
And here's the bad news (to quote a well-known music publicist): That bottom group of couldn't care less folk make up 40% of the population. The casuals make up 32%, meaning that only a quarter of us are in the music-lover division. So on a typical night, that's 3 out of 4 of you heading for the door!
But it gets worse. That's assuming there's a broad cross-section of society at the gig. Of course that's never normally the case. So there may well be an audience made up of 90% from the bottom two categories. That's daunting especially if the audience numbers less than 10 to start with!
Cover bands aim for the 'Casuals' as well. But for original music, those top two sectors are vital. So which category do you fit into?
It's comforting to know that there's some statistics to back up all these years I've been braying my head against a brick wall. It's also fascinating stuff. If I'm ever to get a following I'm going to need to bear some of this in mind. And where can I target and hone in on those categories best??
On the interweb, and not in the local free entry boozer.
It makes you think doesn't it.
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