More proof

You know what they did when they were in Amsterdam last year or so? They sold out the entire place in thirty minutes but kept the tickets of the first two rows. These were then *given* away to hot looking young chicks so in the video footage they were shooting it looked like they still drew the attention of young women. Meanwhile the real fans (generally not young girls) couldn't get any tickets. That has nothing to do with integrity, pleasing fans or caring about music. It's pathetic and shamefull behaviour.

..making mental note to save front rows for young hot chicks at my next gig... lol.

the true fans never really get the front rows anyway. Unless they scalp them, or know someone. Those seats are usually reserved for the promoters, advertisers, local radio stations that promote the shows, friends of friends in the know, etc. No different than seeing a high profile sporting event and then watching the camera "just happen" to find a celebrity in the stands (great seats, free tickets) who "just happens" to have a show on the very same network that is broadcasting the sporting event. Amazing how that coincidence plays out over and over again. It's all done in the name of MARKETING, which is a $50 word for selling.

I like Arjen's comparason to the baker who makes bread that people like. It can be argued that any type of marketing can be called "selling out". Selling out is just selling except you're not seeing any of the money so you get angry over it. Or you're upset because that which you once felt was rebellious and decadent has now become popular and mainstream. You find yourself saying, "I was listening to these guys before they sold out". 30 years ago no one would have bet money on a Led Zeplin riff being used as a jingle to sell Caddilacs. Selling out? or just selling to a market that once identified with Zep who can now afford the price of a Caddilac?

Selling is what makes the world go round.

Just more of my 2 cents.
Mike

Sorry, where are you guys getting these exagerated numbers from?

300 a ticket? Huh?

I saw The Who last year, the ticket was 45 dollars, at Madison Square Garden. Nice seats too. I saw Clapton a few months after that, paid 80 bucks for really good seats. Elton John? 60 bucks. Billy Joel? He just played 12 sold out shows at madison square garden, breaking the record held by the Greatful Dead and Springsteen, and the most expensive seat was 90 bucks. I got tickets for Clapton in September, 100 bucks. I'm 18 by the way. And what's the difference if my parents pay for the ticket anyways?

The Who was the greatest show I've ever seen, by the way, and most old people who saw them said that they were better than they used to be.

By the way: Shows I didn't go to, The Stones, tickets were around 60. Aerosmith? Same thing.

300 bucks..yea, if you want front row and you're going through scalpers.

Nothing to add to the argument side of the discussion but to make it official: I dont believe in the words "Sell Out".. if you're a musican and can make music and that music sells big time and you make more money by changing it to a little different style or not... Go for it. Your not a sellout or else every corporation in the world should be titled as such. Its about making money and I'll watch each and every one of you guys' eyes fill with dollar signs if you get the chance.

Secondly, its hard for me to argue about the age part being that I am only a youthful 36 and fully capable of rockin my A off. But I always HATED classic rock and roll. You couldnt get me to listen to ANY of it. Well, until recently and I am loving it. About two weeks ago I changed my dial to a couple of the classics stations we have here. WOW.

That said, I think there is a TON of creativity in the more youthful bands that my generation are listening to.. and I think I argued on the side of Eminem back in the RAP argument thread.. For example, I heard a rock song today that had some sort of arabic sounding guitar in it. I think it was modern but what ever it was it was awsome. So creative.

Lemme ask this. If the same people that you say are sell outs were actually no-names on this board... but they were exhibiting the behavior of the ones you are calling sell outs.. would they be sell outs too.. Maybe on a smaller scale.. but non the less sell outs? Cause I think several of the members here regularly gig and I imagine they get the biggest price they can.. I imagine they play what the customers wanna hear (Even though they want to play their original music), and I can sure as anything bet you that they get up there and shake their money makers no matter how old they may be. To me.. they arent sell outs..

Crud.. I got in the argument.. BUT in a very FUN way.. RIGHT? LOL This is always a humerous argument in my mind.

Geoo

I think the baker analogy is actually pretty good.

What's the difference between Interstate Brands Corporation's Wonder Bread Company, the baker down the street and a world-class pastry chef Jacquy Pfeiffer?

They all make bread right?

Wonder Bread makes more money than any of them, but does anyone think that that is good bread? All it does is fill a consumer want as cheaply and efficiently as possible, with the sole goal of making money off of what everyone knows to be an inferior product. Nothing they do in terms of baking is worthy of respect. They're a great company. I own their some IBC stock. I like them as a money making machine. But I know what they make is crap. It may be well-marketted crap, but it's crap none-the-less.

Next on the income list is Jacquy. He makes stuff that's aimed at a select audience that can appreciate his art. He compromises nothing in terms of cost or effort for his products, and he's well compensated for his efforts. He doesn't do it for the money though, he does it because fine pastry is a consuming passion.

Last on the income list is the corner baker. He is also making a consumer product, but he's doing it with the care of a craftsman. He might not have the skills of Jacquy, but he wants to produce the highest quality product he can. He's not about making money either, though he hopes he will. Rather he's about making a product that pleases his customers for it's quality and value. His bread costs more than Wonder's, but he is hopefull that the care and effort he takes will provide enough value to his customers that they return to him instead of going to IBC's pre-packaged stuff. His ingreadients aren't as good as Jacquy's, but they're better than IBC's, he makes sure of that.

Of these three, I see very good analogies in the music world.

Most of the older classic rock guys started out as the musical equivilant of corner bakers. The ones I label "sell outs" are the ones that in my view have stopped giving a damn about producing anything of quality and have instead tried to become the wonder bread of rock.

Yeah, call me a sell-out, my band charges clubs to play. And I want to make the most money I can.

Sure, I love playing music, and have played thousands of times for free. I love going down to Open Mics and just jamming.

But a band is lots of work. You spend months practicing. You spend lots of money on gear. Everytime you play a gig it's like moving, except when you move you usually just pack and then unpack one time. At a gig you pack all your gear up, haul it to the club, unpack it, set-it all up, play for hours, break it all down, pack it up, haul it home, unpack it and set it up again.

At 3 A.M., not exactly the best hours.

Man, that is a lot of work. I want to get paid for that. And musicians make lots of money for people. Why do you think every club in the world pays for a band? You think they like to throw their money away? Sure. No, they know a good band draws a crowd and that people stay all night and drink. They are happy to pay you if you draw a crowd. So, why shouldn't I share in the profits?

And you have to play for the crowd if you want a crowd. This is not selling out at all. I happen to enjoy all the music we play, so there is nothing fraudulent about it.

But if you insist on being an "artist", well, there's always the Open Mic down the street. :roll:

Wes, I'm pretty sure you are completely missing what I'm saying.

Do you see me anywhere saying that making money is bad? If you do, you're failing to grok what I'm saying.

Well I for one am looking forward to seeing the Stones in August.....

And if most of the show is dedicated to their greatest hits, well so what? And if Jagger still prances around with his shirt off, so what? Hell, he's over 60 - it's 44 years since the Stones first made a dent in the charts!

I paid good money to buy all those Stones records - I think it'll be great to finally hear - and see them live after all these years!

Arjen, what Wes was getting at - I think! - was the DIVERSITY of Classic rock - there's a reason those songs from the 60's and 70's are still played on Classic Rock stations, it's because they were great songs - every band had its own unique sound (The Stones still do!) whereas these days, most of the new bands coming through sound like clones of one of those 60's/70's bands....

A case in point - the Kaiser Chiefs - hailed as a bright new influence, take a listen to their "I Predict A Riot" single - sounds to me like The Jam......

A band needs a unique identity to create a niche for itself in the market-place......and once they've found that sound, why change it? On the other hand, there are bands who aren't afraid to experiment.....all hail to them......

The great thing about music, whatever your taste there's probably a band - or a few bands - that's going to make you feel good when you hear them - The Stones still do that for me, Status Quo do it for me, John Fogerty as well - the Stones had their first hit waaaaaay back in 62, Quo and JF both in 68 - and those are the three gigs I've got tickets for this summer!

:D :D :D

Vic

A couple of years ago my wife and I were in the center of the second row at an Aerosmith concert. I noticed plenty of good-looking chicks around me trying to get the band's attention. They were mostly 40-50 years old, but they looked fine to me. :lol:

I was a big bald guy in a silk shirt with Gibson electric guitars on it, and a big grin. Steven Tyler stared at me several times with a look like "Do I KNOW this guy?" :lol:

I thought they were having a ball onstage, and really sort of parodying their rockstar image. At the "encore," Tyler came out with a little Barbie-type doll of Liv in his hip pocket, and wearing a T-shirt that said "Lucky F___er" on it. He was slinging his mic stand around, wearing wrist supporters to do it. He tried to do a flip, fell on his butt, and got up laughing. And at the very end of the show, he said "Please drive carefully. Good night, and God bless!" I don't remember anything like that when I saw 'em back in the '70s.
8)

Wes, I'm pretty sure you are completely missing what I'm saying.

Do you see me anywhere saying that making money is bad? If you do, you're failing to grok what I'm saying.

Kingpatzer

I think I do understand you. You are saying the Rolling Stones are simply writing music to make money. They are not doing it to express themselves as artists. This is selling out.

But I don't see how this could be possible. The Stones are still playing Blues based songs like they were in the '60s. They have always been a Blues Rock band.

Seems to me if they were selling out they would all tune down their 7 string guitars and try to play like all the modern bands do.

So, I do not see how they are selling out at all. All the bands that just copy the current popular band, these are the sell-outs to me.

I always thought that selling out was changing your music to fit the will of the studio moguls in order to make more money. I don't think anyone is telling the Stones what to play.

Seems to me if they were selling out they would all tune down their 7 string guitars and try to play like all the modern bands do.

Right now there isn't a single downtuning, 7-string wielding band in the top40.

Vic: Again, what do you consider variation? It's all chord-driven, pop-song-structure, drum/bass/guitar/vocals/(keys), with pentatonic solos, mildly overdriven rhythm guitar with half the lyrics being about love. What on earth name IS that fabled diversity? When I put the Beatles, Stones and Led Zep together the diversity isn't half that of modern bands like Muse, Portishead, Keane. Different instruments, different song structures, different scales and harmonies, vastly different subjects, it's just more varied in every shape or form. It really doesn't take too long to hear that bands like AC/DC, Led Zep and the stones ALL play basically the same music. How else would you call three bands that play exactly the same chord progression, with basically the same sound and singing about the same stuff?

Ofcourse, if you happen to like it you will see the diversity. Like rap people see the diversity in all the different rap genres. Like electronic people see the difference between old school and trance, ambient and grindcore. Classical people can talk hours about the difference between Beethoven and Chopin. And to be perfectly honest, it kinda pisses me off to see people here bash modern music on the wrong grounds. If you seriously think my generation is just hacking powerchords on their ibanez 7-string then you are really not that well informed.

The simple truth is that every generation is MORE diverse then the one before. People are still writing classical music, big-band jazz, classic rock, oldschool blues etc. But we also add to it. Your generation added classic rock. The one before added Jazz. The one before modern classical. The one before renaissance classical. With the massive advancement in technology everyone can write their own records these days and you see so many people doing so many different things, simply because they can and want to do it. We've seen a huge variaty of electronical genres mixed with existing types of music. Rock has been given an impulse by bands that do not follow the typical pop structure. I am fully convinced that the diversity of music will be even larger with the next generation. They will take everything my generation did and add their stuff to it. And that's a good thing.

I really hope you'll have a great time watching the Stones. Some folks around me went to Amsterdam (all of them were fans) and they loved it. But please, no matter what kind of music you, the reader, likes, don't blindly assume the previous generations were more creative and original then folks these days. There's enough talent out there that deserves a bit more respect then that.

...diversity...Keane...
Keane = Coldplay = Snow Patrol = blah = blah = ZZZzzz.

http://www.EverythingSoundsLikeColdplayNow.com/

I have to agree with Arjen here, I don't think you can generalize and say that the bands today aren't as creative as they were in the 60 - 70's. that's just not true. Whether you like the music or not is a matter of taste but the talent level surely hasn't dried up since the classic rock era.

So much of music is all about the individual and how it effects them personally along with your environment, the time in your life etc.

To me it has more to do with the stage in life you are in that has a profound effect on how you view a bnads music.

When classic rock was big in the 70's I was in my teens and that music had a totally different effect on me than someone say like my daughters who might hear the same song today but it won't have an impact on them the same way as it did to me even though we were chronologically hearing it at the same age, but for her it's thirty years later and alot has changed and so will the impact the music has on a person.

Music is so subjective it's all in the ears of the listener.

Anyone who thinks bands/artists aren't as creative today as XY decade doesn't listen to enough music. period.

BTW, I distinctly remember thinking the 70's were a musically wasteland at the time -- but that came from listening to only popular music. Then I went to university and discovered a decent radio station (XTR, Chicago), and all that changed.

i agree with both Vic and Arjen on this one, because i don't think the opinions are mutually exclusive.

in the context of the times, or the footing for what the earlier artists were building on or drawing from it's easy to say that in that light (at that time) they were breaking new ground or near enough to be building a fresh row on the newly formed modern rock wall.
todays contributions are not any less inovative really but in a totally different referance (imo) because the groundwork for a lot of what we hear seems familiar. in the early days of modern R&R there was little other than blues or R&B to reference, now we actually have several decades of it to reflect on.
imo the new artists today have a lot harder time finding a "new" sound while using the same basic structures.
that's why Rap , Electronica, (in all it's forms) and any other amalgamation you can describe seem so foriegn to a lot of us old timers and traditionalists. they only draw on the previous forms what they need and disreguard the rest. so instead of just coming up with a "catchy new tune" they (like the R&R pioneers of the 60s) are actually creating new music styles.