Musical Influences !

Rigsby

Reading through this and other "musicians/bands wanted" sites, I am always amused when people give their influences as X,Y,Z. The vast majority of the time these influences bear absolutely no resemblance to the music that is being played by their band. This gives the potential new band member a false idea of what to expect. It is as useful as naming what type of films you like to watch, or what beer you drink, IMO. So why do people list these influences ?

Malice

Rigsby wrote: »

Reading through this and other "musicians/bands wanted" sites, I am always amused when people give their influences as X,Y,Z. The vast majority of the time these influences bear absolutely no resemblance to the music that is being played by their band. This gives the potential new band member a false idea of what to expect. It is as useful as naming what type of films you like to watch, or what beer you drink, IMO. So why do people list these influences ?

I haven't found it to be the vast majority of the time. Often you can hear an influence from a particular band/musician even if the result isn't typical of the source band. Mostly I have found people will stick to more well-known bands when listing influences. Listing early Metallica as an influence will mean any self-respecting metal fan should know what to expect whereas they might not be as familiar with Evile or Mass Extinction even though the three bands are similar.

As for naming favourite beers or favourite films, surely that is useful? If someone names Budweiser as their favourite beer and they're not American then I know straight away they need a clip round the ear and a night of Żywiec, Paulaner or Erdinger .

Dord

Rigsby wrote: »

Reading through this and other "musicians/bands wanted" sites, I am always amused when people give their influences as X,Y,Z. The vast majority of the time these influences bear absolutely no resemblance to the music that is being played by their band. This gives the potential new band member a false idea of what to expect. It is as useful as naming what type of films you like to watch, or what beer you drink, IMO. So why do people list these influences ?

The only explanation I can think of is that they really don't know what they want or what they sound like. I've went to auditions for rock bands who have listed a good mix of influences only to turn up and find out that they're an off the shelf Thin Lizzy clone.

With my latest band I've tried to be as specific as possible without pigeon-holing it.

In the end though it seems that people who reply to adds will read what they want to and ignore everything else... and thus the circle of life continues.

Sandvich

Rigsby wrote: »

Reading through this and other "musicians/bands wanted" sites, I am always amused when people give their influences as X,Y,Z. The vast majority of the time these influences bear absolutely no resemblance to the music that is being played by their band. This gives the potential new band member a false idea of what to expect. It is as useful as naming what type of films you like to watch, or what beer you drink, IMO. So why do people list these influences ?

Because people who are influenced by Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode might not want to end up playing Nine Inch Nails, and vice versa. It's going to be **** if you can't talk to your band mates about about music and I think you're way exaggerating what's happening. People subconsciously take influence from everywhere, a lot of my music doesn't sound too heavily to like the music I listen to but when I sat down and really listened, I saw where I was getting most of my ideas from.

This is a bad attitude, IMO, and is part of what pushes people into playing generic rock music.

I find a lot of people make irritating assumptions of what people should play "In a band".

Rigsby

My basic point is that when looking for bandmates it would be a lot better to say something like " hoping to play something along the lines of XYZ" instead of listing their influences, which, as I have said, seldom comes anything close to what they actually intend playing IMO.

Two people who are influenced by the same band(s) will more than likely come up with completly different original material. So listing influences gives no information of what direction the potential band intends to go in.