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Music Scene In Ireland

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  • #122
    Shapey Fiend
    Registered Users Posts: 1,994 ✭✭✭Shapey Fiend


    My experience of the Irish gig scene (I reviewed a lot of bands for a music website in Cork) is that 90% of them are DULL. There's so much underwhelming indie music going around that the whole genre is saturated. I think that's a sign of too much support not a lack of it. If you're main influence is Radiohead in 2011 then you're a boring act.

    Three of the bands playing Oxegen this year came out of the Irish hip hop 'scene' (http://www.irishhiphop.com/forum/read.php?11,142738). Most of the Irish hip hop community spent the past 10 years playing gigs to rooms of other rappers and 5 of their mates. Not only were people not interested in hearing the music, they were actively hostile towards it. Maverick Sabre started singing over dubstep and doing reggae stuff. The Original Rudeboys (Neddy) started doing saccarine love songs that birds like. The Rubberbandits started singing and turning their live sets into a theatrical stage show. They're all doing really well.

    The rest of the community who stuck to traditional hip hop started doing rap battles. This has nothing to do with music but these day time events dragged in a load of punters, most of them under 18 who buy loads of CD's. The youtube channel helps with exposure (people actually know what people look like and what they're about) and they use that as a channel to get hits on their music videos. These battle events mostly consist of rappers insulting each others music and making ugly remarks about their girlfriends yet there's no real bad blood between anybody because it gets everybody on a stage together to hash the thing out.

    I suppose what I'm saying is live rap music is boring. Live indie music is boring. You have to bring something extra at this stage to have a hope of filling a venue. Getting traction on the internet is getting really, really difficult as well. It's going to take more interaction between musicians to create destinations or channels that have regular content and plenty of google juice. You stick a music video on youtube these days and unless it's on a channel with lots of subscribers or it has some humour aspect it dies on its arse.


  • #123
    SeanHurley
    Registered Users Posts: 347 ✭✭SeanHurley


    hmmm guitar solo battles?:D


  • #124
    krd
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,455 ✭✭✭krd


    SeanHurley wrote: »
    hmmm guitar solo battles?:D

    No, FFF'ing way.

    If you want guitar battles go down to MusicMaker now.

    All the school kids will be battling each other out with snippetts of solos they've learned. It is hell.


  • #125
    SeanHurley
    Registered Users Posts: 347 ✭✭SeanHurley


    krd wrote: »
    No, FFF'ing way.

    If you want guitar battles go down to MusicMaker now.

    All the school kids will be battling each other out with snippetts of solos they've learned. It is hell.

    Strangely enough I was in MusicMaker at lunch time and sure enough there were a group of young fellas who were butchering solos in front of a few young wans. The lads working in MM must need counselling at the end of the working week.


  • #126
    krd
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,455 ✭✭✭krd


    Shapey Fiend wrote: »
    I suppose what I'm saying is live rap music is boring. Live indie music is boring. You have to bring something extra at this stage to have a hope of filling a venue. .

    Neither live indie or rap are boring. It's the way their done. It's like telling a joke. There's so much more to it than just the words.

    And it's the people. If the people are essentially boring people it will come across in their music. It comes across in their performance.

    And you can't hide it with gimics. One band I can't remember the name of, the singer used to do all kinds of tricks like cycling on a unicycle and juggling. They were still ****e.

    Look at the way Christy Moore engages and audience. It's really simple. He talks and tells a few stories between his songs. If you look at the way so many Irish indie bands perform: wide eyed blank stares, no effort to engage anyone. Musicians trying to play over each other (one of the most fundamental things musicians have to learn to do is not play over each other - nobody gives a flying f about the drummers snare - if he's trying to battle the singer with it he's a sh1te drummer)

    I think these people look at the "stars" and think that if only a record company would come along and spend a fortune on them, the same charisma would magically materialise. It doesn't happen that way.


    The guys doing the rap battles I think really have something. And they're learning on their feet.


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  • #127
    krd
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,455 ✭✭✭krd


    SeanHurley wrote: »
    Strangely enough I was in MusicMaker at lunch time and sure enough there were a group of young fellas who were butchering solos in front of a few young wans. The lads working in MM must need counselling at the end of the working week.

    Imagine having to put up with that for several months.

    An experience I've had which I know other people have had too: The drummer who will not quit fff'ing around in rehearsals. In between songs -- while you're trying to talk to the others and work out arrangements, Animal from the Muppets, keeps banging his drums (way louder and harder than he does in any of the songs). You're trying to tune up, he deliberately f's with the drums. And does it in such and annoying way that everyone ends up with a splitting headache. And it's not just drummers - sometimes you have the guitar hero who keeps breaking into Sweet Child of Mine between songs. You're trying to think over your songs and the wanker is filling your head with Sweet Child of Mine. I think that's what really causes the headaches - you're trying to think of one piece of music and you have another piece of music being played very loudly in your ear.


  • #128
    Shapey Fiend
    Registered Users Posts: 1,994 ✭✭✭Shapey Fiend


    dp


  • #129
    Shapey Fiend
    Registered Users Posts: 1,994 ✭✭✭Shapey Fiend


    I suppose what I'm trying to say is if you're doing something different than everybody else is doing then you don't necessarily have to be the very best. Not everybody is that talented. There are too many similar bands around with similar influences. If you're bringing something new to the table it doesn't have to be perfect.

    Live rap is incredibly hard to do well though. There's a reason most of the top touring acts are rock. If you're playing on a bad soundsystem with rock the melody still carries. 90% of the rap gigs I go to you can't make out the lyrics and there's not much melody to fall back on. People have to rely on the rhythm of the delivery, crowd interaction and other stuff to help compensate. It can be done it's just requires a lot of talent/hard work. I've seen a couple of people like MJEX and The Informatics whose style of hip hop translates well to a live setting (although it's not necessarily my favorite on record) and it's fair to say they've gotten there by incorporating more singing/dance/melodic elements.


  • #130
    krd
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,455 ✭✭✭krd


    Shapey Fiend wrote: »
    I suppose what I'm trying to say is if you're doing something different than everybody else is doing then you don't necessarily have to be the very best. Not everybody is that talented. There are too many similar bands around with similar influences. If you're bringing something new to the table it doesn't have to be perfect.

    You do have to be different. And if you're bring something new to the table it doesn't need to be perfect - basically you will get absolutely nowhere if you try and ape the artic monkeys or Oasis.

    And it doesn't just restrict itself to Ireland. I saw a bunch of new English indie bands play in Dublin a few months back - and they had aped each other so much it wasn't even funny.

    Live rap is incredibly hard to do well though.

    It is an it isn't. You have to look at the origins of rap. The Jamaican sound system shouters - and the New York street party MCs (which were just an extension of what the Jamaicans had been doing) - even the beat poets - it goes back. It's something that really started as a live thing. And it took a long time for it to become a recorded thing.

    There's a reason most of the top touring acts are rock. If you're playing on a bad soundsystem with rock the melody still carries.

    It can depend on the style of rap - the shouty stuff carries very well. The beasty boys have done very well for years. Eminem was selling out monstrous venues a few years back. Remember he was booked to play Slane.

    I've heard the streets live are awful. He just talks into the mic - and can't get the delivery to work as well as it does on the records.
    90% of the rap gigs I go to you can't make out the lyrics and there's not much melody to fall back on.

    I've seen that. And I think it's often not the sound system. It's the rapper has lost his bottle and is just mumbling into the mic. The Mic is wired up to the sound system - unless it's completely f'd if you speak up you will be heard.

    There is another thing - the sound man may be a tosser - or if you have someone playing beats they might also be a real terrible tosser who thinks they're meant to be competing with the rapper, so they drown them out - those people should have tosser tattoo'd across their foreheads.

    There is a lot of rap that has been recorded by the rapper rapping very quietly into a mic - that will just not work on stage. I've seen Fiddy do it - and it just came out as an inaudible mumble.
    People have to rely on the rhythm of the delivery, crowd interaction and other stuff to help compensate. It can be done it's just requires a lot of talent/hard work.

    I've seen Youtube clips of the Irish guys doing battles - they're more shouty. I think they have the talent - some of the subject matter is a bit off.

    I'll say one thing, some of the stuff coming out of London - kids rapping over dubstep - quite a bit of it is sickeningly violent. There's nothing entertaining in having a scumbag tell you how he's going to stab you -several times. The misogyny can be sicking to.

    Where people go wrong with hip-hop and rap - and not just here, lots of other places. They think it's all about the look, and the posing. You could say the same for indie. What made Eminem so big was all the crazy stuff he came out with. You really have to have something to say.


  • #131
    flyswatter
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,625 ✭✭✭flyswatter


    As regards live rap, just look at The Roots live videos on youtube, to see how it should be done. Everyone in that band are incredible musicians. Takes real talent to carry it off though.


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  • #132
    Shapey Fiend
    Registered Users Posts: 1,994 ✭✭✭Shapey Fiend


    It isn't so much that the guy from the Streets talks it's that he writes his lyrics to be as off beat as possible. It's kind of an interesting style but I can imagine it'd be horrible live.

    The thing is I've seen Public Enemy a few times and sometimes they're great and other times they're bloody awful. Last time I saw them in the Savoy the sound was awful and they resorted to doing medlys of choruses from other people hip hop songs and way too much "which side of the audience is loudest" bollocks cos their own songs were falling flat.


  • #133
    madtheory
    Registered Users Posts: 1,892 ✭✭✭madtheory


    Shapey Fiend wrote: »
    Last time I saw them in the Savoy the sound was awful
    This happens a lot in that place. You'd think they'd have figured it out by now, and realised that it's affecting numbers.

    I mentioned poor sounding venues way back at the beginning of this thread... a lot of venue owners/ managers don't realise that a good PA pays off.


  • #134
    madtheory
    Registered Users Posts: 1,892 ✭✭✭madtheory


    krd wrote: »
    Brunker's talent (and what she may have worked at) is not anything you could describe as musical. Her talent is drawing attention to herself. So many "serious" musicians you see around perform and look like, the most boring people you could possibly meet - waiting for a bus.
    I agree that a lot of bands are rubbish at entertaining people, and that is a major problem. They're also rubbish at selling themselves, as I said earlier. But that doesn't make Brunker anything other than a deluded self promoter.

    Perhaps that is the point you're making, but I've missed it...


  • #135
    krd
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,455 ✭✭✭krd


    madtheory wrote: »
    I agree that a lot of bands are rubbish at entertaining people, and that is a major problem. They're also rubbish at selling themselves, as I said earlier. But that doesn't make Brunker anything other than a deluded self promoter.

    She's deluded if she believes she's a musician. She's deluded if she thinks she could do karoke. That she's a talent show judge is a travesty.

    I don't even think she's such an arch self promoter. I think she's one of these people from a particular Irish social set, who just says one morning "I want to write for a newspaper" and viola, she has a column with the Indo.

    Delusion in this country is in no short supply. In fact we have it in a painful overabundance.

    Please do not encourage people to "sell themselves" - it leads to all sorts of bad things.

    If you're rubbish at entertaining people you should not be on a stage full stop.

    What makes people entertaining is so hard to quantify. Like guitar virtuosos can be as boring as watching paint dry. Where rank amateurs can be riveting.

    If you've ever heard very early live recordings of U2, before they even made their first album - you would be shocked at how ropey they were, Bono could not sing - he was awful. Yet they used to pack places out.


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