Episode 37 – “You know I love getting scared in the woods…”

Welcome to Songs That Don’t Suck with your host, Mark Bradbourne.

Welcome to Episode 37 of Songs That Don’t Suck. Thank you for checking out the episode.

So I was reading an article this weekend and it was talking about concerts and the concert industry and how things have changed, some of it due to COVID, some of it due to generational behavior changes, and I found the whole thing really interesting. The really great thing that the article points out is that live music has returned, right? Post-COVID, you know, bands are announcing tours at a pretty regular clip. Bands from Europe are coming over to the United States, bands from the United States are going over to Europe and Asia Pacific. So it’s good, but there have been some effects due to COVID, mainly around equipment and staffing, which have been really interesting. The equipment side of it, tour buses sat idle for more than two years, and when a automobile or a vehicle sits, it breaks down, it becomes unreliable because these things aren’t being maintained, they’re not being run. So a lot of smaller bands or midsize bands that would do a bus for a tour have had to kind of downgrade and they’re back in the big four to conoline vans like they probably were when they were just starting out. The larger acts, of course, are snapping up the buses that are still working because they can just buy them outright, but the interesting thing for the larger tours is that they’re struggling to find roadies because a lot of folks who worked in the music industry as the road crew left because they were unemployed for so long. So it’s been really interesting. Acts are obviously making it work, right?

But there’s some other issues that are starting to arise. This one’s due really to, I think, the generational shift, right? So there’s a couple of people to point fingers at. Our ticketmaster live nation, ticket seller people, scalpers, all of that bullshit. The greed around that has just become insane. The random convenience bullshit charges that turn a $25 ticket into a $50 ticket is just, I don’t know how long this bullshit can continue before we need another Pearl Jam style uprising that happened back in the 90s. But something has got to happen because every time I buy a ticket, just frustrates the crap out of me. But the other thing where we’re seeing a lot of greed is actually in the venues themselves. That’s due to this generational behavior change that I was talking about, and it’s hitting really the smaller venues. Your larger venues, it’s going to have enough volume generally that you’re not going to see it so much. The smaller venues where Gen Z generally is going to see music with these smaller acts, they’re not making bar revenue because Gen Z is not drinking. It’s expensive. So they are pre-gaming at home. Maybe they’re taking an edible or two, or maybe they’re just forgoing alcohol together for one reason or another. Whatever the reason, whatever, it’s fine. Don’t care. But the venue is struggling at this point, so they’re like trying to find other ways to make money. The way that they’re trying to make money now is they’re taking a cut of the band’s merch, some sort of percentage that’s coming with the agreement of letting them play the venue. If you talk to any touring band, generally the merch and the touring, like the tickets and the stuff they sell is where they are obviously making the bulk of their money because it’s not coming from streaming generally and it’s not coming from album sales because physical media just doesn’t sell like the way it used to. So the touring is really where they’re making their money and now the venues are all in their pockets. So bands decide to raise ticket prices and the ticket seller’s percentage goes up and the merch cost goes up because the venue’s taking a cut and they’ve still got to make enough money to make money so they can eat. So the one person that continues to get screwed and fleeced is the fan. It’s the consumer. We are getting just financially raped, which is horrible because we love music.

It’s funny. Nowadays when I go to shows, I very rarely will drink. Generally it has a lot to do with the fact that I refuse to pay $15 for a Bud Light, but it’s just, it’s asinine and I don’t buy merch anymore really when I’m thinking about it. Like of the last few shows that I’ve gone to, I bought a shirt from the Bytes show just because I knew it was their first tour and as a smaller band just starting out, I just wanted to support that. Generally I will buy merch through a band’s website because I know they’re getting the bulk of the revenue at that point. And now that I’m hearing about venues taking a percentage of it, I’m just like, especially as a local musician being screwed by venues by playing for free basically, I rarely will feel sorry for a venue. They are a necessary evil from a music perspective, but there is part of me that really wishes it wasn’t that way and maybe one day I’ll open a venue and do it the right way. But anyway, at some point, I’m sure there’s going to be some balance point that’s found, but I don’t know how long that will take and I don’t know what kind of other seismic shifts we’ll see in the music industry before that happens.

Okay, let’s get into this week’s brain bending cover. It is called Harvester of Constant Sorrow by The Native Howl. The Native Howl describe themselves as thrashgrass and I’m here for it. This song, I don’t even know how it fell onto my radar, I think it was in my release radar honestly on Spotify, but it’s as much a mashup honestly as it is a cover and I really do love when artists can find these songs that work together in such a great way. If you haven’t seen the movie Oh Brother Where Art Thou, you probably don’t know I am a man of constant sorrow and it’s a fantastic movie, you should go watch it. And then the other half of this song is Harvester of Sorrow by Metallica from The And Justice for All album and them taking this old time gospel tune and dropping it in with a classic metal tune just proves that sometimes the line between genres is really just instrumentation at times. The ending of this song gets very heavy except for the fact that it’s mandolin and banjo and I’m listening to it and I’m like, if you electrified this through some distortion on it, it’s metal and at points almost like prog rock. So really cool. If you have any really cool mashups like this that you are a fan of, please send them my way because I would love to put them on the show.

All right, let’s get into new music for this week. If this is your first time listening, welcome, appreciate you being here. The quick rundown is each week I listen to a ton of new music. I wade through the crap that’s being put out every week and I try and find a handful of songs that I refer to as gems that I can share with you and hopefully they make your playlist, I turn you on to a new artist and we have a great relationship that way.

So the first song this week comes from Old Mervs and it’s called Hey. Old Mervs are the first of three Australian artists on the podcast this week. Old Mervs were actually on the show back in June on episode 26 with a song called Sweetheart. This is yet another solid indie rock tune from these guys. This one I found especially catchy from like the hook from the chorus. I really dig the melody line that’s running here and the whole song like in the verses and the pre-chorus, it has some really interesting like vocal rhythms and melody that sit on top of what can only really be described as a very straight ahead guitar based drum track. You know musically it’s just super solid, super not distracting, supports what’s happening with the vocals but the vocals just really differentiated which is pretty awesome.

The second song this week comes from Middle Kids and it’s called Highlands. Middle Kids are from Canberra and they’re the second of the three Aussie bands this week. I actually heard this track on Advanced Placement which is a show on Sirius XM’s Alternative Nation channel. As I was in the car listening to this, the vocal was the first thing that grabbed me right away. There is a really great quality to Hannah Joy’s voice. She is just effortless with her voice as she slips kind of from her lower register where she starts into kind of her upper register and then at the end she pushes it even higher and it just she just feels like she’s in total control of her instrument which is fantastic. Nothing earth-shattering musically but there is no denying how catchy this track is.

The third song this week comes from Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers and it’s called Salt. The third and final Aussie band this week, Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers, feel at home in that Riot Girl era that was popular back in the early 2000s. They have actually teamed up with the Grogans for this track who were on the podcast a couple of episodes back. As I’m listening to it, I think the favorite part of this track for me is kind of the buildup from the first chorus to the second chorus because as you’re finishing that first chorus you’re like this is going to be a very kind of serene song and then there’s this tension that starts to mount in the second verse into that chorus and it is delicious when it hits the ear. It just felt really good. Another thing I really liked about this song were the vocals being passed around the different members that were present at the recording. I don’t know if the Grogans have any vocal. I think there’s some backing vocal that I hear. Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers are all women. Grogans I think if I remember correctly are two dudes so I think I hear the two dudes singing back up. Anyway, all I know is there is some great music happening out of Australia so fantastic.

The fourth song this week comes from the Moss and it’s called The Place That Makes Me Happy. This is the third time the Moss have found themselves on songs that don’t suck and the most interesting part of that is that all three songs, Blink, Chaparral and The Place That Makes Me Happy are so diametrically different in the feel of the songs. I have just basically fallen in love with the Moss. I think they are super talented musicians. They are super amazing songwriters and there’s nothing else to it. If you can draw me three songs that are stylistically different but all fantastic and honestly all fit within the same genre, they’re not jumping between genres. It’s just they’re just really creative when it comes to creating music. It’s fantastic. I love it. Honestly, at this point the next thing I need from the Moss is a local tour date so I can go check them out live.

The fifth song this week comes from Jimmy Buffett and it’s called Like My Dog. I mentioned last episode that Jimmy Buffett had been working on a new album at the time of his passing and the day that I recorded I heard Bubbles Up which they played on Radio Margaritaville on Serious XM the day after he passed as they were kind of remembering him they made mention that they got permission to play this song from the estate and I was like oh you know and I really like that song. This week in kind of the review this song Like My Dog came up and I’m guessing it’s the first single. It’s honestly kind of hard to tell nowadays how things are released and whatnot but I’m treating it as the first single. Listening to it this song is just humorous. If you are in a relationship I will guarantee you will smile listening to this. I’ve mentioned on previous episodes that long term relationships take work and there are some days that all you want is some unconditional love like that which you would get from a dog. Once again Jimmy proves just that he’s an amazing songwriter and he captures the simplest ideas and just turns them into magic. I cannot wait to hear the rest of this album. I am not going to be disappointed.

Alright, that is it for this episode. As always spread the word to your fellow music fans about the podcast, follow the show on social media and in the immortal words of show announcer Zach.

Thanks for listening and until next week keep searching for and listening to songs that don’t suck.