I had a conversation with a good friend of mine the other day about the sorry state of the Anniston area music scene. An apathetic public (this includes the "fans"), few good venues and struggling bands with little resources to promote and prosper all combine to make for a music wasteland. Sure there are small pockets of scene-ish folk who are plugged into what word-of-mouth info circulates about shows and bands (mostly friends and family of the band members). There are shows sprinkled across the land at intervals but the general public never hears of them. Why does Anniston and Alabama in general have such a suck-ass music scene? Who is to blame for the sad, sad decline of our music community?

THE BANDS.

Before you wail and gnash your fangs, consider this. Heavy Metal is on the rise (again). Some of the top selling bands today are hard rock and metal. Interest in music in our culture is skyrocketing. Interest in playing music is also on the rise (Wal Mart, Target, and even the CD store in the mall are selling cheap guitars, fer Chrissakes). If you knew how many people around you owned instruments, whether they play them or not, it would boggle your mind. Everybody wants to be a big rock star. American Idol is so huge indeginous peoples in the Amazon jungle who have NEVER been in touch with the outside world know about it. So the potential is there, right? The market is there, right? There are literally hundreds of bands and solo acts in North Alabama so the product is right there for us. So why do we have a dead music scene? Why doesn't the general public know your band exists? What's going on?

What is going on is there's not much real promoting going on. Bands aren't exploiting the media resources we have at hand. Nobody really seeks out avenues of advertisement and properly puts out relevent information in any real volume. Why? Four main reasons: 1) People don't know how to go about promoting their event or their band. 2) They don't know there's several resources at their disposal. 3) They ASSume word-of-mouth will get the word out. 4) What methods of promoting they do use isn't done very effectively. Here's a great example:

Several weeks ago a friend of mine who fronts a band invited me to one of his shows. He told me where it was. Well, actually he just gave me the name of the venue. I wasn't familiar with it but it was just in the next town not far away and I knew the area so I didn't fret it. On the day of the show I give him a call to get directions because, lo and behold, the flyers everyone connected with the show put out (in about a half-dozen locations) had NO ADDRESS and NO CONTACT info. Anyway, someone else answered the phone and told me my friend had already left for the gig. OK- so I asked where specifically the show was. There was a pause. "Hold on, I'll ask." was the reply. She came back with the name of the venue- but had no further info. Frustrated, I take off thinking that I'd ask for directions to this place when I get there. To make a long story not-so-long, I kept getting either "I don't know" or directions that took me nowhere, often conflicting with directions I had gotten earlier resulting in an evening of driving around in circles and then going home disgusted. On my way out of the city, I counted all the things that went awry. The event wasn't advertised. I heard about it by word-of-mouth. The people close to the band wasn't even sure of where it was. The flyer had minimal circulation and gave no info beyond band names and name of establishment. It was if it keeping people away was a priority. Well, it worked for me. 

I was later told that the show drew a less-than-stellar crowd. No freakin' duh. Take a moment to consider how many people who actually heard about this wanted to go- but didn't know WHERE to go. Consider the many, many people who didn't even know about it but would have atttended if they did? Every time there's a show anywhere- what I went through plays out to varying degrees countless times with God knows how many people. I busted my ass trying to find the place. MOST would go so far as look at the flyer, see no info about the bands or the location and shrug it off.  Are you starting to get the picture?

It is at this point you may ask "Oh yea, smartypants, what have YOU done to help?" 

Hey, I'm a "put-up-or-shut-up" kind of guy. This profile and the web site I'm building is my own contribution to solving this problem of ours. People's interest in artists are proportional to how much info they have about them. So I'm going to do my best to inform people of what great talent there is out there, what kind of music they play, where and when they will be playing, what happens at the shows, etc etc. Hopefully I'll soon have reviews and articles featuring individual bands with photos and interviews. If all goes well, maybe a print publication will follow. But I can't do ANY of it without the participation of the talent out there. You guys have to give me something to work with. This will only go as far as you want to take it.