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The recent Song by Toad blog on Aberdeen


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I like the article and I agree with pretty much all the content within it... there's just some unshakable air about it that feels like the writer is looking at it all through a rose-tinted lens. I can't explain any better than that, there's just something about it that feels a little naive. Like we're the 'other side' with the greener grass.

 

xx

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I like the article and I agree with pretty much all the content within it... there's just some unshakable air about it that feels like the writer is looking at it all through a rose-tinted lens. I can't explain any better than that, there's just something about it that feels a little naive. Like we're the 'other side' with the greener grass.

 

xx

 

Kinda this, maybe it's just badly written and was meant to be funnier/more tongue in cheek than it ended up?

 

Also - if Alan Cynic chose to wander about Edinburgh rather than stay at his house and the lovely Depeche Choad actually told him to fuck off the second they met him, there's maybe grounds to suppose he's a bit of a fud?

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I agree with some elements of what was said in that blog for sure.

In my opinion, the city's music scene isn't big enough to support the number of gigs that have been going on over the last few years. Audiences are spread far too thin across several gigs on the same night competing against each other. It just kind of ends up in promoters and outsiders getting a poor perspective of what a good quality audience in Aberdeen can actually be like and then not putting on gigs or not coming back. I don't know if this would be helped by promoters working together to galvanise scenes or avoid date clashes (I'm sure some promoters/venues do that)?

There used to be loads, and I mean loads of mid-level, International, radio friendly and audience pulling bands/solo artists coming through Aberdeen from mid 90s through to the latter part of the 2000s. This seems to have nose-dived for some reason. It might be the way taxes have affected international revenues for bands coming to the UK, it might be the mid-sized venue vacuum that we seem to have in Aberdeen at the moment, it might be both together and many other factors, but we just don't seem to have that "gig/venue to aspire to" vibe in Aberdeen at the moment, which is a shame.

 

As it stands the majority of local acts end up playing on all local band bills and get the odd support slot with decent UK based touring bands but don't get anywhere near the bigger support slots for whatever reason (commercial more likely) and most of the bigger acts end up playing the Music Hall (how many local musicians have played there recently) or the AECC (good luck getting on a bill there). This ends up with bands either getting bored of playing the same venues, with the same 3 other bands to the same 20-odd people and ultimately fizzling out over the space of a couple of years. Either that or they end up moving away completely.

I agree with the fact that it's hard to tour outside Aberdeen if you're an Aberdeen based band (note I said hard, not impossible). It takes very careful planning if you can even string 4 or 5 dates together and coordinating 4 or so people when you have a high chance of at least one of the band being an offshore oil and gas worker is a nightmare. It also seems to be a struggle convincing promoters outside Aberdeen to take a gamble on Aberdonian bands as we tend not to be overly well known outside of the local area and if we are it tends to be very niche. The costs/overheads for an Aberdonian band touring or even playing the odd date outside of Aberdeen can be very prohibitive even spreading it over 3 or 4 people, but in my opinion it's worth the outlay the first couple of times just to get the word out, but you really need to be punting something (CDs, T-shirts etc.) to bump up the money coming in to cover costs.

 

Aberdonian bands seem to be less willing to play around the area these days as well. When I was playing more regularly at my most active in the Aberdeen scene you could get gigs in Elgin, Arbroath, Montrose, Inverness, Fraserburgh at small venues easily and there were usually anywhere from 20-50 folks turning up at those gigs (I remember playing a cracker of a gig at Oceans in Elgin with Right Hand Left when I was in Genevieve and it was unbelievable how appreciative the local kids were to have bands from Aberdeen making the effort to come to them). I don't know if these things happen anymore or if bands from Aberdeen are less willing to take a gamble or not? It's that sort of effort that gets a buzz going and when the kids in those towns go to Uni in Glasgow/Edinburgh/Aberdeen they're aware of who you are and go to gigs when you're down there too. 

 

I don't know what the answer is here, there's definitely some great stuff and pockets/bubbles of mini-scenes in Aberdeen but I don't feel that there's any sort of cohesion any more and a lot of the good stuff definitely goes unnoticed by people outside Aberdeen.

 

I know tl;dr and I think I'm on the person who started the threads "ignore list" but that's my tuppence.

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Aberdeen thinking it's so shit is what makes it not shit in a round-a-bout way.

 

A prevalent way of thinking in Aberdeen is to constantly pine for something/somewhere else. Complaining about how there's no support for whatever art/music/pasttime you're into and how if only you lived in Glasgow or London you'd be all set, or if only it was still 2002 and there was a scene for said interest. That creates two types of people: those who are vehemently defensive of the cultural worthiness of the area, and those who constantly slag it off.

 

I think that makes for an interesting dynamic - as it relates to music, whatever genre you're playing you can be sure you'll get as much hate as you will people defending you. That's quite admirable. Take Aberdeen rappers for example - a lot of people will slag them off in a mock-gang-sign kinda way, but just as many  will applaud them for expanding musical horizons in the area. You won't find much in between - the scourge of a lot of 'scenes'... apathy.

 

I don't think you get that self-policing in larger cities - where the 'fa's is boy hink he is?' attitude is balanced by the 'I'll overlook quality because it's local' one. I know i've considered a band better than I would normally, just because they're from Aberdeen.

 

Although, maybe that's prretty typical of provincial towns?

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We're a pretty broad church in Aberdeen - lots of bands but not that many similar to each other, zines/blogs are usually created by people who like one particular kind of music. The scene up here would I think be quite difficult to find content for unless it was a straightforward review of released material and gigs

 

Would there an audience for a zine that covered Deadfire, Seas Starry, Cleanse the Hive, Ashley Park, Boak and Roswell for example*?

 

*Names picked at random...

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Zines are dead. So are forums and blogs. The internet has been reduced to nonlinear one-liners on Reddit.

 

It's surprising this place is still live, but it isn't really used for what it should be used for. All the West Yorkshire DIY/punk/whatever forums I remember frequenting 10 years ago are all dead now. All the zines died before I was old enough to get involved.

 

I don't really know how people talk about music anymore. Maybe they just don't?

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Zines are dead. So are forums and blogs. The internet has been reduced to nonlinear one-liners on Reddit.

 

It's surprising this place is still live, but it isn't really used for what it should be used for. All the West Yorkshire DIY/punk/whatever forums I remember frequenting 10 years ago are all dead now. All the zines died before I was old enough to get involved.

 

I don't really know how people talk about music anymore. Maybe they just don't?

So true. I have no idea what has supplanted zines, forums and the like. Tumblr, YouTube and Reddit maybe? Maybe even private Facebook groups? Whatever it is, I'm not privy to it. There really doesn't seem to be the same community-driven passion anymore. Then again, maybe I just don't know about where it's happening.

There must be young uns starting bands at the same rate as before. What's the process they follow? Create a soundcloud/band camp page, advertise their gigs on Facebook... What else?

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The awesome thing about the internet, and the horrendously shite thing about the internet, is that there are no real borders to it, so the concept of "local" just doesn't have the same clout. If I were to have a look through a load of new bands, then limiting the selection to what's local to me would leave me with well under 1% of the total available pool of emerging art... the double-edged sword is that if you fall in love with a small-scale band from the US, you'll probably never see them live, vs the fact that if you limit your search to 50 miles of home you have WAY less to choose from.

 

Bands seem to be using social media in all its forms to get fans and followers but what is really striking to me is how many musicians have made a full time career out of YouTube videos. 

https://youtu.be/5pR-voFbxzo

 

https://youtu.be/G0jN1MT4TBA

 

Honestly, I'm starting to think that the sheer amount of incredible talent, the quality of live recordings and the sheer convenience of it all being at your fingertips in internetland is turning a lot of people off the idea of actually going out to local gigs to FIND good bands. Instead of going to a bunch of local gigs and finding the bands they like, they're finding bands online and going to their gigs when it's convenient. 

 

xx

Edited by Stroopy121
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