Defining a Band's Direction/Style/Genre/Niche

Lounge
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Band practice last night, we were discussing what direction to take for song selection. We’ve been doing a really broad list of songs without a strong unifying theme. Our guitarist was making the point that we should pick something to make it easier for us to book gigs.

But we don’t want to be yet another band in the area doing grunge, 70’s classic rock, top 40, pop punk, or screamo metal.

We’d originally thought New Wave and Post Punk… but that’s proving to be difficult from a production/instrumentation standpoint.

With the new singer I think we’re moving in a new direction, but want to see if this sounds like something that makes sense, would be easy to explain, and would interest people:

60’s Psychedelic Rock meets 80’s New Wave

(I’d say more 80’s post-punk, but I think that would confuse people more.)

Does seeing that … make sense, confuse you, interest you, make you roll your eyes, or what? Would you want to listen to that or not?

To explain what I mean - there is a weirdly high number of 80’s covers of 60’s songs. “Hazy Shade of Winter”, “I think We’re Alone Now”, “Venus”, lots of them. There’s a big link between 60’s rock and roll and punk. So we’d be doing songs like that, and bands like Jefferson Airplane and the Zombies, but harder and louder. But we’d also be doing other 80’s bands we like: The Cult, The Cure, Talking Heads, Stone Roses. Because holy heck do those bands actually throw back a lot to 60’s psychedelia.

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Way more interesting of a cover band than your average best of the 90s alternative cover bands. Theres a lot in those catalogs that even casual listeners will hear and have that “I know that song” reaction. Dear Prudence by Siousxie and the Banshees needs to be on that list too btw.

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We agree. And we’d rather play these songs. And I think if we get into bars, people will start digging it.

But will it present difficulty selling ourselves to venues?

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I’d come see you for sure with that description.

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Maybe the first question should be: what is the main goal/intent of the band? Do you want to have fun playing music with others? Do you want to gig? Sometimes/occasionally? Often? Do you want to earn money doing that? What types of gigs: bars, Sunday morning cafés? Weddings and private parties?

My point is, that if you want to cater to a certain audience and their expectations, then perhaps you should ask the audience what they like/prefer. If you, on the other hand, want to present something “new”, something not often experienced by the audience, then it’s much harder because you have to create interest first and slowly build a “following”. But then, it could be more tunes you like (as opposed to tunes the audience likes) and there could be some tuning of the selection and direction from gig to gig.

Anyway, it’s tricky…:wink:

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We want to have fun playing fun music for people. The primary goal is music we enjoy playing. But we want the goal of playing for others. Probably gig bars and other small local venues. Not constantly, but maybe monthly.

We’d like to cut a balance of stuff that people are familiar, but not the same stuff that’s getting stale.

Which is where we’re leaning towards the 80’s post-punk stuff. The new singer really wants to do psychedelic rock, and we actually had a ton of fun playing “White Rabbit”… and I’m seeing a massive through line from 60’s to 80’s.

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Yeah, for sure. I didn’t mean to be critical - just asking some questions which could shed more light on your own goals.

Sounds all very reasonable and something to strive for!

I’ll shut up now, as I have no idea about most of the music you were discussing :sweat_smile:

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@joergkutter poses great questions and valid points.

Essentially, it sounds like you guys need to decide if you want to play what you like versus “how/can we describe what we play to not confuse” potential venues and/or private gig folks.

If you’re asking, I would create the set list you guys really dig and, MOST importantly, can play the living shit out of. I mean really, really well.

Then record yourselves at the best quality you can muster. Shooting a video of you guys performing tunes is even better. That way, you will have content you can put on your band’s website (which, of course, you need).

Think proof of concept. Show, don’t describe. Bar owners usually get hit on by bands all the time. Make it easy for them to say, “Aw, what the hell. You’re hired.”

But regardless of what you ultimately decide to do, good luck, man. God knows unknown bands have gotten further without much talent or good marketing materials. :joy:

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These are good questions. Please be critical. Critical is not the same as negative. It is just being pointed.

We are definitely trying to figure out what needle we want to thread and how to thread it. Our goal is neither to be the most popular crowd pleasing, nor to just do our own thing for us. We are trying to find the right balance between that - Doing songs that are fun for us that we love, but that an audience is going to have fun with too.

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A bit of Joy Division might go down well, the melody in the vocals often followed Peter Hook’s basslines

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Another thing to consider is the demographics of the attendees of the bars/events you’re aiming at landing. That info could help narrow your music genre choices.

Lastly, consider that your decision of direction can be entirely fluid: what you think you need to do going forward can and likely will morph as your band evolves, and from venue/audience feedback. So just take your best guess at this point, and be prepared to change as situations dictate. :+1:

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Lots of great bands like that, with a broad range of styles. On one end you get stuff like XTC, on the other stuff like Modern English and Flock of Seagulls. It’s a solid sound.

Could you elaborate on the difficulties here? Maybe I can help with some advice, post-punk is really pretty straightforward. Desmond Doom even has some joke videos about it, and his style is surf/post-punk :rofl:

New Wave probably will need a dedicated synth player.

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As a listener, I’d want something rock’ish but not heavy. Maybe dance-able, something you could groove to, slightly familiar, not overbearing.

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CBGB and OMFUG…Blondie, Talking Heads, Television, Patti Smith…now those are the sorts of bands you want to be covering. So much more interesting.

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Lemmy always said he only played rock and roll. My advice would be to play the music you like, do it in your style, it will be authentic and passionate. That will resonate more and let the crowd argue about your genre.

I mean Sonic Youth cover of Carpenter’s Superstar. Hard to think of two more disparate genres, but it works.

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Post-Punk less of a problem. New Wave… lots songs are a bunch of simple parts layered on top of each other: multiple guitars, plus synth, plus bass. We’ve got a three-piece and a lead singer. Unless I start doing a lot of key-bass plus keyboard.

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Eldritch too, he’s adamant about it and hates being labeled as one of the grandfathers of Goth rock.

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This is where I would ask - do you want to do covers, or original music? Because if it’s original music, you can make it whatever you want it to be.

Multiple synths is no problem, all synth players pick a part to play and sequence everything else (either in the DAW or with a hardware sequencer), and control the sequencer live. Having many layered synths is just the work you do ahead of time. The DAW is used for performance as well as recording :slight_smile:

When we played live I would play a synth part, but we never had just one synth going at a time and I had programmed all the drums too, also controlled by the sequencer.

It would be best to have a dedicated synth player though, yeah.

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If you’re sticking with covers for now, I would just say you cover a variety of rock styles. That doesn’t put a label on it that somebody might see and not even give you a chance, and it also doesn’t box you in so that if there’s something new that you discover and enjoy you don’t have to worry about “that doesn’t fit this label”

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It interests for sure…if Psychedelic is the thread tying all the song choices together thematically perhaps: Psychedelic tinged Rock from 60s to 80s

Psychedelic tinged (mentions the theme, add tinged to make it looser to cover bands like The Cult or The Stone Roses etc.)

Rock (putting rock in there covers you for you being ‘harder and louder’)

from 60s to 80s (covers time periods you have mentioned )

Its a little looser than your suggestion, but still puts me in mind of the kind of band you seem to describing… I would be interested in hearing a band like that what ever style name you land on

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