by nickwan
I was invited to a show the other Saturday, the 2nd Annual DigiTour presented by Neuro and Posse Audio, and although it wasn’t necessarily a show I normally attend (nor would I review almost any act on that stage that night) it did shine a few shimmering lights on the side of music business that we at 402 are normally sheltered from. You see, we are mainly based upon a few errant beginnings from my music past — where it was really hard for me to get people to review my stuff due to my small name, small amount of shows played, tiny fish in a tinier pond sort of persona I was given. This site was supposed to be promotions of music acts that normally get little to no press — much less, advocating good music that isn’t hyped or talked up by some editing team that dictates what you listen to and read about. Needless to say, we don’t have much power here to flip a band from a no-name-nothing to a signed success, but that’s not the point I suppose. Promotion of music isn’t just magazines or publications, nor is it really online publications or social networking power. For me, it’s a holistic approach to what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. You tour, you come out with an album, you promote it and you get your friends to promote it, you do all you can to flush out new fans. It’s a classic tale with new technology. Your promotions are based around the hundreds of emails you send a day, or subtly becoming a forum regular on popular message boards while using your signature as a linking out point, or your witty and retweetable comments on your Twitter feed… whatever it is, the kids at the bottom of the totem pole seem to be doing alright for themselves. Shows are easier to book today than they were a few years ago. A band that could pull 20 people to a show on a weeknight was a big deal back in the late 90s — now, if you don’t have 40 or so people coming in, what the hell were you doing for the past few weeks? Promotions, promotions, promotions.
This show was all about promotion in two forms: lots of corporate money keeping all the acts happy and the fact that the lot of them had “OVER 2 BILLION YOUTUBE VIEWS”. Wow. You can swing that number however you like: whether one act got the majority of it, or it was spread evenly between everyone, or if a single dude clicked refresh a few hundred million times, the command of that many views means something today. It’s sort of like the Billboard of the old, or the Rolling Stone top albums and singles list of the older — the new version of a one-hit wonder is no longer about radio play but the view count on your most viral video.
The show itself was fairly poor, and I think there isn’t much more to be said other than that. Almost all of the acts with the exception of a few were not really live performers. The way the show was set up was also gimmicky, with a massive TV screen presenting the musical act’s YouTube videos alongside and in sync while the act was playing their song. As the troupe of The Key of Awesome said, “You don’t have to watch the TV while you’re here. You can look at us, too.” Funny, as that’s definitely what a live show should be.
The line up in terms of YouTube cred was fairly impressive: Nick Pitera sang, who is known for his ability to sing like a girl (quite literally, as his video for “A Whole New World” suggests). Dave Days attracted a handful of his channel subscribers — he (I guess) is known for making quirky videos directed towards the teen community. A handful of Ricky Ficarelli‘s friends seemed to be shared musicians for many of the acts that night — and this Ficarelli fellow seems to be the drummer version of a Justin Bieber character. During soundcheck, he was no slouch — definitely a shredder on the drums. And that’s actually something to be said about all of the acts this night: no one theoretically sucked. Everyone was amazing. The fat black guy who sang parody songs about food could belt it. Asher Monroe‘s vocal ability matched the swagger. The Key of Awesome (we’ll get to the nitty gritty about them in a bit) were on point. Alex Goot was also a fairly polished singer-songwriter product. Wellington, albeit Disney soundtrack rock music, all had musicians who could play their asses off in any context.
The driving force that has shoved all of this together is most likely what “selling out” means to me. I encounter bands all the time who talk about “selling out” or what it means to sell out. Mixed reviews suggest that this notion of selling out is always subjective and about as dumb as calling someone gay or retarded. It makes no sense and is a term used mainly to piss people off. But I feel that after seeing what a lot of backing can do, selling out is a real thing.
The show, and it’s handful of sponsors (the biggest being Neuro and Posse Audio it seems), was commanded by money. Oddly enough, no one gives a shit about viral videos outside of the internet. There were maybe 20 people at this show who came solely because of an act on stage. The others seemed to have either won passes some how or were invited. The target demographic was definitely teens and pre-teens, which basically doubles ticket sales since they usually bring a parent along. The New Parish, the Oakland venue the show was held, isn’t a no-name venue at all — Too Short, Ozomatli, Orgy, and Afroman are playing there in the upcoming months. On any other occasion, trying to swing a show that will attract only 20 kids who can’t purchase drinks at the bar would normally not even be booked. In this case, there wasn’t any indication of a loss of funds.
Which brings me to my thoughts on corporate backings of new bands. Usually, it’s for some sort of promotion — Disney rock is usually in order to find cheap teencentric music to play in their made-for-TV-movies; promising production costs and studio time being covered in exchange of flaunting Neuro energy drinks is also a way to gain a cultish following if all of the cult fans of a certain act begin drinking what was on a table of a viral video. One of the staff at The New Parish put it bluntly, this concert is completely fabricated. And who is to say that’s a bad thing? These kids want to make music their living. What’s a few dollars for a crappy tour going to do? Hurt their rep? They have no rep to begin with. The headlining band, Wellington, admitted they had only played two other shows before this night — and those two other shows were the two other shows of the DigiTour. Asher Monroe was asked to play one more song, a sort of encore — which any SUPPORTING act would die for normally — and he awkwardly declined. DECLINED? PLAYING MUSIC ON STAGE? IN FRONT OF POTENTIAL FANS? Needless to say, his set was not perfect — he missed coming into the verse by singing his own chorus for an extra progression. Monroe was one of the less prepared of the live acts, as he definitely has not played with a live band probably ever.
Most of the acts had little to no experience on stage. Dave Days, the lanky left handed pop punker, seemed to be one of the most comfortable on stage. His banter and presence was reminiscent of what a local show with high school bands felt like when I was growing up in that age. His “band”, a bassist and Ricky Ficarelli, was still rigged together by outside forces it seems. The bassist of Wellington, the long-haired, muscle-heavy guy named Troy, was also very energetic. Some of the cornier things, like melodically saying I can’t hear you or picking at his bass while holding it by the neck overhead as if every song was the last song of the night, were amiss for me. Other than these two and Nick Pitera, everyone else seemed uncomfortable — not energetic — abnormal to watch after seeing their viral videos.
As promotion goes, the world of advertising is definitely a crapshoot. Somethings work and somethings don’t. Some times, putting up a lot of money for an act can pay off — the amount of money invested into *NSync was probably a good idea in retrospect, whereas putting a ton of money into Dr. Dre‘s Detox is bordering on Guns ‘n’ Roses Chinese Democracy in terms of return investment. Where would these DigiTour kids fall? Most likely closer to a risk than a reward. I view it as this: trying to promote a hard working band by making videos for that band is just another way to promote a band. Trying to promote a well produced viral video by making a band for it is much harder to do. You can edit around a video — hard to edit around a real live band. Reverse engineering these YouTube wonders doesn’t seem like a very good strategy.
The worst part about this tour seems to be the talent director or scout for the tour. I mean, how hard was Gotye to get? In all honesty? He’s the hottest viral wonder out there right now and you aren’t cashing out to have him headline? What would be the problem of ditching the view count stats for actual bands and fans? Couldn’t you put together a show with bands who have been together for longer than a week, pay the same money, and have better returns?
In the end, the best advice for a band or artist with a viral video is something that is very well known in the music world: be a big fish in your small pond before becoming a small fish in a very large, vast, competitive, usually heartbreaking pond. Viral promotion, paired with corporate promotion, seems good on paper but can introduce you to horrible habits. A habit formed out of this show would be thinking that you will always have a safety net after a show is done. Then you board your million dollar tour bus provided to you for free and drive off to Tempe. That’s definitely not how it goes — you get a van, you get shit stolen, you learn how to change out your spark plugs, you sleep in positions most people aren’t comfortable sitting or laying in. Even before that, you flier your town, you play a ton of free shows, you make albums using stolen software and shitty microphones and you press them yourselves and hand them out to everyone in walking distance, you play shows at all the venues in your town until you finally see a kid or two without their arms crossed and jumping around. A viral video helps speed up this process, but you have to be smart about the speed in which it does this at. This isn’t to say that selling out, or being used by corporations to be the face of their product, is entirely horrible. As I mentioned, these kids on this tour are slayers in their own right — probably all guaranteed studio musicians in the very least. This experience might be once in a life time for a good amount of them. It’s just a bad idea to pretend to be something you aren’t. And many of these acts were just that — acts.
Photos courtesy of Annie Tsui
