Would you rather put out an Instagram reel of you playing guitar from your couch with 20,000 likes or play a great live gig in front of 100 people?

I prefer Tik Tok

Playing a great live gig. Playing live is a blast, but I would need a band that focuses on practicing. If I'm playing in front of 100 people, i'm gonna practice my ass off.

I would choose live gig, too. But I kind of get the instagram thing. Bands are hard. Lots of equipment, scheduled practices, different personalities, travel time, marketing frustrations, getting gigs booked, late nights, etc. Plus, a good 100 person live gig probably means a lot of other gigs performing in front of 10 -15 people.

I see so many great, young players on instagram that apparently don't have bands. At least none that could find. I guess they chose the "likes" over a band. Makes me sad.

Philo B 93 said:

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I would choose live gig, too. But I kind of get the instagram thing. Bands are hard. Lots of equipment, scheduled practices, different personalities, travel time, marketing frustrations, getting gigs booked, late nights, etc. Plus, a good 100 person live gig probably means a lot of other gigs performing in front of 10 -15 people.

I see so many great, young players on instagram that apparently don't have bands. At least none that could find. I guess they chose the "likes" over a band. Makes me sad.

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How much of that is the lack of rock in popular music? How many of us originally started playing with others because of bands we were listening to that made us want to go into the garage and start jamming with our friends?

Lathspell said:

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Philo B 93 said:

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I would choose live gig, too. But I kind of get the instagram thing. Bands are hard. Lots of equipment, scheduled practices, different personalities, travel time, marketing frustrations, getting gigs booked, late nights, etc. Plus, a good 100 person live gig probably means a lot of other gigs performing in front of 10 -15 people.

I see so many great, young players on instagram that apparently don't have bands. At least none that could find. I guess they chose the "likes" over a band. Makes me sad.

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How much of that is the lack of rock in popular music? How many of us originally started playing with others because of bands we were listening to that made us want to go into the garage and start jamming with our friends?

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Back in "the day", rock was pop music which made it easier to find musicians with similar taste in music. Also, Instagram didn't exist. The choice was play for no one or form a band.

Gig all day.

The bands I played in were never great (one was pretty good) but we always had a blast playing. And people didn't care that we weren't awesome. They danced anyway.

We once had a guy give us a $100 bill to play "Wonderful Tonight" so he could slow dance with his date. And one time at Cadillac Bar, a group of drunk girls from a bachelorette party heard us in the party room and crashed the gig. That was awesome.

Not-a-guitar-player here (apologies for crashing the axe party). This old organ / piano / sax veteran cosmic rocker says Live Gig is the answer. Nothing else comes close.

I've done the live gig. 200 people. It was awesome, but I was so afraid of making a mistake and was so focused that it was almost more work than fun.

Philo B 93 said:

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I would choose live gig, too. But I kind of get the instagram thing. Bands are hard. Lots of equipment, scheduled practices, different personalities, travel time, marketing frustrations, getting gigs booked, late nights, etc. Plus, a good 100 person live gig probably means a lot of other gigs performing in front of 10 -15 people.

I see so many great, young players on instagram that apparently don't have bands. At least none that could find. I guess they chose the "likes" over a band. Makes me sad.

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It doesn't help that pay for musicians has either stayed flat or gone backwards in the last decade. And that's not adjusted for inflation, just straight dollars. Maybe it's better for bands, but I do solo acoustic and the number of people that undercut everybody just to play a gig is a problem.

I agree. Early on, my band that would play for the bare minimum to get booked by cheap-ass bar owners. Some friends of mine in a non-competing country band set me straight. We probably lost a few gigs over it, but we make more when we do play.