Talk about the recent Tours

 #19927  by sarraqum
 
Hahaha rubbish summer indeed. I am "taking a break" from Uni but I really want to get back into the shit, as they say.

And yes, music scene in UK is not bad at all. There is a lot of great stuff happening, not necessarily in rock (though there are some exceptions) but in general. And all the tripe that little kids are into nowadays, well, each country has their star factories pumping out piles after piles of garbage.

Back to the topic though, exposure is a very interesting thing. Popular theory states that Jam bands never broke through in UK/Europe because people weren't into the music they make. But another plausible theory states that they aren't popular because they don't spend any time in UK/Europe. It works both ways.

Once again, I am not picking a fight, I am just quite interested in the idea of Americana, is it self-proclaimed or is it bands' own doing?

 #19942  by Shaggy
 
The GD were still a cult, just a very big one. With not much chart success and not many appearances in the Uk it was hard for them to get a big following. But British fans were still always very open and knew a lot about all the hip american music. John Peel and Bob Harris played a lot of GD in the early 70's, Peel would actually play whole albums! It would have helped a little had the dead played the Whistle Test or a session with Bob Harris on the 72 tour or something. But they never did.

I don't put the dead in with the jamband scene if you like because the dead were a monster all of their own.

 #19953  by d-v-s
 
I'm with the UK chaps on this one - maybe just cuz I wanna see some jam bands on this side of the ocean. I can't find the time or money to get to the US just for a concer. wish I had that luxury, but i don't.

To Sarraqum's point, I find it hard to believe that the dead wouldn't have found a following in the UK, considering what was going on there at the time. Look at the "jam" bands the came out of the british scene in the late 60's early 70's - The Who, Led Zepplin, Cream, Blind Faith, Pink Floyd and even Jimi Hendrix rose to stardom in the UK before being recognized in the US.

 #22712  by smile_smile_smile
 
by the way it's europe 90

 #22725  by nicolasalk
 
CountryMile Cadillac wrote:WHy not a jam band in europe? If they are that hard to come by, then it should be easy to develop a following
possibly

 #22728  by owmmusic
 
The other issue, one that varies from band to band due to financial circumstances, is the cost of touring. Yes, a top concert draw like the Grateful Dead probably made enough money from touring to sustain more touring, but on the other hand they had a lot more equipment to transport. In reading Rock Scully's book, his account of the European tour was a logistical nightmare, and the whole thing either had to come out of the band's pocket, or the record label's if the record label happened to provide tour support. Most independent labels don't, and even major labels probably don't do it for every artist. When they do, you can bet that the cost is recouped from the artist's future profits so it eventually comes out the artist's pocket anyway.

When Pink Floyd performed the Wall live, they only performed it four times and lost a ton of money. Although that was a huge theatrical production. But after Roger Waters left the band and the remaining members hired Rick Wright back into the band to tour, he was hired on a salary basis and not a percentage of profit. On their first tour, they lost so much money that Wright was the only one that made any profit because he was guaranteed a flat rate. That was a band as big as Pink Floyd, losing money on a tour. Some of the bands I've worked with - local/regional bands with no label support - can't afford to go more than 3 or 4 hours from home, and it's rare that they go that far. It's not really that they don't want to; if they could go further they would because there would be much better opportunities for them. Sometimes it's a tough choice for a band when something as wonderful as music comes down to what you can afford financially, and how practical it is.