Identity is fundamentally a linguistic rather than natural property of objects and thus the Ship of Theseus problem is conclusively answered by the arguments of late period Wittgenstein: fight me.
To apply this to less frivolous and lighthearted matters: the English word "band" is a linguistic label that most naturally refers (imo) to a specific group of people playing from a specific selection of musics. Of course, labels are flexible, and the word "band" is flexible enough to accommodate people playing Queen covers or inviting other musicians on stage at a festival. Even so, I'd argue that if that happens too much, it does wear away at the band's identity. Replacing all five members of the Dreadnoughts and calling it a Dreadnoughts gig would be quite a stretch to the identity of the Dreadnoughts as a band. However, to quote thedreadnoughts.com/bio:
"The Dreadnoughts aren’t really a band, they’re an advocacy group, ruthlessly promoting the idea that folk and punk music form a perfect union."
And see, "advocacy group" is a much more flexible identity label than "band". Dreadnoughts-trained musicians performing as The Dreadnoughts might be a stretch, but Dreadnoughts-trained musicians performing as Representatives Of The Dreadnoughts Institute Of Acoustic Studies* seems to me less so. It fulfils the important goal of letting people who want to experience a Dreadnoughts-inspired gig do so, without getting the knickers of purist-jerkoffs-such-as-I in a twist about diluting the identity of the Dreadnoughts band name. And more than that, it offers an opportunity to promulgate The Dreadnoughts' identity and "what it stands for" (i.e. punk, cider, aggro trad folk and loud guitars exalting each of these virtues) beyond any one band that might adopt the name. Ideas can fly further than mere mortals, after all, hence why Theseus is still getting talked about 2500 years later.
(*they should probably use a less shitty band name, unless y'all like that sort of things in which case I will take my copyright royalties in loose cans of Strongbow)
The interesting thing about the identity issue in the Ship of Theseus is that new components were integrated alongside old components. If all of the new components were simply assembled on their own, entirely separate from the original ship, you'd still have the same end product of the exact ship model with all of the same parts, but it would clearly be a different ship because it is fully distinct from the old one. If you intend to train up local bands to carry on your energy, that would certainly be blurring the line significantly more than an entirely new ship constructed from parts that never interacted with their predecessors.
On the flipside of this thought experiment, consider how much every single venue you've played at more than once experiences this same exact phenomenon: the audio equipment might've been replaced since last time, venue staff might have moved on and been replaced, and most importantly it's not the exact same crowd. There are likely going to be some but not all of the old faces and hopefully a bunch of new faces to the next concert in the same city. The energy of the crowd persists all the same.
I'm reminded of a previous substack post on how polka might actually die wherein you said that the focus of the music shifted away from the community aspects and into the fame of the band. If you subvert that by enabling anyone who wants to participate in the music to become a performer for the band, that both de-emphasizes the reverence with which members of the band might be treated *and* offers significantly more opportunities for community growth through music by just generally increasing the total amount of concerts being played. In turn, that increases the amount of opportunities for people with similar niche tastes in music to find others who share their tastes and have some chaotic fun.
Also, what were the inspiring influences behind Tuika? I can't quite put my finger on it.
Aug 21, 2022·edited Aug 21, 2022Liked by The Dreadnoughts
First about the Thesus ship problem. I have only one band on mind now, but I saw several rock/metal bands where the whole line-up changed besides one member, one of the founding members. So, yeah, you can change dozens of musicians, but until the founding member, the one who mostly composes the music and the lyrics, the one who keeps the "spirit" of the band alive(even if the sound changes more or less) is still there, it will still be the same band.
Next about all those poor fans who won't see you live. I discovered your band on internet a year or two before the Foreign skies album. What I read about you was that you were on a kind of hiatus and nearly disbanded. I was like "oh fuck, I discovered them too late, I'll never see this great band live". And up to now, I saw you live twice here in Switzerland. But if I wouldn't have had that chance, I would just have been continuing enjoying your albums and some of your live performances on YouTube. I've just watched one of your concerts in England on YouTube and it was as if I was there. So just say "Fuck off" to all those pussies in Austin, Athens and Arequipa. You're a non-professional band. You've got jobs and families. Let them go and see one of those commercial bands who keep touring throughout the world all the year. We live in the internet-era when you can discover tons of great bands from all around the world. I have lots of such small non-professional bands that I would love to see live, but I know I'll never do. So continue recording new stuff, continue playing some gigs for some lucky bastards. Take care of yourselves and your families. And say "fuck you" to everyone else. "C'est la vie", as we say in french:)))
Aug 21, 2022·edited Aug 21, 2022Liked by The Dreadnoughts
If The Dreadnoughts aren't able to come to Texas why don't we just ask the band from Nebraska to play their EP there?
And on a serious note, considering what you wrote: How interesting it would be to have musicians on standby for the same band in various countries? I bet there are hundreds if not billions of people who play along on their respective instruments to your songs and would jump on the opportunity to play a gig with you and therefore become part of Dreadnoughts history. Or the band itself, for that matter. But some of the main cast, e.g. drums and vocals, would need to stay. Wouldn't be the same otherwise.
I agree with Dimitri down the page. You guys have to take care of yourselves, and starting up a bunch of Dread-nots bands would be another straw on the pile.
But I would suggest that you don't need a band. You need a book. A songbook, specifically, one that's got the spiral bound cover so it lays flat of all the Dreadnoughts songs. Possibly with sheet music. You could do it at a Kinko's.
I've got a copy of the songbook 'Rise Up Singing'. It's got a bunch of songs, everything from Woody Guthrie to Stan Rogers, but importantly, it's a common reference point for a lot of folk musicians / people that sing folk music. I've gone to singing circles in other states and they can just say 'turn to such-and-such page' and we've got something we can sing together. Imagine how awesome that would be if you could go across the country, or the world, see a dog-eared copy of the Dreadnoughts songbook, and know you're all going to have a great night?
I mean, don't get me wrong. I'd love for you all to come to Grand Rapids, Michigan. (Or hell, I could probably make Ontario.) I would love to see a Dreadnoughts knockoff barnstorm the Midwest. But the fact is that I'm an old man, and I can hardly stay up past 11pm. But I can sing, and I do. If I had a songbook of all the Dreadnoughts songs, I'd use it. And if this blog has proven anything, it's that people are willing to pay you guys for writing stuff.
Anyway, a songbook would help accomplish a lot of what you've been talking about here, and I think people would pay for it and it'd be rad. That's my two cents.
My favorite band of all time is Starflyer 59, who began releasing music in 1993, and who I’ve been an avid fan of since 1998. The band is a rotating cast of members except for the songwriter and voice behind the music, Jason Martin. As long as he is at the helm of the good ship Starflyer, I don’t care what pieces are swapped out and replaced. The moment he’s no longer involved though, Starflyer has ceased to exist.
When I listen to The Dreadnoughts, it’s your voice, songwriting, and artistic direction that I’m here for. I realize that other members contribute to the writing, but everything is filtered through your voice and injected with your character.
When one member is swapped out here and there, there’s probably a period where they sound a little green to everyone, but eventually the other members’ influence on them erodes and polishes them until they sound like a weathered piece of the Dreadnought vessel.
If you replace 5/5 of the band, you haven’t given us The Dreadnoughts, you’ve simply built another ship that will be helmed by a different captain with his own vision; trained by the original captain, but never the same.
Identity is fundamentally a linguistic rather than natural property of objects and thus the Ship of Theseus problem is conclusively answered by the arguments of late period Wittgenstein: fight me.
To apply this to less frivolous and lighthearted matters: the English word "band" is a linguistic label that most naturally refers (imo) to a specific group of people playing from a specific selection of musics. Of course, labels are flexible, and the word "band" is flexible enough to accommodate people playing Queen covers or inviting other musicians on stage at a festival. Even so, I'd argue that if that happens too much, it does wear away at the band's identity. Replacing all five members of the Dreadnoughts and calling it a Dreadnoughts gig would be quite a stretch to the identity of the Dreadnoughts as a band. However, to quote thedreadnoughts.com/bio:
"The Dreadnoughts aren’t really a band, they’re an advocacy group, ruthlessly promoting the idea that folk and punk music form a perfect union."
And see, "advocacy group" is a much more flexible identity label than "band". Dreadnoughts-trained musicians performing as The Dreadnoughts might be a stretch, but Dreadnoughts-trained musicians performing as Representatives Of The Dreadnoughts Institute Of Acoustic Studies* seems to me less so. It fulfils the important goal of letting people who want to experience a Dreadnoughts-inspired gig do so, without getting the knickers of purist-jerkoffs-such-as-I in a twist about diluting the identity of the Dreadnoughts band name. And more than that, it offers an opportunity to promulgate The Dreadnoughts' identity and "what it stands for" (i.e. punk, cider, aggro trad folk and loud guitars exalting each of these virtues) beyond any one band that might adopt the name. Ideas can fly further than mere mortals, after all, hence why Theseus is still getting talked about 2500 years later.
(*they should probably use a less shitty band name, unless y'all like that sort of things in which case I will take my copyright royalties in loose cans of Strongbow)
The interesting thing about the identity issue in the Ship of Theseus is that new components were integrated alongside old components. If all of the new components were simply assembled on their own, entirely separate from the original ship, you'd still have the same end product of the exact ship model with all of the same parts, but it would clearly be a different ship because it is fully distinct from the old one. If you intend to train up local bands to carry on your energy, that would certainly be blurring the line significantly more than an entirely new ship constructed from parts that never interacted with their predecessors.
On the flipside of this thought experiment, consider how much every single venue you've played at more than once experiences this same exact phenomenon: the audio equipment might've been replaced since last time, venue staff might have moved on and been replaced, and most importantly it's not the exact same crowd. There are likely going to be some but not all of the old faces and hopefully a bunch of new faces to the next concert in the same city. The energy of the crowd persists all the same.
I'm reminded of a previous substack post on how polka might actually die wherein you said that the focus of the music shifted away from the community aspects and into the fame of the band. If you subvert that by enabling anyone who wants to participate in the music to become a performer for the band, that both de-emphasizes the reverence with which members of the band might be treated *and* offers significantly more opportunities for community growth through music by just generally increasing the total amount of concerts being played. In turn, that increases the amount of opportunities for people with similar niche tastes in music to find others who share their tastes and have some chaotic fun.
Also, what were the inspiring influences behind Tuika? I can't quite put my finger on it.
First about the Thesus ship problem. I have only one band on mind now, but I saw several rock/metal bands where the whole line-up changed besides one member, one of the founding members. So, yeah, you can change dozens of musicians, but until the founding member, the one who mostly composes the music and the lyrics, the one who keeps the "spirit" of the band alive(even if the sound changes more or less) is still there, it will still be the same band.
Next about all those poor fans who won't see you live. I discovered your band on internet a year or two before the Foreign skies album. What I read about you was that you were on a kind of hiatus and nearly disbanded. I was like "oh fuck, I discovered them too late, I'll never see this great band live". And up to now, I saw you live twice here in Switzerland. But if I wouldn't have had that chance, I would just have been continuing enjoying your albums and some of your live performances on YouTube. I've just watched one of your concerts in England on YouTube and it was as if I was there. So just say "Fuck off" to all those pussies in Austin, Athens and Arequipa. You're a non-professional band. You've got jobs and families. Let them go and see one of those commercial bands who keep touring throughout the world all the year. We live in the internet-era when you can discover tons of great bands from all around the world. I have lots of such small non-professional bands that I would love to see live, but I know I'll never do. So continue recording new stuff, continue playing some gigs for some lucky bastards. Take care of yourselves and your families. And say "fuck you" to everyone else. "C'est la vie", as we say in french:)))
If The Dreadnoughts aren't able to come to Texas why don't we just ask the band from Nebraska to play their EP there?
And on a serious note, considering what you wrote: How interesting it would be to have musicians on standby for the same band in various countries? I bet there are hundreds if not billions of people who play along on their respective instruments to your songs and would jump on the opportunity to play a gig with you and therefore become part of Dreadnoughts history. Or the band itself, for that matter. But some of the main cast, e.g. drums and vocals, would need to stay. Wouldn't be the same otherwise.
I agree with Dimitri down the page. You guys have to take care of yourselves, and starting up a bunch of Dread-nots bands would be another straw on the pile.
But I would suggest that you don't need a band. You need a book. A songbook, specifically, one that's got the spiral bound cover so it lays flat of all the Dreadnoughts songs. Possibly with sheet music. You could do it at a Kinko's.
I've got a copy of the songbook 'Rise Up Singing'. It's got a bunch of songs, everything from Woody Guthrie to Stan Rogers, but importantly, it's a common reference point for a lot of folk musicians / people that sing folk music. I've gone to singing circles in other states and they can just say 'turn to such-and-such page' and we've got something we can sing together. Imagine how awesome that would be if you could go across the country, or the world, see a dog-eared copy of the Dreadnoughts songbook, and know you're all going to have a great night?
I mean, don't get me wrong. I'd love for you all to come to Grand Rapids, Michigan. (Or hell, I could probably make Ontario.) I would love to see a Dreadnoughts knockoff barnstorm the Midwest. But the fact is that I'm an old man, and I can hardly stay up past 11pm. But I can sing, and I do. If I had a songbook of all the Dreadnoughts songs, I'd use it. And if this blog has proven anything, it's that people are willing to pay you guys for writing stuff.
Anyway, a songbook would help accomplish a lot of what you've been talking about here, and I think people would pay for it and it'd be rad. That's my two cents.
My favorite band of all time is Starflyer 59, who began releasing music in 1993, and who I’ve been an avid fan of since 1998. The band is a rotating cast of members except for the songwriter and voice behind the music, Jason Martin. As long as he is at the helm of the good ship Starflyer, I don’t care what pieces are swapped out and replaced. The moment he’s no longer involved though, Starflyer has ceased to exist.
When I listen to The Dreadnoughts, it’s your voice, songwriting, and artistic direction that I’m here for. I realize that other members contribute to the writing, but everything is filtered through your voice and injected with your character.
When one member is swapped out here and there, there’s probably a period where they sound a little green to everyone, but eventually the other members’ influence on them erodes and polishes them until they sound like a weathered piece of the Dreadnought vessel.
If you replace 5/5 of the band, you haven’t given us The Dreadnoughts, you’ve simply built another ship that will be helmed by a different captain with his own vision; trained by the original captain, but never the same.
Franchise!