I often think about what I would do if I were an old-school A&R guy in the music industry, responsible for actually spotting and developing new bands. Not necessarily making them famous—I suck at that now because it involves tiktok—but making them good. There are two things I would focus on.
The first thing I’d focus on is securing strong vocals. Roughly 40-50% of the volume on any rock/punk/metal/pop recording is the lead vocal. You have a great bass player, a great drummer and some solid guitars and you just… give that 40-50% to Steve because Steve came up with the idea for the band? If no-one in the group is a great singer, get a great singer. Do not skip this stage. Plenty of bands get very good with mediocre bass players, zero bands get good with a mediocre singer. It’s not optional, don’t take it personally, and if you’re Steve, ask yourself which you love more, the ego boost or the music.
But the second thing I would do, which is in many ways the most important thing, is to force everyone in the band to take an 8 week acting/theatre course.
I know what you’re thinking? Hang out with drama nerds? Vocal sculpting exercises? Trust exercises? Talking about getting in touch with your inner essence? Playing the ‘mirror game’, which involves creative imitation and not doing lines of coke off a mirror? And…horror of horrors, I know: doing improv comedy? (*spasmic shudder*) Isn’t all of this basically the least punk rock stuff in the entire world?
But hold on there, friend, let me haul out the big boy font now, because this cannot be stressed enough:
Live musical performance isn’t like theatre or similar to theatre, live musical perfomance is theatre.
If you are a live musician, you are actually operating in a specific branch of the theatre world; you are an actor, you are a choreographer, you are a playwright, all of it.
Shudder at the thought of improv comedy? This is understandable, since local improv comedy shows are among the worst things in the entire world, and the people who charge money to see them should be taken out into the street and maimed.
But buddy: what do you think your vocalist’s between-song banter is? How do you think you work it out? And you just want to do that without practising it at all? You’re going to put 5,000 hours into learning your instrument, 500 hours into crafting and practising your songs, but when it comes time to do your improv you’re just going to… wing it?
“Oh, but I have it all scripted in advance!”: ok, lame, but even so: you just admitted that you’re a playwright, writing monologues for characters.
That cool thing punk bands do when they jump and slam their feet down on the beat during a big moment? Choreography.
Vocal projection exercises? Oh, you mean “learning to sing into a mic”? Which are almost literally the same thing?
Wondering how bands have the gall to do amazing shit like leap into a crowd and surf to the bar? Oh, you mean, how do they do the most common trust exercise in drama class, the trust fall?
Some rock/punk bands understand that live music is theatre. The rest of them think that their job is just to stand there and looks semi-bored and play, like people have just paid to see some people replicate the sound of a recorded song. This is just literally false; you are on a stage, you are performing, this is a stage performance, it is theatre. And if you just stand there, trying to look nonchalant and cool because you secretly you don’t believe you deserve to be up there, guess what, your theatrical production sucks.
You know that voice in your head that tells you this?
Hey. Everyone hates you and is secretly judging you and you don’t really matter.
That voice is poison, and a good actor knows how to just shut it up and be fabulous. They know how to replace that voice with one that just repeatedly screams:
“AND NOW COMES AN ACT OF ENORMOUS ENORMANCE!
NO FORMER PERFORMER’S PERFORMED THIS PERFORMANCE!”
(h/t Dr. Seuss)
And so I’d just love to see what would happen with a band full of great musicians and singers who took an 8 week theatre course. If you were planning to go out on the road I bet the course would pay for itself within the year: that’s how much it matters. You don’t have to end up doing the crazy shit we do, you might just develop this incredible look and confident performance style, a la the Ramones. And a drama nerd will take you there.
So, what can drama nerds teach punk rockers? Turns out it’s: how to do their jobs.
And now what I’m about to say is so pretentious and egomaniacal that I’m going to paywall it. But it’s honest and it’s true and I need to say it. And if someone is going to hate me for saying it then I at least want to get $5 from them before they angrily cancel their subscription.
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