Tell Me Something New

This makes me sad because I don’t want to come off as sounding snarky, but we really need to control our enthusiasm, at least to reasonably normal levels, when writing about bands. During the newspaper days, when I sensed the reviews were coming from friends and family, I ran them in the letters column rather than in the reviews column.

Now everything goes onto the same web page, although no doubt the readers can detect a biased review. It depends on the size of the room, but normally, less than 20 people is not a crowd. Two couples dancing is not a crowd dancing. It’s four people dancing. Watch those adjectives or you’ll give yourself away as a publicist and it dilutes your message. The very fact that my paid reviewers were so hard to please gave them credibility when they were surprised by a good band. Don’t be so easy that you’re suspect.

And remember who your readers are. The audience on the Journal’s website is mostly musicians, and they don’t really care how good a band is because they’re probably not going to see you unless you’re opening for them. They’re interested in the room, the acoustics, the stage, whether there’s regulars who come to the club all the time or if the place will be rolling in tumbleweeds unless they bring their own friends. If you have insider information about how much the club owners pay, or if the doorman gets to keep half the money, whether the house PA barely works, or the TV is going to be blaring sports right over the vocalist’s head – share that.

Otherwise, we already know that every one of you is the greatest band that ever was and deserves to pack the house with standing room crowds every night. We already know you cover songs fantastically, yet with such originality you make them truly your own. Your originals are indeed No. 1 hits that everyone will be singing next week. We all know you “will not disappoint,” a favorite cliché used in all the hundreds of reviews I’ve published. Every bar is wonderful because they booked you and you want them to book you again, so their food is fantastic, the microwaved chicken fingers are where microwaved chicken fingers were born, the beer is the coldest ever in history, the bathrooms so clean and sparkly, and the manager and waitstaff are saints. They practically give foot rubs, they’re so accommodating. Your thousands of fans are the most fun people; so much fun that all the rest of us must go to your next show and rub elbows with them so the fun will spread. We will have a great time, maybe the greatest of our lives.

Yes, we know all that. Now tell me stuff I don’t know.