Play that funky music....

Italy is the promised land of little musical groups. Or at least the place where I live in. This has many advantages, but also many disadvantages. One of them being that you have to listen to a lot of shit.

When I lived in Finland I sang in a Gospel choir. I had one solo-performance every year. That was in Christmas when I got to sing Noel Noel, a cover made famous by Whitney Houston. It was great, but unfortunately one song a year was all I got. 

I also sang in a pop/soul/rock group with four 15 year old dudes. The age wasn't a problem, they were really talented and all, but it was up to me to go get us gigs. I didn't have the faintest idea how to go about this, so we played outside the rehearsal room only a few times. That made me a little sad. The problem is, or at least was, that there aren't many places for up and coming groups to go play. The pubs and restaurants just aren't interested, they want professionals.

Then I move to Italy. After about 8 months I find a guy, a guitar player who wants to play with me. And he's super talented too, so I'm wondering what the hell is he doing playing with me?! After about 5 months of practicing we do our first gig. 2 weeks from that we play another one. In the year to follow we play lots of gigs in the neighborhood and some out of town. We played pubs, events, weddings, reggae festivals, birthday parties, even this big rock club had us play 2 times. To me, that's amazing. It's amazing how willing people are to give you a chance to play, and sometimes they don't even ask you what it is that you do. "Yeah yeah, I trust you, you'll be great, just go for it". 

The problem with that is that not everybody's great. And not every type of music goes with every venue. So a lot of times I've walked into a bar, listened to the group for 5 minutes and said "what the hell...?"

I'm certainly not saying that my duo's all perfect. No no. Once we played at this rock bar that book only cover groups, and they prefer groups that dance on the tables and do drugs in the bathroom. So when me and my guitar player showed up and started to play Björk, they weren't too happy. Mind you it was valentine's day and they had said that what we did was ok and cuddly, but then again....not. Worst gig ever.

You never know what people are looking for these days anyway. There are some pubs that want you only if you play your own stuff. Doesn't matter what kinda stuff. You can sit upside down on a chair and make music-like noises from your ass hole, but as long as it's original, you're good to go. They prefer to have bad non-cover groups than good cover groups.

Then there are the places that only want cover groups. The cheesier the better. They ask you to play Hedonism by Skunk Anansie and Hand in my pocket by Alanis Morrissette. They want to sing along. They don't want to hear anything that they haven't already heard a million times. It's like group karaoke.

To me that doesn't make sense. You should want any group that's good to play in your club, and someone original in their own way. Don't be so black and white about the genre or cover/non-cover -issue.

We (me and my guitarist) try to be something in between. We do covers of songs that nobody else does. We try to add something of our own in them. We use effects or change the rhythm or something. We also have a few songs of our own, just to spice things up a little. And we've also added one or two of those cheesy songs that everybody plays, just in case we run out of songs before it's time to finish. Still, we get comments like "it's too slow", "it's too artsy" or "it's too sad". You can never please everybody, but that's ok.
And more importantly what matters to us is to play songs that inspire us. It's the only way you can go on for years without getting bored.

Still, I have to say that I prefer the music scene here. I like the fact that you don't have to be a professional in order to score a gig. People want to see the little artist grow and develop into something great. Or not, that's ok too. I like going into a bar and not knowing what I'll find. I can always leave if 

I don't like what I hear. 

Or I can just close my ears and get a beer.