Aah, tribute acts. Bringers of light. Who doesn’t love a good tribute band?
I’m joking. No-one should. No-one in their right mind says to their loved one, ‘let’s go out for some tip-top entertainment tonight’, and ends up watching a bad impression of a musical act they love.
Except they do. I was staggered to realise while waiting for the (real) band to come on at Bristol’s finest music venue, The Fleece, the other night, that over a third of all the bands scheduled to play were tribute acts.
Clearly something is not right in the world.
Every half-way decent band, and a lot of really bad ones these days have at least one pun-tastically titled mock version. Pink Floyd currently has over fifty copy versions doing the rounds. Some of them selling out quite large venues.
I decided to investigate.
The problem, it rapidly transpires, has its origins with the Millennial generation.
When two trends collide, a third emerges.
Millennials are ‘Heroes’. They have also rejected the ‘live to work’ attitude of their parents and have gone for much more of a ‘work to live’ perspective on life. Fair play. If you’re a plumber. But combine the desire for heroism with the corresponding lack of desire to do the hard yards, and the result is fifty tribute acts to every musician. Or worse. Tribute acts of trbute acts. In which Radiohead tribute act, and arch music-killers, Coldplay, now find themselves competing with half a dozen Coldplay tribute bands.
Lowest common denominator heroism. No need to bother with the challenges of writing new songs. Or doing any thinking to advance the state of the art. Or learning how to play your instrument. Just download a few Oasis chord sheets, borrow a dodgy wig and some sunglasses, and hey presto, two weeks later you’ve got 500 people cheering you on at Bristol’s finest music venue on a Friday night. Not to mention the poundshop groupies.
Rest assured, this doesn’t end well. Not for the Millennial quarter-life crises. Not for the sanity of people who actually enjoy music. Or for the next generation of Artists, that are going to have to pick up the pieces in the coming years.
Come the revolution…