JUMPING DARKNESS PARADE: DAATH’S EYAL LEVI ON HOW TO GET YOUR BAND NOTICED
Every show we play, any city in the world, any time of day, any season of the year, ANYWHERE, we get demos. Some of these demos come in really nice press packets with blown up photos and a bio telling us about the stagnation of the local scene and how Cryptic Disembowelment is breathing new life unto said scene. Some of these are just burned CDs with sharpie on them. Some come hot off a laser printer. We get shit tons. And by and large they are all garbage.
No offense to anyone, but that’s just the truth. It seems to me like these bands are missing the point. They all seem to want to get our attention so that we can get the attention of some “industry folk” for them so that they can be discovered and hit it big like us (HAHAHA). They all want that hookup. What they don’t seem to get is that we’re all looking for the hookup and that a baby national has nothing to offer a local band. We’re in the struggle just as much as you are. Don’t count on us to be the hookup.
I mean, I’m always happy to help out a struggling band that has a ton of promise, but seriously…. How much can I really do for your band? I can hand your demo off to a dude at a label who gets three-hundred more demos a week? I can give it to some managers who don’t give a shit? Show it to a booking agent who won’t book you because you’re not signed? It’s not the way.
We have stacks and stacks of demos. It’s all just clutter. The key is to get people talking about your band. Talking about your band enough to where it’s the topic of conversation in multiple places. The topic of conversation enough to make people curious enough to check out your own band on their own accord. There are sooooo many bands out there. So many MySpace pages. So many more options than anyone with half a life can even begin to sort through.
So how do you get noticed? Like I said, you get people talking about you. Case and point: Job For A Cowboy and Suicide Silence. Two bands that blew up before their first albums even came out. I had heard about these bands in conversation long before they were signed. Their style may not be my preferred cup of morphine, but I went out of my way to check those bands out because people had been talking about them enough to get me at least curious enough to check them out. Obviously I wasn’t the only one because these bands had tens of thousands of MySpace friends and thousands of plays a day BEFORE THEY WERE EVEN SIGNED.
This didn’t happen because they bugged every signed musician at every show with their demos. It happened because they used technology we all have available to us to get conversations about themselves started and got people curious. Curious enough to check them out and help propel them to where they’re at now. So stop focusing your energy where it doesn’t matter and get to fucking work.
-EL
Instead of giving them your crappy demo, why don’t you visit Daath on MySpace?
