Don’t Let Your Band Become A Stereotype

I have WAY too much experience and examples of this. It goes this way, nearly every time.  Band has great gig, parties afterward.  Band plays gig while partying.  Band starts partying before gig.  Before you know it, it's all about the partying and no longer about the music.

I see these band profiles, from local to national that describes a band as "....a booze fueled group of blah, blah, blah".  It's not new, it's not novel and it's certainly not attractive to watch a bunch of people waste talent that they worked on developing disappear into a bottle.

Ivan Moody of Five Finger Death Punch recently did serious damage to his bands reputation and his relationships with the other band members by getting faced before going on stage.  This is just the latest proof that even the best get their priorities mixed up. Back in the day, Metallica had such a band problem that they were frequently called "Alcoholica".

I know this will mostly fall on deaf ears. So of you will say "we play better when we're drinking".  No, you don't.  You'll go through band after band and member after member as they lose focus on the music and spend too much time partying.  If you are serious about becoming a musician, then don't let anything get in your way.  There is a time and a place for everything and the worse time to make an ass of your self is when you are on stage in front of people.