{"id":6173,"date":"2011-11-22T23:04:58","date_gmt":"2011-11-22T13:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=6173"},"modified":"2011-11-22T23:08:21","modified_gmt":"2011-11-22T13:08:21","slug":"the-economics-of-aging-rock-bands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=6173","title":{"rendered":"The Economics of Aging Rock Bands"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A few weeks ago, I saw two rock bands that I am very fond of: Def Leppard and The Dropkick Murphys.\u00a0 Both bands have been playing for quite a number of years.\u00a0 Def Leppard formed in Sheffield, England in 1977 and have been playing together for 34 years now.\u00a0 The Dropkick Murphys originated in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1996 and have been together for 15 years.\u00a0 After watching the two shows in the span of a week, I noticed something about their setlists and it got me thinking.<\/p>\n

I saw the Dropkicks first.\u00a0 Their gig was at the Tivoli, a smallish venue that holds a couple of thousand people and has an intimate environment that can really pack in the crowds but keep everyone reasonably close to the stage.\u00a0 Jen and I were mostly there to hear ‘the old stuff’.\u00a0 They did get around to playing a lot of their most well known songs but not before performing a good chunk of their new album Going Out In Style<\/em> which Jen and I aren’t that familiar with.\u00a0 Clearly though, there was a sense of pride from the band in the new material they released and judging by the response of the people around us, most of their fans keep up with their new albums.<\/p>\n

Def Leppard played at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre.\u00a0 It’s a large arena that is used by just about all the major music acts that visit Brisbane.\u00a0 If you’re Britney Spears, Pink, Foo Fighters or anyone of that magnitude, you’re playing your shows at this venue.\u00a0 At the show, I noticed that Jen and I were probably some of the youngest people there.\u00a0 The typical age of the Def Leppard concert goer seemed to be in the mid-thirties to early forties.<\/p>\n

The band came out to great fan fare and plenty of cheering from the crowd.\u00a0 They opened the show with…actually, I can’t tell you the name of the song.\u00a0 It’s the new single from their latest album and I’ve never heard it before.\u00a0 Judging by the completely muted response from the audience, they didn’t know what the hell the song was either.\u00a0 After they played the single, the band then proceeded to play all their hit songs from Pyromania<\/em> to Adrenalize<\/em>, a span of nine years (83-92).\u00a0 The crowd loved every minute of it and went home happy.<\/p>\n

After the show, I started wondering – why do Def Leppard release new albums?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Looking online, I noticed two things.\u00a0 Firstly, they have played nearly the exact same setlist since the Nineties.\u00a0 If you look at the tracklisting for their greatest hits album Vault<\/em> (released in ’93), that is pretty much what they play and the only exception is usually the single off their latest album.\u00a0 Basically, its tacit acknowledgement that everything that they have produced since 1992 to present day, a span of nearly two decades<\/strong>, is complete rubbish that they have zero interest in playing beyond the initial release of the album.\u00a0 So there’s a catalogue of about seventy songs off six albums (Slang, Euphoria, X, Yeah!, Songs From The Sparkle Lounge, Mirrorball<\/em>) that pretty much gets glossed over.\u00a0 Likewise, if you’re interested in hearing anything from their first two albums (On Through The Night, High ‘n’ Dry<\/em>) then with the exception of Bringing On The Heartache, you’re out of luck.<\/p>\n

The second thing I noticed – there is a small but vocal group of diehard Def Leppard fans that continually request a more versatile setlist on Twitter and on the band’s messageboard.\u00a0 Most of the time, these people get ignored and then blocked.<\/p>\n

Which brings me back to my question.\u00a0 In this day and age, I can’t imagine releasing a new Def Leppard album is worth much money.\u00a0 The Mirrorball wiki page<\/a> tells me that the album sold a paltry 20,000 copies in the States.\u00a0 Compare that with Hysteria<\/em> (1987) which sold 20,000,000 copies.\u00a0 Given that for six albums in a row, the band plays the new single before getting back to the old stuff at which point they never, ever play the new material ever again, why bother releasing new material at all?\u00a0 If the band is now making 90%+ revenue from concert ticket sales and merchandise and its from people who are clamouring to hear a very narrow selection of music, what is the point of releasing new music at all?<\/p>\n

I can’t believe its because of any kind of passion or strong feeling about producing new tracks.\u00a0 I mean, if it was, surely they would make more of an attempt to play the songs live like the Dropkick Murphys did at their show?\u00a0 Do the band really think that there are no songs worth playing off Slang<\/em> or Euphoria<\/em> whatsoever?\u00a0 Do they just release new albums because thats just the time honoured tradition of what active bands do?<\/p>\n

From what I can see, there is no creative drive<\/em> for the band to release new music and there is no commercial benefit<\/em> either in selling several thousand copies of an album at $20 a copy.\u00a0 You could make that money back playing a single show in Brisbane, even after you’ve paid off the promoter and everyone else gets their cut.<\/p>\n

It is a mystery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago, I saw two rock bands that I am very fond of: Def Leppard and The Dropkick Murphys.\u00a0 Both bands have been playing for quite a number of years.\u00a0 Def Leppard formed in Sheffield, England in 1977 and have been playing together for 34 years now.\u00a0 The Dropkick Murphys originated in Quincy, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,6],"tags":[437,1105],"class_list":["post-6173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-music","tag-def-leppard","tag-dropkick-murphys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6173"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6180,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6173\/revisions\/6180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}