The Doctor's Band

[Guest]

Interesting - this thread encapsulates all the challenges of anyone wanting to become a music professional. There are a couple of different angles I reckon:

- The Music: not that hard to classify, reminiscent of various things - Sparks springs to mind. It's clearly a decent bit of music in itself. But how does it relate to what's going on currently? Does it slot into a current scene with a readymade audience? I suspect not - and that could be a problem. (Yes, a low budget DIY track can be exciting and sweep through the music world, but I'm not sure this style is different enough from what's gone before to do that. I'm thinking of things like Scrrobius Pip and White Town for the sort of left-field DIY hit here)

- The Promotion: there are established methods of doing this, even as a DIY outfit. You just stump up a few hundred/thousand pounds and have them send your tune out to journos/DJs/VJs or whoever are the 'mavens' within the appropriate scene. Of course, if you're not easily identifiable into a scene then that might not work.

- Being seen to be serious. I think this quite important. The idea being that you are doing it 'for real' - getting out there, doing gigs, releasing records, making videos. That in itself can show the authentic artistic drive to be heard. And I think impresses a potential audience. It gives them something to buy into. I think this band are doing quite well on that front, with video and everything.

So, in summary - on the evidence of the one song, I'm not sure it's enough to prick up people's ears, but perhaps there are other songs that could do that. Without proper promotion it's going to be slow graft building up any kind of audience.

I guess the question is - what do you want from it? A fully paid for career in music, or a low paid sideline that satisfies your soul (or ego

[Aurongroove]

I only just remember this thread after a long year, and I came back to give some updates!

Oli F, thank you.
I didn't actually read your post until now, but when I did, I read it twice! the advice is sound and still very much applies!!
The main reason I thought to come back was to say thanks for lots of the responses I had here. Just knowing there are people who can relate to the... absolute madness of trying to get an indie band up and/or running.
This thread, though on the surface was indeed looking for help on practical matters (which did come, and was listened too) was for me, also an attempt to connect with people (perhaps older/wiser) who might help make this journey feel less alienating and scary.

So thanks guys, you helped in more ways than one.

Here's a selected list of things that happened since last May;

We got a slot in Electric Picnic, via a 'backdoor'-ish way of applying.
Basically, we wrote, filmed and produced an entire interactive move to be screened inside a lavishly decorated caravan as a festival installation and applied that way.
Viewed by small groups of people at a time, the people make decisions that affect the outcome and show alternative pathways through the film with two big buttons.
Some kids queued up again and again immediately to try for other endings!
(we were just counting our lucky stars we accidentally managed to make it PG)

It was played all weekend at the festival, and we did a gig as well.
The installation was entirely to thank for getting us our foot in the door to the "big" festival, and now there are several art festivals booking us especially for it.
We've almost become a two-party group; the band (5 musicians, in character) and the staff for the installation (A lady who's a theatre director, her husband a handyman, an artist who makes our signs, a filmmaker who recorded the film and a sound man who conveniently, because he's at the installation, can come do sound for whenever our gig is on at that same festival)
Making a posse of 10 people that meet up for the festivals.

In the summer we finally had the last piece of the pie for the album release except for our graphics editor (for the album art) was seriously dragging his heels.

It turns out that he was a con man who delegating our work to a low paid, non-qualified foreign worker, and that's why it kept coming back with mistakes. We found out before handing him any more money, but he ended up costing us another 8 months delay and the original investment of 600+ euros completely wasted. We had to perform our album's tour last autumn being able to only sell the merch and NOT copies of the album.

This was a guy RECOMMENDED TO US by the company printing our album, who were a newish printing house and who otherwise performed with brilliant professionalism and gave us an exceptional end product.

One of our friends who was extremely busy did us a massive favour by doing the graphics for us in only two weeks; vinyl labels, sleeves, CD art, Text formatting, print templates. He is officially a legend for the rest of his life.

on the day after Christmas day, our band leader (the DOCTOR, lol) was rushed into ICU with a ruptured appendix and therein almost died from toxic shock, drug-induced hallucinations and 10 days lack of sleep, E-coli Poisoning in his stomach, and blood poisoning.

He's just about survived and is recovering, and as of Valentine's day our album was released.
It's a Rock Opera inspired by the film 'The Room' by Tommy Wiseau and the Book 'The Disaster Artist' by Greg Sestero (recently James Franco made a film about it too!).

So we're currently clutching our legal advice document hoping no one sues, but partially hoping he at least kicks up a fuss about it because that'll be free promotion and we are protected under parody law.

We've had three reviews (all extremely positive, in one case, there were tears reading it).

We've done two videos since,
a live performance video of one of the songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjRDe8db42E

and a very funny Christmas song, if I do say so myself, a cover of "Walking in the Air"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoNtiOJzLNA

The Album sales have been underwhelming, but considering no one knows us and we already had a pledge drive of 5k, our core audience and friends and family have already got their copies and merch!

This year we have a plethora of festivals to play at, and, I suppose, start writing more music.

There's no business like Music Business.
https://www.drmindflip.com/

[petev3.1]

Unnecessary post.

[Drew Stephenson]

Thanks for the update Aurongroove, love the caravan idea - good alternative thinking to work your way onto the scene.