by Chris Gray
“Don’t forget me when I’m gone” – Glass Tiger (1986)
How ’bout that as food for thought? When you stop laughing, you might want to
consider that there’s actually a grain of truth in what may be the most
brazenly ignored piece of advice since somebody told Eisenhower maybe he’d
better let the Vietnamese solve their own problems. Though they wouldn’t admit
it to their
own mothers, whenever a band – any band, every band – takes the stage, their
minds are on those very words. okay, they probably don’t hum the song as
they’re hoofing their gear in from the van, but it’s the thought that counts,
right? To avoid the fate of those words, bands must do certain things. First,
they have to learn songs. They should also be able to play their instruments,
and unless they’re really, really good at that – or play surf – at least one
person in the band should probably know how to sing. But that’s the easy part.
The hard part comes when they have to get other people interested in what
they’re playing. That’s when they have to create a buzz.
Buzz (buz) n. 1. Physiology. Something that happens
between three and six beers. 2. Zoology. A sound that bees make. 3.
Carpentry. A kind of saw. 4. Communications. A radio station in
Houston. 5. Music. A little-understood phenomenon that can make or break
a band’s career. Though the word “buzz” itself has become a joke, the idea it connotes is dead
serious. Though bands will tell you ’til they’re blue in the face that it means
nothing, or deny it even exists, the truth is a buzz means everything to a
band. It’s the difference between signing a record deal or dragging out the
four-track to cut another demo in the garage. It’s the difference between
filling a club every time you play there or playing an intimate set to the
sound man and the bartender. It’s the difference between touring or finding a
summer job. It’s the difference between good press or no press. So why does it
scare people so much? Probably because of what else it’s come to mean.
“The word almost implies a short, fast, comet-like ride; burnout; end of
career,” says Seed guitarist Dean Truitt. Dah-Veed, who’s seen his share of
buzzes, says “Every band has to have a gimmick, and how[ever] cool the gimmick
is, is how big the buzz is.” Carrie Clark of Sixteen Deluxe, a band that might
as well put buzz somewhere in its name because everyone else already has,
threatened to vomit (jokingly, of course… but then again, maybe not) the next
time she heard the word.
Fair enough. Writers get as tired thinking up synonyms for “buzz band” as
musicians (not to mention readers) do of hearing them. And it’s true that, in
many cases, “buzz band” is just a euphemism for “flash in the pan.” No band
wants to think the grand total of all the hours spent in the practice room and
at the shitty, rent-making gigs is an eyelash-quick ride on the Success Bus
with “Obscurityville” on the manifest. Every band needs a buzz to survive, but
no band wants to be a buzz band. Make sense?
It’s easy to tell when a band
has a buzz. A band has a buzz when its live audience pays more attention to it
than to their friends, their dates, or their drinks… When people won’t shut
up about them and plan their social calendars around their gigs… When they
bring people back to the same place week after week… When the only thing
played more often on the radio are the call letters. And they’ve really got a
buzz going when the guitar player downs a 12-pack of beer before going onstage.
This last buzz, the buzz of the chemical persuasion, is probably the only buzz
band members have direct control over.
What causes the other buzz – the one all the fuss is about – is a lot harder
to pin down. Why a crowd (and eventually, a label, a club, a writer, etc.)
latches onto this band and not that one could be due to some really convoluted
psycho-sociology about which band meets its listeners’ needs the most, or it
could just be this: People like what they like. Whatever. It’s really not that
important. What is important is that bands that do have a buzz aren’t quite
sure how they got it, and those that don’t aren’t quite sure how to get it.
Dah-Veed offers this helpful bit of advice: “Once you get the buzz, the key is
pretending like you don’t have a buzz.” It’s all starting to come together
quite nicely now, isn’t it?
“It’s as much a mystery to us as anyone else why they” [“they” being the
mysterious Austin Music Powers That Be… more on them later…] “singled us
out,” says Sixteen Deluxe bassist Jeff Copas. “Our plan was to play Emo’s,”
bandmate Chris Smith adds. “That was our big goal.” Instead, what they got
was… well, shit, unless you’ve been studying for the LSAT or MCAT since last
fall, you know what happened: They got “buzz” – big time buzz, possibly even
signing buzz (word is that Atlantic is interested in possibly signing the
band). One hundred and eighty degrees from Sixteen Deluxe’s story is the story
of another local band, Bottle of Smoke. You may not have heard this story. You
may not have even heard of the band. And that’s the problem: “The entire six
years we’ve been together, we’ve been trying to create a buzz,” says Matt
Hammond, bassist for Bottle of Smoke. “We’ve tried everything; from setting up
in a parking lot to giving out free T-shirts… everything, really.”
Bottle of Smoke – a young trio whose sound borrows as needed from hip-hop,
punk, roots-rock, new wave, and pop – is in an awkward position. They do gig,
but not steadily. They’re doing everything in their power to build a buzz,
including all the usual things like flyers, approaching record labels, mailing
lists, and T-shirts. They’ve even landed in these pages, in the “Recommendeds.”
It just doesn’t seem to be working. So much for How to Build a Buzz 101.
“There’s a missing link to our chain,” says the group’s drummer/vocalist Jason
Stolly. “It’s `How to get people continually out to the clubs?'”
Short of forcing them at gunpoint, the best answer is probably to be where
your crowd knows they can find you. Ted Roddy, whose Naughty Ones have parlayed
their Tuesday night Continental Club gigs into a minor cult following, agrees.
“People always want to go someplace where they know it’s gonna be a happenin’
deal,” he says. True; trouble is, most of the regular slots are taken by bands
who’d sooner give up 50-yard line Cowboys tickets than their gigs. This is
great for the Naughty Ones and similarly scheduled bands; however, it’s not so
great for bands like Bottle of Smoke who, every time they gig somewhere, have
to move to the back of the line. “That guy on the other end of the line who’s
booking his club is thinking, `Okay, I’ll book this band, but I’ve also gotta
book these hundreds of other bands,'” Stolly says. “Even if he likes you, he
can’t really get back around to you until he’s dealt with a lot of the other
bands.”
This being the “Live Music Capital of the World,” bands in these parts have to
deal with the headaches that go along with living here. Besides the ratio of
bands to clubs, there’s the micromanagerial music press and the general
quicksand-like mentality that keeps Austin bands from finding any kind of
significant success outside the city limits. Needless to say, this leaves a lot
of Austin bands who achieve a certain degree of buzz-hood wondering “Where do
we go from here?” The answer should be “anywhere,” but more often, it’s
“nowhere.” But at last, the musicians can all agree on something; namely, that
Austin is not exactly the healthiest place to build a buzz.
“It’s strange to me that `The Biggest-Heralded Bands in Austin’ are the bands
that never go beyond this scene,” Seed’s Truitt says. “It’s almost like the
people here are so territorial that they don’t want you to go beyond that.”
Sixteen D’s Smith tells a similar story. “Austin is really awesome, but there’s
this invisible bubble around it,” he says. “It’s really easy to get caught up
in it and think the world revolves around it.”
As far as is known, there’s not a cabal of tastemakers that determines what
bands will hit it big (if there were, though, whatta story). It’s still up to
Joe and Jane Clubgoer – with a generous assist from Austin’s music press. The
only thing resembling a cabal is that a lot of Joe and Jane Clubgoers are
perfectly willing to let a handful of music writers tell them what and what not
to like. “As soon as you’re in the paper a lot, then you’re trendy,” says
Dah-Veed, who knows a thing or two about being trendy from his days in Twang
Twang Shock-a-Boom. “And as soon as you’re trendy, if something doesn’t happen
soon, then you’re washed up.” This chew-em-up-spit-em-out mentality is hardly
unique to Austin; however, because it seems every local writer (yeah, me too)
is pushing his or her own agenda before all else, and because there’s a lot
more bands around here jockeying for ink than most places, it can be especially
pronounced at times.
But – always a but – the press is just as hard to ignore. One thing the press
cannot do with any authority is create a buzz – it takes a crowd of people all
into the same band to do that, and Austin music writers agree with each other
about as frequently as pigs sprout wings and fly – yet without it, buzz bands
would be lost. “You get a buzz, and then you get media interest, and it
continues the buzz and makes it grow,” says the Derailers’ Tony Villanueva.
“When you read it in the paper or a magazine, it’s all the more reason to go
check it out,” agrees Roddy. “When we were written [up] in the “Recommended”
section, a lot of people said something to us about it,” says Bottle of Smoke’s
Hammond.
Bands don’t make their living in the press, though – when it comes down to it,
what the press thinks is just this side of irrelevant (look at Hootie & the
Blowfish). A band can get all the favorable press in the world, but if nobody
except rock critics comes to see them, they can expect to last just about as
long as it takes for the rock critics to find the next next big thing – and
there’s always a next big thing. Likewise, if a band can sell out a club
without the help of the press, you’re not likely to see many long faces in the
ensemble.
What happened to our buzz?
Good question. A buzz is easy to define yet hard to understand. The word is
tossed about more loosely than a back-alley prostitute, and yet nobody thinks
it applies to them. Bands with buzz don’t want it, and those without a buzz
can’t get it. A solid buzz can last for years, but the loudest ones are the
ones that flame out overnight. You can’t live with a buzz, and you sure as hell
can’t live without it. Is it any wonder everyone hates that word so much?
There are no rules for being a buzz band; if there were, everyone would sound
like Filter or Better than Ezra, and violence might ensue. As it is, buzz bands
that didn’t pan out are already strewn about the musical landscape like first
chapters of a novel or multiple takes of a scene. Every once in a while, a band
will prove strong enough to reach the ultimate goal: the retirement of the word
`buzz.’ I, for one, can’t wait for the next one. It really is a stupid word. As
a matter of fact, something about it reminds me of this band I heard once. A
band that was popular for about 30 seconds and then faded into oblivion where
it belonged. Jeez, I wish I could remember the name.
Oh, yeah, it was Glass Tiger. n
This article appears in August 11 • 1995 and August 11 • 1995 (Cover).