Concertgoing is no longer what it used to be.

Not that I’d really know myself; I attended my first live rock concert in 1994 (Dream Theater), and although there are a lot more metal bands to see these days, the types of bands and the venues are pretty much the same. I’m certainly satisfied with the current state of affairs (and I think things have been on the upswing for the last several years), but I can recall some of the “old-timers” around here spinning their tales, telling of a day when things were different. A day when you could go out every weekend and see a good live band (that wasn’t just playing covers). When an unsigned local band could get a good following, and bands and fans would mix to create an integrated scene. When people would go out to see some bands they had never heard before, because it was a fun night out AND a good way to discover something new.

I think scenes like this started to decay as people became more averse to risk. This includes the club owners, booking agents, and the bands themselves. But most importantly, it includes the fans, the customers who drove the whole system. People became less willing to come out and spend money to see a band they’d never heard before, and then predictably, clubs became less willing to book bands that wouldn’t bring out the people. I imagine a combination of factors contributed to this decline in risk-tolerance, from a perceived decline in the quality of the acts, to a shift of interest to styles of music that don’t benefit from a live performance, and finally to an entertainment explosion that created all sorts of alternatives in the fight to win the consumer’s time and money. And once people stopped taking chances and stopped going out to see shows, the whole thing started to fall apart.

Back in the REALLY old days, before recorded music was invented, a live performance was the only way to experience music. If you wanted to hear music, you had to go find a real person who was playing it. Then recorded music got popular, but I imagine there were still a lot of up-and-coming bands that really built their careers and got their names out there by playing shows. But now, with a million independent labels all releasing a million albums every year, and record production becoming less and less expensive, it has become a lot easier for bands to get their music out to the public without having to interact directly. And now with the explosion of the Internet and mp3s, the idea of going to see live bands to discover new music has almost become absurd; now people aren’t even willing to take on the risk of buying an album without hearing most of the music on it first. It’s no wonder bands have trouble drawing people out of their homes.

So with this year’s Milwaukee Metalfest, I wanted to take a trip back in time, and see what it was like to hear a band for the first time on-stage, without hearing their albums, downloading their mp3s, or being influenced by their marketing. Certainly I had seen unfamiliar bands in the past, but never to this extent. At this particular festival, there were 14 bands that I’d seen play before (six of which I owned CDs from), so that left 119 bands on the schedule that I’ve never really heard much from. Among those 119 bands, there was bound to be a lot of garbage, but with a little perseverance, I was sure I’d be able to find some of the hidden gems.

In the four previous years that I’d attended the Metalfest, I’d never actively watched more than 13 bands over the two days. I’d always had a desire to see more, but it never quite happened. For one, I’d always gone with friends who weren’t really interested in spending all that time inside the venue, and in most cases, I couldn’t really blame them. There were always a certain number of clear “headliner”-type bands that drew us to the fest, and there wasn’t a lot of interest in seeing the unsigned bands. I think as the upswing in popularity of underground metal has continued, the unsigned bands have actually gotten quite a bit better. In 2002, the quality and diversity of unknown bands has increased to the point where you can do fairly well taking a chance, while in years past the unknowns may have totally deserved their unknown status.

Those “unknowns” were the key to the whole thing, because this year, there wasn’t a single “must-see” headliner for me (or most other people) like there was in the past with In Flames, Opeth, or Anathema. Thus, instead of one or two bands that I REALLY wanted to see, there were a whole bunch of bands that I was merely interested in checking out. This also meant there wasn’t enough to draw my less-ambitious friends up to Milwaukee, so I would be doing this one alone; this was a bit of a benefit, because then I was free from peer pressure and they wouldn’t be able to drag me off to the Miller Brewery tour again! I decided to make the trip to Milwaukee on my bicycle; besides the standard benefits of riding a bicycle and the adventure of it all, as a bonus I figured it would limit my ability to “escape” from the fest in case I lost my resolve to sit through band after band. I know that sounds kind of sick, “trapping” myself like that, especially since this is all supposed to be fun, but you never know what you’re going to feel like after 20 hours of metal. One negative consequence of my transportation choice was that I had to travel by city bus to the venue, and thus I knew I might have to leave early in order to catch the last bus. But the more I looked into all the bands playing the fest, the less important the bands at the end of the night became. Sure, I would likely miss some good stuff, but I knew I would still see a whole lot of good stuff earlier in the day.

Once I decided that I was going to go, I immediately set to work. Since the talent would be spread out over dozens of bands, rather than being concentrated in a select few, extensive research was the key to sniffing out that talent. Unfortunately, the official Metalfest website was virtually useless in aiding this research. While there were website links to a few of the scheduled bands, the vast majority had no further information beyond than the band name, and sometimes a logo (which could sometimes be helpful as a last resort). So I spent a lot of time searching. Luckily, almost all bands these days have websites, which wouldn’t have been the case a few years ago. I began putting together a spreadsheet listing the band name, point of origin, a description of their style in four words or less, a website address, and a number from 1 to 10 indicating how interested I was in seeing that band. In addition to official websites, mp3.com was very helpful, as many of the bands had a presence there, which provided not only sound samples, but also important biographical and stylistic information was surprisingly missing at some official websites. I spent many hours on this process over a couple weeks, but in the end I had a very helpful document. It’s surely not something I’d do just for the heck of it, but even if I hadn’t gone to the Metalfest, I wouldn’t have felt like the project was totally worthless, as I learned quite a bit about bands to look out for (and also some to ignore).

So I printed out the relevant information from this spreadsheet and took it with me to the Metalfest. For a full report of the event and the bands I saw, please see my other articles on the Milwaukee Metalfest. In summary, I had a very satisfying time at the fest. I might not have experienced the peaks I had in previous years when seeing an incredible individual band, but I saw far more good music than I had at any previous Metalfest, spread across many bands. And during the whole time I never even thought about leaving, as I was always far too busy watching a band, trying to figure out which band to see next, or taking notes on the band I just saw. It was a lot of work, but I would definitely do it again.

So why go through all that effort? Why not just let others do the grunt work of discovering new talent for me? I could easily just wait until a band reaches a certain level of popularity before I even let it enter my consciousness, and by that point, much of the garbage will have hopefully been filtered out, right?

The problem is, that’s not the kind of music listener I want to be. I never want to end up in a position where I only know about the “popular” bands and lose my connection to underground music. For years now, I’ve heard people whining about being forced to pay high prices for concert tickets. $130 for U2. $100 average for Billy Joel/Elton John. $250 for Madonna. Heck, I even saw someone here a few weeks ago complaining about ticket prices for the Dream Theater tour. To me, complaints like that are moronic, and I say the same thing I say to those who complain about being forced to buy new reissues of old albums: “Who is reaching into your wallet and taking the money out?” If the price is truly too expensive, don’t pay it. If you pay it, the price wasn’t too high, and you have no reason to complain.

The reason ticket prices get so high is because there are huge numbers of people who want to see particular acts, all fighting for a limited number of seats. And sure, those acts might be good, and deserve all the fans that they have, but if anyone thinks there is any correlation between popularity (which equals ticket price) and quality of the show, then they don’t know anything about music. The enormous supply of bands out there dwarfs the demand of people to hear them, so high ticket prices are not caused by any sort of overall demand, but rather from a very uneven distribution of that demand. Crowds glom onto certain bands and ignore others not because they’re “better”, but simply because lots of other people like them. That means there will always be excellent bands out there playing for next to nothing, to a few passionate fans, in intimate venues. It just takes a little more effort to find them, since you can’t just follow the well-worn path created by the stampeding herd. Case in point: I recently saw Dillinger Escape Plan for $3. DEP can hold their own with anyone in terms of musicianship and intensity as far as I’m concerned; sure, a lot of people might say U2 puts on a better show, but 43 times better? The average price of a concert ticket in 2001 was an absurd $43.86; I’ve been to over 60 concerts, and I don’t think I’ve EVER paid that much to see a one-day show, and I hope I never do.

You might think “oh, but those are mainstream bands he’s talking about, that’ll never be a problem for underground metal; that’s one of the reasons I really like metal in the first place, because it’s NOT that popular!” To that I say just look at the prices people are getting for tickets to ProgPower 3.0 on the secondary market. There has already been talk about it becoming an event that only the “elite” will be able to attend. In truth, “elite” basically means “ignorant”. People are willing to pay that much because they haven’t left themselves any alternatives. Yes, there has never been anything like PP3 in the US, but if everyone paid such a high price, would they all really think it was the most entertainment they could get for their dollar?

So the way I see it, spending $45 and a bunch of time on the Milwaukee Metalfest gave me the chance to see 130 bands (many of them unsigned), which was a very good investment for my concertgoing future. I never want to reach the point where I believe that I NEED to spend a whole lot of money to see a particular band, and staying in touch with the underground, catching bands while they’re on the way up, before they’ve had a chance to balloon, is a great way to prevent that from happening. Who knows which of the bands I saw this year will be big next year? Last year’s festival had Soilwork, who while pretty well-known then, made a significant step up in the last year. I’ve seen several people talking about Mastadon recently, and they played last year. Summer Dying played too, and while they aren’t that big yet, I didn’t know about them last year and missed out. So there is plenty of good stuff, it just takes a little more looking that most people are used to.

So what does the future hold for the Milwaukee Metalfest? I have no insight into the financials of Jack Koshick’s organization, but the Metalfest has been held in high-class indoor arenas for the last four years. A date and place has already been determined for next year’s festival (again at the U.S. Cellular Arena, July 25 & 26), so there are no signs of an imminent death. Interestingly, there has been no mention of a March Metal Meltdown, so perhaps he has conceded victory to the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival and gone back to focusing on Milwaukee as his sole event. In Milwaukee, no major changes have been implemented in the four years, despite the fact that overall attendance has been far, far below capacity, so I have a feeling that Koshick has the numbers to this thing worked out where he may be able to continue it almost indefinitely. Who knows, maybe even if no one attended, he would still break even. Much of the money seems to come from the bands themselves, and if things were like they have been in past years, most bands paid $1000 (through the sale of 20 tickets) to play. If 100 bands played under this program, that’s $100,000. I have no idea what it costs to rent a place like the U.S. Cellular Arena, but having $100,000 in your pocket before a single fan gets involved has to be pretty helpful.

Attendance between this year and last year seemed relatively stable, so I really don’t see it dropping much below current levels, no matter what happens in the future. With no big-draw headliners, I think that there were hardly any “casual” attendees. It really is quite a bit of work, and there is no way an event like this year’s fest will ever have a broad appeal across the metal community. It’s something that only a select few will have the time, energy, dedication, and interest to participate in. Additionally, nationwide metal tours have seen amazing growth in popularity and frequency over the last five years, which I think really knocked down the importance of the Metalfest to the casual fan. Heck, some of the biggest potential draws at the fest (Arch Enemy, Nile) were already in the midst of a U.S. tour. So I’m guessing that most of the people who still turned out were one of two types: one group is like me, meaning people who really wanted to see a lot of underground metal bands and were willing to put in all the effort to do so effectively. The other group are those for whom the Metalfest is simply a traditional summer gathering, a weekend of metal, CD buying, and drunken partying. As long as the Metalfest continues on and has bands playing, I think it will take a lot to turn these two groups of die-hard fans away.

Are there things that could be improved at the Milwaukee Metalfest? Of course. Here’s a short list of fairly simple changes I wouldn’t mind seeing:

o Get the band info out sooner. On the Metalfest website, bands were appearing and disappearing right up until the day of the show. With a year to prepare, it seems like these bands could be booked sooner. Most of the bigger names were established a few weeks in advance, but it was still probably pretty difficult for people who wanted to travel a long distance to the event. Of course, I don’t think it makes much sense to base your business model on a nationwide-draw anyway, unless you can somehow prevent the bands from playing anywhere else in the country. Anyway, for the smaller bands, I read some information suggesting that a band would only be posted once they had delivered their pay-to-play money, so I guess I can understand some bands waiting until the last minute to scrape up the cash.

o Provide band information. This seems like it would be very simple to do, and would be extremely helpful to potential attendees. All you really need to do is make a link to each band’s website. I don’t know why this has been so difficult for the website manager.

o Get schedule information out sooner. In previous years, this was actually pretty good, but this year, we only found out what DAY bands were supposed to play a few days before the event, and only found out the TIME upon arriving at the venue each day. I guess it’s understandable that you can’t make a schedule if you aren’t even sure who is playing, but it seems like it would be such a necessary improvement. I could see attendance doubling if there was simply better communication coming from the Metalfest organizers.

o Figure out some way to get the bigger bands to play longer. While I liked the new stage setup in general, it almost forced every band’s set to be the same length. I don’t know how many bands will continue to come over from Europe for this show if they only get to play the same 20 minutes that a local Milwaukee band of 13-year-old kids gets to play.

Unfortunately, the past history of the fest suggests that from the organizer’s perspective, there isn’t really a need for improvement, so I don’t really see any of these changes suddenly occurring. None of these problems are really big enough to prevent ME from going, but I’m sure they prevent a whole lot of other people from going, so it would be nice to see them fixed.

So those are my answers to the question “What does the future hold for the Milwaukee Metalfest?” That can be twisted around to generate a different question, namely “What will the Milwaukee Metalfest do for the future of metal?” Some have gone so far to say that the festival is collapsing, and that collapse will cause a depression in the entire scene. Really, at this point, it may have already “collapsed” without anyone really noticing, or caring. People who may have previously traveled across the country to see a European band now just go see them in their own city, so there’s not really a big loss from their perspective. No metalhead has lost their retirement fund yet, and as far as I can tell, the U.S. metal scene has actually been on a steady rise for the last decade. But perhaps the resources of the collective metal community would be better funneled into a different area? Lots of bands have problems with the pay-to-play, and many have played a Koshick festival once and then determined they never want to have anything to do with the guy again. But then there are also many respectable and presumably intelligent bands who have played multiple years (Anathema, Jag Panzer, November’s Doom, Silencer, etc.) so some bands must think it’s worth their while. And it seems like there is never any shortage of bands wanting to play the event, so even if Koshick is a total crook, maybe it’s much like getting a record contract: the competition for fame is so great that bands are willing to do things not in their best interests just for a the slightest chance at that fame.

All in all, the Milwaukee Metalfest will probably have a minimal effect, negative or positive, on the future of the metal scene. Its importance now lies mostly in the past, when it helped to hold things together through some extremely dark days; it was one of the only bridges that existed through the early-to-mid-nineties, connecting the 80s heyday of metal to its recent underground resurgence. Remember, this thing got started in 1987, before Iron Maiden released “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son”, before Metallica released “…And Justice For All”, and before Death released “Scream Bloody Gore”. In 2002, it may have finally become a victim of its own success; Meshuggah, In Flames, and Opeth all made their first US appearances at the Metalfest, and now those bands have made several tours around the country. Milwaukee kept the flame burning, but I think it will be up to others (NEMHF, ProgPower, big nationwide tours?) to carry the torch from here. In the meantime, I think the Milwaukee Metalfest will live on, perhaps returning to its more comfortable role as an alternative, truly underground festival rather than “The Only Show That Matters”. And that’ll be just fine with me.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 11th, 2002 at 2:15 pm and is filed under concert. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.