In the UK for the last 18 years at least, a whole generation has been virtually starved of decent live rock musicians for a variety of reasons. The advent of computers being a standard household utility with accompanying music production and downloadable music format devices, together with widespread video and latterly DVD technology has kept many young people indoors for most of their leisure time. Coupled with the rising overheads and prohibitive licence fees and conditions imposed on UK venues such as pubs and restaurants to house live artistes (or even play recorded music), this has had a devastating effect on professional musicians and potential artistes alike. The biggest losers are the record companies as the whole of the 20th Century Music Catalogue has been Bootlegged. There's no going back on that one! Band members of the younger and older generations still carry on playing their music regardless because the record companies had no role anyway in their income. People who've never heard a live musician or band don't really exist. The corporate job was always to to market, sell, promote and then dance on the graves of their artistes like John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Bob Marley and as of late Michael Jackson. No wonder the Beatles made a comeback, once Michael Jackson was murdered, it was easy to grab the publishing royalties!
It is easy to see why therefore, that during my live gigs lately, I'm frequently faced with a young person totally agape watching the live musician at work. They have no doubt become conditioned to accepting music as an impersonally generated medium and find it fascinating to witness the live, hands-on music creativity. Fortunately, this seems to be having an inspirational effect. Having spent most of my career working in pubs, clubs and festivals, I have recently returned to working out at live gigs. I play different genres of rock and blues music styles but often older standards such as BB King, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry etc. I am now finding I'm being booked by hard core musicians who appreciate where I am at. They love a good steaming rock ballad or delta blues classic. It seems they got into this sort of music through being at great rock festivals and actually experiencing the buzz.
There is very little coverage on UK radio or television of any live rock music. Pop classics are still the mode of commercial music radio stations. It's interesting that new fans of music don't always get the opportunity to witness live virtuoso performers because mainstream broadcasts of live rock, metal and blues music are so rare. People don't get the the chance to decide if they like it or not. We've been creating a generation for many years that is one-tracked in its musical culture, when the choice should have been wider. Still heavy metal, classic rock and guitar based gigs are booming, for instance AC-DC in 2009 did a 44 gig world tour packing in 70000 people at Wembley. The income generated was 1/5 of a Billion Pounds!!