Kramer v. Kramer: Summer Tour Packages

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Summer means tours for metal, specifically big package tours that pack venues with dozens of bands. And while these traveling circuses of crushing riffs and drunken laughter are the highlight of some metalheads’ year, they’re the bane of others’.

We asked two of our finest journalistic minds, the forward-thinking Joseph Schafer and the entirely backward Scab Casserole, to debate the pros and cons of these summer package tours. Here’s what they had to say.

JS:
I can think of several reasons why summer package tours are an ideal concert-going experiences in many circumstances, but I think the primary advantage is economic.

Even though most metal blogs and magazines are run by urbanite metalheads living in hotbeds of musical activity, they don’t represent the majority of the metalhead population or audience. We can’t all live in Brooklyn, Chicago, or the Bay Area, only minutes away from excellent concert opportunities multiple times a month. For a lot of people, seeing a major metal show means a drive, a bit of a financial investment, and possibly a vacation day from work. The cost of living in the US is high, and so is the price of gasoline. I’m speaking firsthand. For me, seeing a show means a one-hour drive to Detroit, or a three-hour drive to Cleveland or Columbus — a tall order when I get up every weekday at 7am and most shows get out around midnight. Those drives artificially add a $10-$25 investment on each concert I drive to, even though my car gets excellent gas mileage. Of course, I usually carpool, but consider the following:

For me, and many like me, the summer package tour is the best bang for our buck, band-wise. For example, I can buy a Summer Slaughter ticket for $25. That makes a grand total of $2.50 per band. In comparison, earlier this year I could have seen any three of those bands for roughly $20. Some rough calculation makes that around a 62% discount per band. Even if I purchase my ticket through Ticketmaster and factor in their ridiculous service fees, the discount is significant. You can’t beat that, even in New York or LA.

SC:
You’re being fleeced, dude! Sure, big summer package tours bring together a ton of bands for one reasonable price, but these tours are also designed to get as many varied metalheads together as possible by jamming incongruous bands onto one bill. They want you in there, but they also want Joe Williamsburg, Larry Old-School, and Mary Krunkcore to shell out their paycheck as well, and so they glut line-ups with bands of all sorts in the hope that you’ll like one, maybe two of them enough to pay the entrance fee for a show you might not even go to otherwise.

Every big summer package bill I look at is usually a couple of diamonds floating in an undulating sea of turds, so that I end up hanging out at the bar and trying to scream at my friends over the third consecutive slamcore band I couldn’t give half a fuck about. If you’d divvied the line-up of these package events into the three separate shows you mention, you’d probably find that you weren’t all that interested in attending at least one of them. These tours are a chance for your precious simoleons to be divided between a couple of bands you dig and a bunch more that you hate.

The venues that host these tours usually thrive on the captive audience factor, committing a crime I consider tantamount to treason: overcharging for booze. If you’re going to be at a metal show for only a few hours, you maybe spend a little too much on beer and whiskey, but when you’re in a No Re-Entry venue from 2pm until midnight, the costs begin to build up, especially when you’re forced to sit through the aforementioned shitty filler bands, whose talentless bullshit usually results in more boozing than you’re usually used to (same reason they play shitty sad bastard music at McDonalds — it gets you stuffing your face).

Finally, as a dude who does live in Brooklyn, these tours are huge pains because they rarely hit big cities, instead going to outside suburban towns that contain an amphitheater and maybe a Denny’s. Hauling out to Camden or Sayreville is a pain in the ass, especially when I have to sit through Tough Guy & The Neck Tattoos.

JS:
The fact that you lived within 50 miles of an Immortal gig completely nullifies your inconvenience as far as I’m concerned.

Look from the venue’s standpoint: these halls are hosting a huge crowd of rowdy people who routinely drink to excess and hit one another for fun. They need to make their ducats somehow. Joe Headbanger, on the other hand, does not need to drink at a show. If you can shop for Christmas gifts at an American mall, walk through Times Square after dark, or drink at a bar during New Year’s Eve/St. Patrick’s Day, then you can suffer through a couple truncated sets by less-than-stellar bands. I understand that it is your money and your time and you shouldn’t need to spend it on some material you dislike, but the world of commercial music does not function on ideals. Even the best tours have dud bands to someone. We are metalheads, we should have a little more intestinal fortitude and a little less confirmation bias.

Perhaps a little optimism is in order: Those varied lineups can be veritable gold mines if approached with an open mind. A live band experience can be completely different from an album experience, and frequently bands that suck on record destroy live and vice-versa. For example, I attended the free Ozzfest in 2007 and arrived early to catch 3 Inches of Blood. At that point in my life I disliked un-melodic death metal. If I had not stayed in the pit I might never have found out that I really enjoy Nile and Behemoth. I’m willing to bet that many people who write off bands like Veil of Maya might have a blast actually watching them. There is only one way to find out: see them live. Summer package tours are the cheapest, easiest way to do so.

SC:
Pfff. Cry harder. One minute it’s all about intestinal fortitude, the next it’s the Shakespearean tragedy of having to drive an hour or two! Make a couple road mixes, roll up a spliff for the drive, and get over it!

Sure, I can survive through some crappy acts and hold off on the overpriced hooch at a venue, but why should I? The world of commercial music does not run on ideals, true; but I listen to extreme metal, defiantly non-commercial music that exists almost exclusively on a diet of faith, loyalty, and alcohol. These venues know that metalheads are going to come out to support their scene, and they know that metalheads like to get polluted, so they go ahead and set silly rules and sky-high prices. When my dogs are barking and my stomach’s growling because I’m not allowed to go find a pub while Powerglove are playing, I find it hard to think, “Well, at least that snarky light-pouring bartender and that overly aggressive bouncer are making a few bucks.”

Yes, the occasional surprise gem is found at a big package tour, but that performance, like the ones of the bands I actually came to see, is usually short and poorly mixed. With a three-to-five band line-up, bands are often given enough time to soundcheck, set up, and play, so that the performance is worth my hard-earned cash. Summer package tours are full of twenty-minute sets during which the band’s lead singer has to repeatedly ask for more bass in the drum monitor. Live music is fun, of course, but I’d rather listen to Amon Amarth at home than hear them play with Cynic’s sound levels. For me, the inconvenience of having to make your way out to an obscure underground show is much better than having to see your favorite epic metal band play for a hideously-mixed split-second.

JS:
Holy confirmation bias, Batman! A small, metal-oriented venue in no way guarantees a good sound setup. Said venues where you live can cherry-pick high quality staff locally. Here in the Rust Belt we have no such luxury, and neither does most of the US. For example, Harpo’s, the most ‘historic’ metal-oriented venue in Detroit, has notoriously bad sound even on three-band tours. In my experience these larger tours work like well-lubricated machines: bands start and end on time and the backstages operate with relative professionalism.

As far as metal being non-commercial, that’s only a matter of comparison to quote-unquote mainstream music. While metal has its fair share of free releases and shows that exist 100% outside of the capitalist economy, they’re still the minority. Almost every metal band that tours exists within the commercial realm, even if that existence is one of continually increasing debt. To quote one of the most commercial metal bands ever, it’s sad, but true.

The fact of the matter is that these larger, more commercial moneymaking enterprises offer huge opportunities for us as listeners to experience a wide palette of music at reduced cost while allowing said bands to play for larger audiences than they would otherwise. Case in point: were it not for Summer Slaughter, I would not have an opportunity to see Cerebral Bore until their next touring cycle — and for extreme metal bands from overseas, said touring cycle is no given.

They also offer more veteran bands the ability to re-invigorate their careers. Without a summer package tour I might never have seen Necrophagist, for example. Likewise it’s fairly self-evident that Summer Slaughter had a hand in the late-career revivals Dying Fetus and (to a lesser extent) Vital Remains are having. If all goes well, the same thing might happen to Exhumed this summer.

SC:
Confirmation bias indeed — I didn’t think we were discussing Springsteen’s blue-collar America, I thought we were arguing about why these tours suck. First off, I have never encountered one of these summer tour packages hitting a “small, metal-oriented venue” — these events always take place in either larger concert halls or open outdoor arenas, places with professional equipment and staff who should know their business, no matter what part of the country they operate in. The only excuse for bad sound production at a place like, say, Starland or Hammerstein Ballroom, is sloppy, rushed work, which these summer packages seem to thrive on.

But second, and more importantly, I don’t want my metal show to be a well-oiled machine of neutered sets, I want it to be an organic experience. I want the bands to start a little late, to maybe go a little long depending on crowd reaction, to pull out a minor classic for an encore. Sure, I remember Dying Fetus’ set at Summer Slaughter — all 27 minutes of it. I also remember them playing for an hour at two in the morning at a near-empty L’Amours. Which show made me believe in Dying Fetus more? I think you know the answer. When I go to a concert, I want a beautiful, epic meal, not a tasting menu made up of two-by-two-inch cubes of food.
In my mind, these short and sloppy sets actually hurt bands. No matter how cool their cover art is or how many of my friends have told me to listen to a band, if I’ve seen them live and thought they sucked, then forget it, I’m not interested. And when I’m stuck at a packed venue for twelve expensive hours and a band comes on playing a poorly-mixed twenty-minute set, I rarely come away excited to download their album.

In the era of internet piracy — what I think of as the New Wave of Underground Metal Tape-Trading — it’s possible for listeners to experience a broad palette of music already, to pick and choose what they like. This doesn’t mean the live experience doesn’t matter; quite the opposite, it matters more, because it gives music a sense of physical reality, makes a band an entity worth supporting and giving your money to. And when I experience a band playing someone else’s gear with a bad sound mix for a very brief period of time, I walk away disappointed, sad that this band I thought might have been cool would instead be content to play some big package tour and give me a sub-par performance.

JS:
Springsteen’s blue-collar America is why everything sucks, but sometimes populism has a point.

These tours are populist. They’re for huge swaths of metalheads, many of whom do not read blogs or Decibel magazine. And that’s a very good thing. I’ve seen 15 year old kids at these things with their parents, aunts and uncles, older brothers and sisters. They walk in with a Switchfoot t-shirt and leave with a Behemoth t-shirt. Every single one of those kids is a hesher waiting to happen. The same goes for the swoopy-haired teenagers, and the radio-punk girlfriends they drag to these gigs.

Would I prefer to see all of these bands with a proper stage setup, a longer set and a real decent mix? Obviously. I love those sweaty booze-fueled nights as much as you do, as much as all of us do. That’s why these summer tours need to keep happening. They need youngbloods to keep happening. You get a few newcomers from basement tours and 18+ bars, but not many. You get so many more from these big event tours. And that’s why (for lack of a better term) true headbangers need to keep attending: to act as good role models, and to make the metal community at large something worth investing in. So yes, the sets will be less than ideal, but it’s about more than the individual sets.

It’s about meeting people. About having a full day to celebrate metal, not just a few hours a night. About getting out there in the sun (hopefully) and letting your freak flag fly. And when one of those 20-minute sets turns out to be a firecracker, you’ll be glad you came. I promise that.

SC:
I gotta ask, man, what’s the weather like on Fantasy Island this time of the year? I hope you’re at least getting a tan.

Sure, I’ve seen these family units rocking out at big summer tours, but I’ve also seen crusty dirtbags stealing tips off tables and thirteen-year-olds getting their noses punched in. These things are, generally speaking, shitshows, and when I attend one of these sweat-drenched poorly-played free-for-alls, I’m usually worried that these potential headbangers are going to get turned off by them.

Look, don’t get me wrong, if a kid tells me that a set on a big summer tour made him love a metal band, even if that set was, in my mind, crappy and unsatisfying, I’m happy for him. Some of the greatest live sets I’ve ever seen were on Ozzfest when I was but a wee casserole. But if you’re going to look at these package tours with a jaundiced eye, they’re gauche, exhausting, and ramshackle. I’m all about celebrating metal for a whole day non-stop with other metalheads – it’s called a festival, a single unique occurrence that usually has the means behind it to give fans multiple options, multiple stages, fun stuff to do. These big summer tours just feel like an extension of your less-than-average show, and five hours in a night is enough metal time for me.

Furthermore, I think — shit, wait, what time is it? Look, man, High on Fire are playing at the Rockstar Mayhem Festival in Rochester in, like, ninety minutes. Come on, let’s keep arguing in the car. If we do 80 the whole way, we can still make it.