I think it’s necessary to take the liberty to talk a little bit about opening bands on this blog.  I’m sure it’s blatantly obvious how much I appreciate what I call the ‘little guys’.  Which by my definition is a talented band with a ridiculous amount of passion and enthusiasm for just making music.  Usually they have a small audience but one that is dedicated to the bands movement.  These are the bands that I always appreciate.  These are the bands that I recommend to my friends who always seem to wonder, “where’d you find these guys?”  I am always so proud of my discoveries and very often after I share these gems with my friends, shortly after everyone is talking about them.  If the music business today was anything like it was in the late 80’s and 90’s, I know that I would have started my career at a label and been the best A&R person, swimming in my millions of dollars.  But as I’ve talked about before, the music biz really isn’t anything like it used to be.  Nevertheless it’s kinda cool to be in the know with the undiscovered bands.  Today I’m willing to tell everyone my secret on where I find a lot of the talent.

Let’s think about show nights.  You and your friends decide to do dinner, and get drinks.  Before you know it’s around the time that the doors are opening to the venue.  You are of course having a good time catching up and hanging out with your buddies, and hey you’ve never even heard of the first band playing.  Not too mention you find it obnoxious to have to listen to 3 bands that you might not like before you get to see the act that you came there for.  I get it, I get this feeling plenty of times too, and I’m completely guilty of this during Lollapalooza.  I don’t like to take the chance of missing a band that I could potentially fall in love with.  I would say that for the majority of tours, the headliner chooses their supporting acts.  Now this isn’t always the case, when I was at Live Nation there were often times that we had to gather supporting acts for particular shows.  But even so, the opening acts are generally handpicked to cater to the particular audience.  Chances are if you go into a show with an open mind you’re going to discover a band that you truly like.

the honorary

I’m dying to share with everyone my obsession this week.  I have not seen him in concert, yet.  However, he is now going to be on Hanson’s third leg of their Shout It Out tour.  Naturally this sparked my curiosity.  Then I saw a tweet from TWLOHA saying he was going to perform at one of their events.  For those of you unfamiliar with TWLOHA – it’s a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide.  I will actually write my entire next blog about that movement.  In my world, Hanson and TWLOHA, I don’t know if I could find any better sources for music.  Jarrod Gorbel is the lead vocalist for an indie rock band, The Honorary Title from… you guessed it, Brooklyn, NY.  He released a solo EP in 2009 and now there’s buzz that the band is no longer together, I know that Jarrod Gorbel has officially played his last show with the band..  I don’t have that full story, but this video is so major I have to share it.