One Man Bands On the Way Out

Here’s something I’m kind of glad to see -

Marco at Oceanbound (a hiring agency) writes on his blog that one-man-bands are on the way out of the cruise ship entertainment industry. He sites the emergence of karoake as one of the factors in their demise, but also throws in a hint that one-man-bands are lazy hacks.

I think he’s right about them going out of style, and I saw this on my last ship. A few years ago I saw lounge acts using a lot of backing tracks, but this time I saw solo entertainers in all of the lounges without any backing recordings.

It’s important to note the difference here: one-man-bands are the guys that play-along and sing-along to backing tracks, sequencers or other types of recorded accompaniment. Solo entertainers are all acoustic, or mostly acoustic, entertainers. The piano bar gig would be a good example of a solo entertainer – also a singer/guitarist.

There are some good one-man-bands out there, but it seems that they’d be well served to throw out their sequencers before they try to get back on a ship.

Thank god.

I can’t decide what’s going on here though – is the public starting to demand better musicians? Are they seeing through the veil of musical mediocrity and starting to value talent?

Maybe. And that would also be good news. Interestingly, it seems that the public has finally decided it hates pre-recorded accompaniment right as the technology to make quality backing tracks has finally become accessible to the average musician. I mean that we can all pick up a copy of Logic, Pro-Tools or Digital Performer and make some quality (acoustic even) backing tracks that sound infinitely better than the MIDI sequences that have been used since the 1970s.

At the same time, if you read any music technology trade magazines you find that many pop artists utilize sequences and click tracks in their performances. Mariah Carey, Britney, probably Miley Cyrus – they all have a guy backstage firing Digital Performer sequences on his laptop, regardless of how many musicians there are onstage.

Maybe it’s only when the backing tracking is totally exposed – as with a one-man-band – that it becomes embarrassing to watch. Or maybe it’s the fact that one person singing alone to tracks he’s triggering on his Casio does seem too much like karoake.

Whatever the reason, I think this is good news. I hope that one day audiences will demand that all backing tracks on cruise ships should be replaced by real musical talent. Then maybe cruise ships will again hire a full band to back their performers and stop making the show bands play along with crappy tracks!