Classic cluelessness from Dresden Dolls
 

OK, I'm sure it's no secret that I find this duo's music supremely annoying, but this priceless NPR interview shows an even more hilarious attitude.

They are complaining that they are having difficulty making a living on their music (as a DUO, no less); their monthly salary is "4 times less than what they pay their crew" at $1500 per month. OK, ok, but then there is this fabulous quote:
"They've toured with Nine Inch Nails. But even at that level, it's very tough for a band to make enough money to survive. Just renting a tour bus costs $1,000 a day, including the cost of gas and a driver."

HELLO! You are a two-piece band! Drive yourselves in a freaking van like everybody else does and you will save yourselves a bazillion dollars!
YEESH! If you weren't trying to live the "rock star" lifestyle (which you are clearly not quite able to afford if it pains you so much to do it), you guys could probably make a pretty decent living off your band. You already don't have day jobs, so you get no sympathy from me.

Wow.


My favorite comment thus far about this comes from a local messageboard, where someone had this to say:

This is like someone saying “it’s so hard to make a living writing! My diamond coated notebooks are $1000 each!”

NPR feature:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=6885355

Chunklet magazine opinion piece:
http://www.chunklet.com/index.cfm?section=blogs&ID=116

hahahahaha

I think that there music is mediocre.
however there are thousands of bands out there that would love to have the career that they do even if they made no money.
$1000 a day is ridiculous for a bus. My ex-band went on tour with another band and all 6 of us were in a car and trailer. It might have been smelly but it worked.

They're one of the few bands from that side of indie that I've liked in the last million years. Probably twats, but I happen to reward twattish bands more than non-twattish bands.

Kurt Cobian used to say much the same thing. In interviews he always used to say that everyone thinks he and the rest of the band are making millions of dollars and how that wasn't the case, and I'm sure they are other bands too, most bands say they make money touring then selling a million albums, thier record company gets most of what amounts to profit, and the bands are left with only a percentage of that split between all its members. So while I'm sure DD and many other bands are making a hell of a lot of money compared to the average joe, its not always as glamarous as we think.

I try to remember the music of Nirvana much more than i try to remember them as talking musicians.The minute they opened their mouths i felt like smashing their records to pieces.I'm more into the Mark E Smith school of thought myself.

No one who has actually attempted touring, especially at an independent or unknown level, thinks of it as "glamorous," believe me. It's a ton of work, very tiring and draining, but also can be very rewarding. DD have already attained a certain level of success; they don't have to work day jobs, they have gotten their music used in commercials for lots of money, they have received FM radio rotation airplay, and have growing audiences in a live setting. They are also a two-piece, which leaves a bigger slice of the pie for each member when it's time to divide the spoils.
Yes, it is hard for musicians to make a living; we are all painfully aware of this. What I was trying to point out was how ridiculous one can come off while bemoaning the difficulty of making a living at one's art (reasonable to say the least) while simultaneously admitting to extravagant expenditures that are basically lifestyle/comfort related and are by no stretch a necessity.
Driving yourselves from place to place in a van, moving your own gear, and hooking up places to stay along the way could apprently save them thousands of dollars PER DAY, and yet they speak of these expenses as if they are totally necessary.
A tour bus lifestyle is really only available to artists who have attained a level of hugeness that can afford that kind of extravagance and luxury. If it's not within your means and you have not yet attained that level, it's not a good idea to go that route. At the very least, it's not a good idea to publicly complain about it when it is such a simple thing to cut out.


As for their music, yes I do hate it, but I would say this about any band that was complaining about these kinds of unnecessary expenses as if they were unavoidable. They are not. This band could easily make a decent living if they simply ratcheted things down a notch in the overhead department.

Not strictly related to the topic of thread but this is an issue that i have very much at heart and it's not necessarily personal.The need for extras and careerism(yes,that awful term) is really making it difficult for younger and not so young talented musicians to make a decent living out of their music.Obvious,i know,but it is ever so painful to see people WHO DO DESERVE IT having to loose battles against complete and utter whores.When i hear that bands are not what they used to be,i immediately think about the enormous amount of creative musicians out there who seem to be cut out from making themselves heard/paid for it because of charlatans who wouldn't stop at anything in order to cool themselves up and make way too many bobs that are rarely seen under the noses of most people.I said this before and i say this again: cheapness of equipment doesn't mean more chances of creation for pigs and dogs.Noone will ultimately listen to this but this is what i think.

I don't usually say when I read something and agree with it, but the above post I do.

My own approach: Fuck it. Just... fuck it.

Touring America is painfully difficult to break even doing, even for relatively successful bands. The distances are so great, and the fuel costs and time involved are astronomical.
Touring Europe is far preferable according to anyone I know who has tried both.

touring is a very difficult thing however touring a band is far easier than touring a theatre company. i have done the touring band thing in a 3 piece in a van with our gear, yes it costs more than you make and can be very tedious but it can also be very rewarding. touring a theatre company which is what i do these days is incredibly difficult. this is what we tour: 2 musicians and quite alot of gear, 6 actors, a director, a lighting designer, and a sound engineer. then there is venue hire, paying of local crew which we can minimise quite a lot because of my normal job as a theatre engineer, on top of that is marketing which we try and make almost half our budget so we get people in. in each state we spend about two days putting our posters everywhere instead of paying someone to do posters. then we generally have to put on opening night drinks which is standard fare in the industry because opening night is usually industry / media night. this all adds up to be quite a lot and we are mostly self funded, we end up losing approximately 5k a tour, but this is slowly starting to shrink as more and more people see our shows and know what we do isn't standard theatre. really the dresden dolls can fuck off and buy a van, sleep in the van, and shut the fuck up whinging little bitches, instead of hiring a tour bus and probably staying in quite nice hotels etc.

Haha, porkmarras, I almost always agree with your posts..

check out this guy who made this video of himself dancing to the theme tune of an old kids tv show and gives himself a rating of "H for hilarious".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w1gjX_GeIY
maybe it's not so bad that global warmimg is going to kill us all

That increased my chances of becoming a violent person even more.There has to be a way to stop this madness somewhere.

Shut up.

There are far too many cameras on this earth.

Last i heard (not more than a couple of weeks ago) the Dresden Dolls had either broken up or gone on indefinite hiatus?

Maybe I heard wrong.

Playing devil's advocate here, I haven't heard the band as they looked kind of pre-fab to me with all the My Space ads and such, so I just avoid that type of Spin shit.

Nonetheless, for a band with a contract and stuff, $1000 a day for a bus may not be as bad as that sounds on the surface. We are talking about the cost of gas and a driver being included here. Also, if they choose to sleep in the bus rather than expect hotel rooms, then they are going to save another big chunk of money for behaving less "rock star".

Since the fact they are a two piece keeps coming up as an advantage, lets at least be fair enough to admit there are pros and cons. If they have to drive from Denver to Santa Fe in one night, then a van begins to look pretty dodgy as they only have two people to do the driving. Of course they can hire someone to drive for them, but in a van loaded with equipment they can't necessarily sleep while they're moving.

Of course, anyone can suffer through the indignities of the road for a jaunt down one of the coasts or maybe even cross country once a year or so. However, if a band has decided that they really are going to do that shit for a living without a job at Kinko's or wherever waiting for them back at home, then it really isn't surprising if they choose to work a few comforts into it so that when they get up onto stage they aren't already exhausted and hating the whole thing. I just don't buy that anyone is so damn indie or whatever the fuck that they continue to draw inspiration from sleeping with their hairy bandmates in their lap year after year.

So challenging a musician because their music sucks is one thing, and perfectly reasonable in my book. But attacking them for being "rock stars" when some NPR reporter asks them about their job and they respond that it is sort of a job at that, I don't really get. Sure if they were bragging about burning up all this money that they don't need to, and claiming they had lots left over to spend on hookers and cocaine, that would be being "rock stars". Instead they seem to be saying that being an opening act on a big bill is not a rock star experience at all.

Ha ha, ok.....I was kind of worried at first when I saw Clone started a thread with the "Dresden Dolls" in it.

Dead-Air made a few fair points, but I wasn't arguing that it isn't a "job." It most definitely is. Anyone who I have known who was a musician exclusively worked harder than most people I know who have straight jobs. In this regard I am sure the Dresden Dolls are no exception.
I was just saying that they could be making a better living if they cut down on some overhead. They could even do OK hiring a friend as a driver for them; three people can fit in a nice van quite easily, and with the money they save from not renting a tour bus, they could buy and convert a nice van. They could even get a Westfalia-style VW van with a trailer and still be able to sleep and cook in their vehicle.