Musical head count

Okay, I've been spending far too much time talking about clothing so far. Quite honestly, I find it funny -- I spend few hours outside the occasional new t-shirt quest actually thinking about clothes, so why am I apparently somewhat obsessed with style this week?

While you ponder that question, let me bring something to your attention: bands these days have FAR too many members. While I love the fact that there are a bunch of great duos on the rise like Mates of State, The Raveonettes, and Matt & Kim, there are also a ton of bands with more people onstage than people who read this blog. For a good band, you need only three or four people. Generally speaking, one drummer, one bassist, and then any combination of guitar, keyboard, or vocals to round out the other one or two spots. I can kind of accept a five member band with four instrumentalists and a singer. Sort of. I have general issues with singers who only sing, but that's another entry for another day.

Now, before you go calling me a hypocrite, I'll say this much: new steps in indie music have made me change my tune a bit. Bands like The Decemberists and Arcade Fire, and even my buddy Alex's band Or, the Whale all have like seven people playing onstage at any given time, but dammit, they put it to good use. There are violinists, horn players, slide guitarists; all sorts of semi-obscure instruments are coming into vogue. Hell, do you realize how many great indie musicians have glockenspiel players onstage with them or on their albums?!?!? It's absurd (yet awesome).

So here's my issue: bands that have like four guitarists. For cool counterpoint, you just need two guitarists. Look at Archers of Loaf: they have some of the coolest guitar interplay I've ever heard. Two guys. But no; nowadays, bands have all these assbags holding guitars, and like three of the four are ALL playing the same fucking chord. Oooh - one guy is playing it clean, while the other guitarist has distortion. This is not cool, it's not innovative, and it's barely even musical. So here's my unsolicited advice to all folks thinking about forming a band: keep it small. If you have a keyboardist (a real one, at least) they have two hands: they can do melodic counterpoint to THEMSELVES. This frees the guitarist to play chords. If you have two guitarists, you can play things together, or do the traditionalist rhythm/lead dichotomy. That's all you need, given both players actually know how to play.

Stop the insanity. Unless you're amazing like Satan's Pilgrims, you don't need three guitarists. Plus, remember this: they're an instrumental band, it's like having two guitarists in a vocal band with the third guitarist (who also doubles on Farfisa, might I add) playing the role of vocalist in the song structure.