The Elephant in the Music Industry

Have you ever heard about this mysterious beast called a Roadie? They sometimes get thanks by artists at the end of a gig but usually only the Sound Engineer (it sometimes takes ignoring their efforts for 20 years to realise they deserve thanks). You also see them depicted in Hollywood films with long hair tattoos and some kind of drug problem. If you really have a keen Eye you might read about them in a book or see them in a documentary where they are depicted as real hard working people who love their job and the life it provides them.

It seems strange to me why the roadie is so mysterious because I am one along with most of my friends. We are never that far from the artist if you want to try and notice us. We have to be because without us only the front row would hear the band and at night they would be in complete darkness without us. Without the Roadie management and drivers they may not even make it to the gig in the first place. Or to draw an even longer bow without the Labels and the promoters and venues we wouldn’t even know where to find them.

To put it plainly the Roadies, Crew, Managers, Promoters, Venues, Labels and all other industry association are critical to the success or failure of an artist. Think of the Artist as the shiny inside and outside of a brand new car and the Roadie and Crew as the engine and drive chain. As good looking as they are people would not buy Porches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis or Corvettes if they were not high performance machines.

The teams that make the music industry possible for the modern punter are run like high performance machines, sometimes without breaks or rest days to make sure the show goes on wherever you are in the world.

If the Crew are so important then why are they ignored or at least barely acknowledged? And why do they have such a bad reputation? The music industry is like any business, it has products to sell, (The artists) it has customers to sell to (the Fans) and people that work in the industry (The Crew, Management and the Labels). The media only focuses on two aspects of the industry the artists and the fan leaving the Roadies, crew and everyone else as hidden figures lurking either side of the stage and in the mysterious back stage area.

I am not a problems kind of guy so I offer a solution that is in your hands Nobel journalists of the world to put pen to paper and involve us in the conversation about the music industry. We have many a tale and opinions galore on what happens, what is hot and what is not.