What I look for in bands

I'm sitting here listening to Buddy Miller's "Universal United House Prayer". Have you heard of him? He's an incredible artist, part americana, part country and folk, part blues. I'm drinking my morning coffee, and I just finished writing in my journal, something I do every single day. There's so much swirling around in my head, I gotta get it out somehow. When I'm at home, I listen to country, folk, americana, mostly anything that is passionate and melodic. When I'm cleaning house, I listen to The GoGos, The Runaways, Teenage Head, great melody and great energy in the rock n' roll. Bands are constantly asking me what I look for when I decide to sign a band, and how i find out about the bands I do sign. There are a number of things that go into making a band interesting enough for me to sign them and want to work with them, the first and most important being passion. You can see if a band really cares about the music they are creating. There's a difference between honestly delivering a song, and just going through the motions, playing what you think will get you noticed. Its not something I can describe, I can just see it, and hear it, in the way they are on stage, how they interact with their band mates, the audience. They can be singing the most raw dirty rock song, or the most touching ballad, but its immediately noticeable. I generally always see a band play and meet them in person before taking a chance on them. The few times I have signed bands and haven't done that, I have regretted it. I look for music that moves me emotionally somehow. The lilt of the melody, the joy of the chorus, the passion of the delivery. If it makes me feel somehow, whether getting my body moving with the rock n' roll rhythm, or the heartbreaking hurt in the voice, the music has  to hit me emotionally somehow. Really being able to FEEL the music, that's what gets to me. When I first saw Nirvana play, I knew right away this band was gonna be huge. I had seen them play at The Satryicon in Portland OR, a tiny club where all the traveling and local rock bands played. The passion in Kurt's voice, the raw vibrating energy of the performance.... you could feel every single note that came off that stage. There were very few people there, and the band didnt' seem to make an impression on the few people that were paying attention, but they left a mark on my soul. In 1988 I saw them play again at a tiny club in San Francisco, The Covered Wagon, and again, only a handful of people were there to see them. They put on an incredible show. Afterwards, I went over to say hi to Kurt who was shyly standing in the middle of the club looking very uncomfortable, and I told him how much I liked the show. He thanked me and looked earnestly at my face and said "I hope the other people liked it too". He wasn't a rock star,he was just a guy who played music that he hoped people liked. That is another thing I look for, no pretense. I hate bands that think they are God's gift to the world. The arrogance, the attempt to create a atmosphere that they are "cool". There's a difference between personal arrogance and a stage persona however, and its also very noticeable. Take The Hives for example. On stage they come off as arrogant jerks, but anyone who is really paying attention can see they're playing a game, playing a part, that they don't really think they're better than everyone else, they're just having a laugh at themselves. Its a stage performance and they are actors. They're brilliant about maintaining that persona in interviews, but you can see the humor shining through their words. You can see the little twitching of the mouth as a smile forms beneath the character they're playing. There are many subtle unspoken things about bands that I look for. Are they real, are they honest in their performance? Are they having fun, loving every thing about that moment they're in? Is there a uniqueness about them, or are they obviously wearing their influences on their sleeves, and trying to be that band or person, or have they taken it and made it their own? Do they do this because they have to, like they can't keep the music inside of them, and must get it out, or are they doing it because they think they're gonna get rich? Being a great band is not something that can be forced, it just is. That's what I look for.