Super Group on VH1

As a parent with daughter who wants to go into the music industry, I let her watch SuperGroup on VH1.  So far we have seen the first two episodes. I tried to tell her that, like in any drama, there has to be conflict in order to get people interested. Furthermore, with editing, anyone can make the conflict seem more severe than it might have been.

That aside, she was raising her eyebrows quite a bit during the show. With the constant swears and the strippers, there was plenty to see that she hadn't seen before.

At first glance, I also had to laugh at the lack of management skills that these rockers had. They were constantly talking over each other, and they didn't seem to start with shared goals/deliverables and link each of their actions back to the shared goals. The goals might look like this...

1. Goal: Make a great demo with sounds of today that can actually sell as a single
2. Goal: Put on a great live rock and roll concert highlighting our personalities
3. Goal: Make a great TV show so people want to know more about us

Now, I may have been "off" with my initial thoughts on lack of management skills because while the goal of "make a great TV show" would have been third on my list, it might be first on their list so some of the scenarios/fights might take precedence and impact the first two goals. A trick to being a good manager is to weigh the short versus the long term and make trade-offs, but since this is only 12-days long, long-term may be a misnomer.

What I do know is that this might be interesting to watch, no one should use it as a best practices case study of how to be a band -- at least as far as my management experience tells me.

For those of you who have been in bands, I'd love to know how close this is to reality.

And for any parents of future rock stars, did you encourage or let your kids to watch this?

It will be interesting to see if they actually go on tour.

Mom at RockStarParents.com

Comments

[Bret]

My parents were great. My mom, who rasied me on her own for the most part, bought me my first drum kit using the last of her Visa card balance. My dad frequently helped me purchase music gear when I couldn't afford it. They may not have cared for much of the music I was making, but they understood my need to express myself and my love for music. Made a huge difference.

As for girls in bands... all I can say is, traditional american standards. While it is much more common than it used to be, I just think that girls are often pushed into the typical girl mold and being in a band falls far outside of that mold. I also think that there can be a lot of sexism among male band members, which tends to deter girls from pursuing it more agressively.

I see more and more bands here with female members, and I think it's great.

[Bret]

Whoops, part of that comment was meant to go under the parents/bands topic. My mistake! Sorry about that.