Quiet Riot Documentary – "Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back"

Thats cool…..

I’m 100% sure it will be widely available via torrent shortly after it is broadcast.

Lance: after watching the Anvil story and clips of this… it makes u think about how much some of these 80s rock band have fallen … when it comes to finding gigs and just surviving period.

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In an odd way of thinking, there is a silver lining in it all – not for the band – but for the fans. Instead of having to see them in an arena, you now get to see them in much smaller venues, and quite often, you can talk with them after the show.

I wasn’t referring specifically to Quiet Riot – I meant ’70s and ’80s era bands in general. Some of them regularly sold out 5000-10000 seat arenas back in the day, but now they would struggle to sell out a 500 seat club (even with several key members still in the band).

More specifically to your point – to me there’s nothing worse than a band trying to represent itself with only one original member, and that original member never wrote any of the songs and doesn’t sing. It’s even worse if that member (like Frankie) is a drummer, because drumming doesn’t really stand out the same way a distinctive and easily identifiable singing voice or lead guitar style does.

Agreed. I guess there are two ways to go about it when the majority of the original band members are no longer involved or around to participate. They either promote themselves as the original band and play a nostalgia gig, or rename and promote themselves as “featuring former members of…” and trying to recreate themselves. In a total reversal of the QR story, Extreme is out doing their 25th anniversary tour for Pornografitti with all original members except their drummer, yet they’re not trying to sell 5,000-10,000 arenas. They’re playing intimate shows which is a logical way to get sellouts and reach out to the target audience.

I agree that going out as Quiet Riot with only Frankie remaining is sort of disingenuous and almost seems desperate. I sympathize for the guy and what he had to go through with the loss of Kevin, but it seems he could have assembled a new band and toured and played some of those QR songs in the shows. Especially considering he’s not the original drummer for the band, although he was the drummer when they reached their highest level of success. I guess in the end, music is their life and much like any career which thrusts you into international notoriety and stardom, you want to desperately hold on to that as long as you can by any means possible. I chalk a lot of this up to these massive festival shows that have been going on all over the world. You have three days and 60+ bands playing, there is certainly room for a Quiet Riot or Black and Blue, or XYZ or any of the other bands from that era. They’re just not going to be headlining any major shows at this stage of their career.

I guess, in the end, it’s whatever makes them happy and the people will support it. If they can sell 500, 1,000, 2,500 tickets and play a gig, more power to them.

I totally agree. I just think if he wants to “perform”, I think it’s a little more honest to create a new band, make new music and tour. He’s hanging on to the band name recognition and it’s somewhat disingenuous due to the band’s history and the fact that he is the only remaining member and wasn’t the “founder” or a founding member of the actual band, but again, like I said, if they can get gigs and people are willing to pay to see them, more power to him.

voodoo: I totally agree. I just think if he wants to “perform”, I think it’s a little more honest to create a new band, make new music and tour. He’s hanging on to the band name recognition and it’s somewhat disingenuous due to the band’s history and the fact that he is the only remaining member and wasn’t the “founder” or a founding member of the actual band, but again, like I said, if they can get gigs and people are willing to pay to see them, more power to him.

Why should he create a new band? Frankie not only is the drummer he has also managed the band for quite a while. I met him and Kevin back in I think it was 2002 and they were really nice guys. Frankie is a big Zeppelin collector. In fact I sent him some bootlegs I had that he didn’t. Frankie and Kevin were best of freinds and I think Kevin would want him to keep the group going.