GREECE'S A GAIN PROVES HOPE YET FOR LEGIT BANDS

Face it, real music is dead. The days of a legit garage band making music for the fun of it are long over, drowned out by the tide of over commercialization. Nowadays, we get a cacophony of techno beats thrown in and auto tuned lyrics about wild partying and drinking sung by an artist with a pretty face and a strange name that producers HOPE the masses will like. Sounds like most of the music you hear blaring on the radio and on MTV when they're not playing reruns of "Laguna Beach", "Jersey Shore", and other inane reality televisions shows, right? I thought so. Disparaging comments aside, how many current top 40 artists such as Ke$ha and Justin Beiber actually make music not just for the money? Honestly, not very many…

Here's the happy silver lining part (because nobody likes to read depressing news): there is still hope. Legit bands still do exist, and could possibly revive the grossly commercialized music industry. Meet one of those legit bands: A Gain. Citing influences such as Black Label Society, Queen, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, as well as 80's classic rock, this quartet hails from Greece and is composed of Achilles, Vasilis, Antonis and Aris. Two years ago, they were just another burgeoning band of three still in high school but missing a few things.

"We realized we needed a singer, so I started singing some notes," Achilles remarked. With the addition of their bass player, Aris, the band was now ready to start making music. Their system of composing is actually quite interesting because they break up the process into manageable portions.

"Write the melody, and find a good riff for guitar, and also chords for piano, and then we combine them all together… into one thing."

Achilles, who plays the guitar, also writes the lyrics, and he doesn't seem to have any trouble finding subjects to write about, as exemplified by their first song, "Is it True". The song starts off with a few minor piano chords, and then the vocals kick in. This paired with lyrics about people fighting and in pain and a long guitar solo, gives an eerie, yet uplifting feel to it without sounding disjointed. All in all, this song is a good start for them.

"Inspiration is from everywhere. Everything I see in real life and in the world, the war, the environment, and also love… everything that we wrote, we try to make it real, not imaginary, we want reality." Armed with a ready music arsenal, the band started from humble beginnings by playing at local bars and clubs in their small town of Katerini. Their hard work paid off last year when they hit the national music scene with their performance at Schoolwave, a music festival for school bands that takes place in Athens at the end of June every year. They were among 21 bands selected out of 80 to perform in the festival.

"Schoolwave 2009 was our first performance in Athens! I think all of us were a little bit nervous, but we were very excited and tried to do our best on stage. The crowd was really huge... it was great," says Achilles, "We are also planning to do live performances at different places around Greece as soon as we finish school, like a tour or something."

However even with all the hard work and effort, life likes to throw us lemons, and for A Gain, it's no different. Long story short, Greeks don't like rock music much.

"Here in Greece it is difficult, there is no promotion for a band because there's no money for it. They are not keen on this type of music; they like pop music. They like folk music. They are not interested in rock…" This is why they have their Myspace band page, to attract fans from other parts of the world, most of which are from the United States. If they could, the band says that they would move to the United States because there are more opportunities for them because of a bigger rock demographic.

But for now, Achilles, Vasilis, Antonis and Aris are content to just keep playing their music while coping with the pressures of high school and homework. "Keep working… and express how you really feel, don't try to write songs to make money. It's music... not a job."