What bands would you pay ahead of time to finance recordings and/or tours?

I was reading a piece on Marillion, and learned the extent which their tours and recordings are fan-financed ahead of time.

When the band announced that it couldn’t afford to tour North America in 1997, Marillion fans—spontaneously and without being asked—clubbed together on the Internet to pledge $60,000 of their own money to fund the tour... In 2000, Marillion... asked fans a radical question: Are you willing to pay for an album before even so much of a note has been recorded? Over 12,000 people said “yes” with their checkbooks. The resulting album, [i]Anoraknophobia[/] (2001), was the world’s first micro-financed album.

That's some impressive fan support. I think it's kind of a unique situation where a band has already had a long stint on major labels and not only has a huge fanbase, but an exceptionally loyal one. I like a lot of prog but never could get into this band. There's a few bands I like, mainly in Europe, that pretty much never tour the U.S. because of expense, and members who have jobs. I wonder if they would have a big enough fan base to pull something like that off?

I'm thinking of these:
Colour Haze
Motorpsycho
Ufomammut

They're all playing Desertfest in Berlin Apr 20-21 and Colour Haze and Ufomammut are playing Hellfest in France June 15-16, but no dates in the U.S. I'm considering Hellfest, but man will that be expensive. Now that Ufomammut are on Neurot, at least they'll probably come over this fall possibly. Hopefully more than just three California dates that they did last time.

Who else?

Dangelo

Black leotard front

Swans

yeah MG basically finances each new release now with a limited edition handmade whatnot.

I think some variation of this is the future for many, many artists. The old patronage style appeals to me, and I'd pay Martin Phillipps to record SOMETHING for f*cks sake!

Having said that, one has to have absolute faith that your patron isn't going to put your money up their nose.

I can see how the fans of Marillion wouldn't be too worried that they included coke & strippers in their budget!

Ha, I guess this really isn't an option, if no one can be moved to talk about it let alone do it!

unfortunately, Marillion sans Fish = balls but kudos to all those kids who think otherwise

We did invest £20 in Patrick Wolf's 4th album, actually, via Bandstocks or whoever it was called. There's a handful of other acts I'd do the same for: Field Music, Caribou, Wild Beasts, Owen Pallett...

wd do this for all 4 of Van der Graaf Generator, wd pay several bands to come and play the Adelphi (or the Piper lol), otherwise what the hey let it flow

I was disturbed to learn that while Ufomammut couldn't even sell 400 albums the first week of the new album's release to make the charts, Canadian Christian nu-metallers Thousand Foot Crutch sold 23,250. With a self-released album, no less.

http://www.metalinsider.net/metal-by-numbers/metal-by-numbers-425-losing-force-on-the-charts

I never heard of them before, but looking at their site, I can start to understand. They've been around since '98 and are freakin' relentless marketing machines. Their first album featured "a rap-rockified version of EMF's 'Unbelievable,' tricked out with a Christian-themed rap from McNevan." Oi. They cross over into all sorts of media -- TV, movies, games and sports. They have over a half million FB followers. They benefited from a decade of label support before venturing on their own with the new album, which according to Allmusic, sounds just like the awful rap-rock from over a decade ago.

For those who’ve been following the Ontario-bred players since their formation in 1998, it’s been a continuously escalating highlight reel that includes best-selling albums, four top 25 Active Rock hits (including the top 20 smash “Fire It Up”), plus a slew of soundtrack slots. In fact, the group has literally infiltrated every facet of pop culture, from ongoing ESPN appearnces, to various NASCAR, MLB, NHL and NFL airings (including the 2010 Super Bowl), along with the “GI Joe” movie trailer, WGN-TV’s “Smallville” and EA Sports’ “NHL 2010” video game

I don't know if they got fan funding, but it's definitely the type of band that could pull it off.

So really it seems like that kind of fan-supported independence is contingent upon getting a large audience initially through major label support and a hit or two, whose tastes seem to remain static. This could arguably apply to Radiohead too, of course.