Are Local Venues Killing Music?

[Robroy]

I see plenty of nice bars, and plenty of dives. But the nice ones don't have live music. Different crowd.

Times change. People have a lot of other stuff on which to spend their time and money. And if you are going there to "meet chicks", well, a DJ is just fine.

 

[ctpunk]

I think we are just all getting old! Im in Los Angeles which is a mecca for live shows, there are alot of venues and every band stops here at some point. It still takes alot for me to see a show, even bands I love because..

1 I have to be not working that night
2 I like to have a drink or 3 at the show but not drive (Uber is cool) and
3 Im not a spring chicken anymore, dont have the ambition to leave the house so often

With that said I do think there has been a quiet revolution of sorts happening in the music scene. Pirating came along and kicked the industry right in the nuts so what your left with are bands making music again for the right reasons.
There is no real get rich quick dream in sight for the majority so I think they are really doing things for themselves at this point. I love finding a new young band that I really dig and see them doing the blue collar band thing driving themselves across the country and grinding it out.

Gives me hope.

 

[DwaynieAD]

hmm a lot of bad info in that original post. first streaming =/= pirating. in fact there was a thread around here a few years ago about some grammy winning artist and what he made from streaming. well lets just say my metal band makes more from streaming than that. also you can monetize on youtube. people are getting there "free" music from spotify and youtube primarily, and you can make money from both of those places.

2nd, please explain to me how no parking is a venue's fault? and unless this venue was built from the ground up to be a music venue they are working with what they have, such as walking thru the front door or having to deal with stairs.

saying they arent compensating you enough? well that is purely your fault. demand what you want. if you can't get it then your product is either not good enough or not in demand, so yeah if you're playing something only 6 people want to hear and five of those people are in your band then no crap they're only gonna give you half a cup of bud light.

if these places are as dirty, dangerous, and disgusting as you say, don't play there.

 

[DavC]

i'm pushing 60 yrs old ... i always kinda blamed it on cheap DJ's and Karaoke ... cheap stupid crap for the mindless sheeples ... !

 

[40Hz]

Haha, no way. I mean, I get that this is a thing that people grumble about and that websites write articles about to get attention, but it's not a real thing let alone something that's seriously affecting live music. Classic "kids these days"-ism.

Plenty of young people are playing in bands, going to school for music, etc. Maybe they're just less into the fairly specific types of music that talkbass tends to focus on?

I think you're missing my entire point, which is perceptions and styles of social interaction are changing in the wake of the technologies generations are growing up with. And F2F interactions are declining across the board. The same thing happened with radio and television broadcasting and the generations which proceeded the web. It has nothing to do with your reading it as "kids these days" (whatever that means) into it. It's a topic being given serious study by researchers and policy makers. Sorry if you chose to interpret my comment as some sort of veiled insult or knock on "the kids."

 

[DwaynieAD]

Horse urine America macrobrew lagers and plain old Jack isn't all that appealing. But that stuff costs more, which means at a location is gets really expensive. A $5 dollar Belgian Quad becomes $8 or $10s at a bar, and Bob's Bar isn't going to have it anyway. I actually prefer to drink at home because I know the beer is good, the bathroom works, and the glasses are clean.
There are a lot of drinking locations near me, but none of them have live bands. One I went to recently was ridiculously busy so it was already too loud. Then an abusively loud DJ started pumping stuff so loud I couldn't talk to my friends, so I left.

ahhh, you're pretentious. it all makes sense.

 

[PluckyThump]

People my age go out and listen to live music, at least where I am, but it's usually not for your standard blues rock stuff, it's for exciting stuff.

What qualifies as "exciting stuff" for younger folks when it comes to live bands?

A few years back I went to an upscale bar that had a live band different from most. Female-fronted with guitar/bass/drums and the guitar player had a midi for doing keyboard and synth stuff. They played modern pop, R&B, new wave and old disco - Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Madonna, Donna Summer, that sort of thing. They were really good, but there were maybe 10 patrons in the bar, and four of us got up and danced including my date and I (couldn't say no...). To this day I have not seen another bar-type band pull that stuff off. Like you said it is mostly a classic rock/blues/country world when it comes to live bands.

 

[socialleper]

this all got me thinking.

years ago, i was talking to the singer for what was at the time my favorite band. he was a great singer and also an excellent entertainer, and he was complaining about how cheap the venues were when it came to paying bands. honestly they were doing better financially than any local band i've known, but his contention is that if club owners respected and enjoyed the bands, they'd show their appreciation by paying them more. we were talking about a specific venue, and i pointed out that it was a large club paying rent, payroll, insurance, a liquor license, booze and juice and soda, cleaning supplies and glasses, utilities, etc. the singer was infuriated at me - he said "so you're taking their side!", walked off and never spoke to me again.

my point isn't that bands should be exploited - it's that it's expensive to run a club, at least here in l.a.. i know people whose clubs went under after they had taken second mortgages to try and keep their clubs afloat, hoping they'd make more money. i'm not taking any side, but you gotta be realistic - a guy who can barely pay his staff and is floating all his booze and supplies on credit really may not have the money to pay bands the big bucks and regularly steam clean his carpets. a guy who's renting on the cheap in hollywood with a second floor band area doesn't have the money to build a load-in elevator for bands, and his landlord probably wouldn't let him anyway.

So here is the question:
If local clubs and bars are no longer financially viable, and that is the market trend, OK.
Where is the next breeding ground for live bands to play their original music? That's not a snarky question, it is a legit one. Let's say this method of "getting out there" is a DoDo bird, what can be the next thing to replace it? If we as musicians don't think of a way to adapt to this, we are truly screwed. Streaming and piracy only hurts bands with produced materials. For those of us still working the local scene to get the money together to produce something that can then be stolen, we still need an outlet. What will that be?

I've been wondering if there isn't a way to turn this around and use people's growing use of the internet as an asset. It would take a significant amount of investment, but if a location set up a studio with cameras, mics, a decent mixing board and a fat internet connection you could live stream performances. Sounds weird, but think about it: my band has fans well outside our local touring radius, and I'm sure we aren't the only ones. Unless I win the lottery, the handful of people in Europe that like us will never see us play live, which kinda sucks for both of us. What I'm taking about is a less naked version of a "live webcam" (unless playing naked is your thing) where a band plays while people watch real time on the web and can react to it. Could that be a thing?

 

[socialleper]

ahhh, you're pretentious. it all makes sense.

There is no way to derive that from my statement, but you are going to believe whatever you want, so sure.

 

[Robroy]

There are clubs in my area that only have live music until midnight, since live music is for 'old people' who go home early.

And there's the writing on the wall. Old people die. But before they do, the stop going to clubs to see live music. i.e. that is a rapidly shrinking crowd.

When I was a kid, you could go to these hobby stores that had AMAZING slot car racing tracks. You'd pay by the hour to race your car. Those places still exist, but they are very rare. That sort of thing has really run it's course.

Same thing is happening to live music venues. It is, more and more, becoming quality over quantity. And it's not just that the clubs are crappy. So are the bands. It's one reason I'm only in my southern gospel band right now that only plays churches and festivals. I'm sick and tired of trying to work with people that only want to be "good enough". I want to be so good, as a band, that people stop talking to each other just to watch us play. There are just too few musicians in my neck of the woods that want to do that.

There is a college in my small town that specializes in music degrees. I'm thinking of puting together a band that continues to burn through students as they come and go. At least they are more motivated.

 

[Korladis]

Ultimately to me this all boils down to "the times they are a changin." Or in reality "the times they have a changed." As a 43 year old musician (and amateur sociologist) whose heyday was 1995-2003, it was easy to see back then that rock was dead/dying and that all of a sudden no one really gave a crap about live music anymore. There was a post in this thread from a guy who grew up in Jersey in the 80's and how the live music scene was awesome back then. So true, mainly because of so many sociological forces at play that converged at a perfect time to be a musician. these were:

1) People were way less uptight than now.
2) No one was distracted by 24/7 technology
3) Musicians still wanted to play live music
4) Music, IMO, simply meant more to us back then than to the youngin's of today (generally speaking....of course there are exceptions on the individual level).
5) Cops, while still in the business of harrassment, just were a little bit cooler back in those days. As a society, we weren't on the brink of a nervous breakdown due to fictitious and constant propaganda about so-called "terrorism."

Ultimately though, while I think that the music scene is completely dead for anyone over 40 (again, generally speaking), to me it seems quite a few of the kids of today are playing in bands and trying to follow the dreams we all did back in the 70's, 80's and 90's. It's just way, way harder for them due to negative societal inertia.

Oh yeah, and the fact that many are playing horrific dethcore and all sound the same.

People were always uptight. Going back hundreds of years.

Older people have always been blaming new technology for the decline of youth. Before the internet and cell phones, it was TV, before then, it was the movies, before then it was the radio, before then it was the car, before then it was cheap novels (really; there was seriously a period when a lot of the same things people say about smartphones ruining social interaction were said about cheap mass market novels), the train, etc.

Musicians still want to play live music and always will.

Music did not mean any more to you than it means to the people I know in the local scene who bust their asses to make shows happen. I know people who have played when it was physically painful for them to do so, when they've been otherwise bedridden, because it meant that much to them. A few years ago after nearly dying, the day I got out of the hospital I went to see one of my favorite bands even though I had been told by the doctor to stay home and rest. Music still matters a lot. I know you said that there are exceptions, but it seems more the rule than the exception, to me.

Cops were definitely in the business of outright brutality back in the day if you were at a punk show. Because "communists."

I do agree that several things that are sort of due to societal inertia make the music business a bit difficult these days, though.

However, I'd also note that when you were in your 20s, the people who were 43 probably hated the stuff you listened to and played just as much

I picked that as an example - we all know there is a list of songs people here hate to play, but always go over well live (MS, Sweet Home, BEG - there is a reason they are known here in shorthand). I get them all requested - regularly.

I am glad that you have an original band that gets booked and paid - as I am sure you are aware from reading posts here, you are the exception.

I recently joined a band that is busy getting booked. Out of a catalog of about 60 songs they have in their regular list, I think there are three that I would pick to listen to. But it is what people want.

Only one that really gets requested is Freebird.

I don't think I really am the exception. Like I said, that was this particular band's first show, and it was on a weeknight. During the biggest rainstorm in northern California in years. Maybe my area is just better for original music than a lot of the country. My other band, Catapult the Dead, has gotten to the point where our gigs are pretty well attended lately.

This was one of those mixed bag places for me. A year and half ago I played there and you could tell the people were trying really hard. The food was actually good and the bar tender was very nice. The PA wasn't too bad, but the stage was very hard to work with. The bathrooms were epically gross. After our set I preferred to take my contacts out in the car than in there. The people running it and the crowd was super cool to us.

They replaced the old gross bathrooms. The new ones are actually really nice.

The stage is not very big, but it's not a very big place.

 

[Robroy]

So here is the question:
If local clubs and bars are no longer financially viable, and that is the market trend, OK.
Where is the next breeding ground for live bands to play their original music? That's not a snarky question, it is a legit one. Let's say this method of "getting out there" is a DoDo bird, what can be the next thing to replace it? If we as musicians don't think of a way to adapt to this, we are truly screwed. Streaming and piracy only hurts bands with produced materials. For those of us still working the local scene to get the money together to produce something that can then be stolen, we still need an outlet. What will that be?

I've been wondering if there isn't a way to turn this around and use people's growing use of the internet as an asset. It would take a significant amount of investment, but if a location set up a studio with cameras, mics, a decent mixing board and a fat internet connection you could live stream performances. Sounds weird, but think about it: my band has fans well outside our local touring radius, and I'm sure we aren't the only ones. Unless I win the lottery, the handful of people in Europe that like us will never see us play live, which kinda sucks for both of us. What I'm taking about is a less naked version of a "live webcam" (unless playing naked is your thing) where a band plays while people watch real time on the web and can react to it. Could that be a thing?

Just an educated guess: Youtube and pandora.

 

[socialleper]

View attachment 1029617

Oh, I'm the most pessimistic, sarcastic, Eeyore motherhumper you will ever meet. I'll never deny it. The thing about pessimists is we are always looking down, so we see the potholes optimists are about to step in and twist there ankles. Plan for the worst and you will always be surprised when things work out OK.

 

[Altitude]

So here is the question:
If local clubs and bars are no longer financially viable, and that is the market trend, OK.
Where is the next breeding ground for live bands to play their original music? That's not a snarky question, it is a legit one. Let's say this method of "getting out there" is a DoDo bird, what can be the next thing to replace it? If we as musicians don't think of a way to adapt to this, we are truly screwed. Streaming and piracy only hurts bands with produced materials. For those of us still working the local scene to get the money together to produce something that can then be stolen, we still need an outlet. What will that be?

I've been wondering if there isn't a way to turn this around and use people's growing use of the internet as an asset. It would take a significant amount of investment, but if a location set up a studio with cameras, mics, a decent mixing board and a fat internet connection you could live stream performances. Sounds weird, but think about it: my band has fans well outside our local touring radius, and I'm sure we aren't the only ones. Unless I win the lottery, the handful of people in Europe that like us will never see us play live, which kinda sucks for both of us. What I'm taking about is a less naked version of a "live webcam" (unless playing naked is your thing) where a band plays while people watch real time on the web and can react to it. Could that be a thing?

I think you're definitely onto something there, and Daryl Hall, for one, would agree with you. The producers of Austin City Limits would, too. Just before my last original project hung it up, we considered doing that too.

 

[Korladis]

I see plenty of nice bars, and plenty of dives. But the nice ones don't have live music. Different crowd.

Times change. People have a lot of other stuff on which to spend their time and money. And if you are going there to "meet chicks", well, a DJ is just fine.

In my experience, a concert is a terrible place to try to chat up someone you're trying to take out.

 

[socialleper]

What about the curtains?

Do they match?

 

[mikeyjm2]

Take this with a huge grain of salt (probably more like a boulder) as I've only been gigging actively for the last couple of years, but the two biggest factors in why we get return bookings to venues:

1. We bring people to the venue

2. We control the volume of the performance

I really think the first point is the biggest one, which speaks to what many have already said: what the venue owner really cares about is how much money you help them make. The second point matters a lot too though, particularly for the people who are not part of the group you brought with you.

This past Saturday eve I went in to a venue (a bar in this case) where we play regularly and are usually very well received. The band was technically good (as good as us if I'm honest). They were tight w/ a female vocalist who was pretty talented. Here's the problem: they were both too loud and EQd terribly for the small size of the establishment. They had already been told to turn down once by the staff and by the time I heard them were still too loud. I'm not convinced they'll be back there, but I am convinced we'll be back there. This is anecdotal to be sure, but even just a relatively short experience set has taught me what works for us and what doesn't, at least in this market.

So that's the bar example, but we also play places which are more restaurant-ish in nature, with return bookings. The two points above are just as valid in that setting, maybe even more so.

 

[Drzejzi]

Where is the next breeding ground for live bands to play their original music?

The Internet.

 

[Robroy]

In my experience, a concert is a terrible place to try to chat up someone you're trying to take out.

I'm really not talking about concerts. I'm talking about Bars. When I go to concerts, I take a date.

 

[socialleper]

The stage is not very big, but it's not a very big place.

What is scary to me is that I've played a few places up there and a lot down here in LA. Places Like Eli's aren't that far off the pace in terms of size and amenities. I mean, it Oakland....so....there is that, but they are dedicated to their scene. Down here there are some clubs that are only 10 years old and are attracting big signed bands, but aren't that much bigger or, for lack of a better word, attractive.