Do It Live
Rick Berlin and The Nickel & Dime Band at Midway CafeIt’s a Hump Night to remember at Midway Cafe on Saturday, 9 December 2023.
Rick Berlin leads a Nickel & Dime Band of revelers.
Bobby Oakes & the TV Models, Jean Paul Jean Paul, and Big Rav party hardy in the sandwiching slots.
With four bands on a bill, you know a significant portion of the audience is climbing up on stage at some point to play their set.
Count the heads in the room. Once you eliminate the employees, the musicians, and their immediate family, friends, and well wishers, how many complete strangers off the street fill out a club on any given night?
Not many. The random lone wolves who will blindly pay a cover to listen to music they know nothing about is vanishingly small.
That small minority loves to trumpet its fondness for exploring the unknown to find new music.
But there’s a less vocal majority that simply and without ceremony stays home if the act in the local club isn’t their brother, or roommate, or the band didn’t write a song that they fell in love to or suffered with through a breakup.
Why is that? Musicians and everyone who works at venues would love to know the answer.
One theory: the notion of the live music club as a “hangout” space on any night of the week, rather than a “special appointment” space, has atrophied. As a result, people need a reason to go to the club for social outings as opposed to needing a reason to not go.
This theory presupposes that the percentage of the population that goes out to clubs regularly has fallen. Less people going out, people going out less frequently, or both. This might be wrong, but anecdotally it seems correct. We’d need some hard numbers in support.
But let’s suppose that club attendance per capita is falling over the years. Contributing factors?
Most of the factors suggested here are closely related economic factors.
Increased cost: it costs more to open and run a club than it used to, and those costs are passed along to the consumer at every pay point: tickets, drinks, pinball machine. This holds true even when you adjust for inflation.
Decreased disposable income: people have less disposable income than they used to. Sure, you’re making more than your grandpa did. But a greater percentage of your paycheck is being eaten up by the necessities (food, shelter, healthcare, education) than it was for your grandpa. Again, this holds true even when you adjust for inflation.
Increased competition for your entertainment dollar: hello streaming services! Not just music streaming, but all types of TV & film streaming services have decreased our will to get off the couch. If you’re comparing dollars & cents, the choice is clear between streaming a song at home versus paying to hear it live. In most cases (setting aside hardware, software, and internet costs), streaming is free.
At an aesthetic level, experiencing a song live versus streamed is a ridiculous comparison, but financial deprivation and absurd rationalization are common bedfellows.
Hey, check out this graph from 2019! It shows that the age demographic most engaged with music is the 18-34 bracket.
OK, now think about that factoid alongside a 2014 survey that determined the age bracket which attends the most live concerts. Guess what? It’s not the 18-34 bracket, which comes in second and eats up 35% of the pie. Instead, the biggest slice of the pie at 43% goes to the 35-54 bracket.
Don’t kill me!Is that a big deal or small potatoes? It’s surprising at some level. You have a younger population that is really into music, outpacing other age brackets by double digit percentage points when it comes to engaging with music on a daily basis. But that same younger population gets dunked on when it comes to attending live music.
If they’re so into music, why doesn’t the younger group go to clubs to hear it live?
Let’s avoid a “Millenials Are Killing Applebees” conclusion. The 18-34 bracket is not “killing” clubs. If people have money, they spend it! It might just boil down to not having enough: most 20- and 30-somethings don’t have the disposable income to pay a cover, plus a night of $5-$10 drinks. And a ride-hailing service home? No thanks!
More questions to ask, more answers to ponder, more presuppositions to interrogate. If you have a tip for any good reads on this topic (let’s call it “the state of live music venues”), let us know in the comments.
Bobby Oakes
& The TV Models
Bobby Oakes & the TV ModelsThe garage rock foursome Bobby Oakes & The TV Models kicked out Ramones-flavored greaser core. One thing was for sure: they wanted to party.
Rick Berlin
& The Nickel and Dime Band
Rick Berlin and the Nickel & Dime BandRick Berlin was ready to party. If you attended his beatification at Brighton Hall in April, then you saw him bandleading with the Nickel & Dime Band.
Except it was a slightly different lineup. Definitely a slimmer roster than the one that took the stage in Brighton. And maybe one or two new faces in new places?
The outfit has an organic feel and keeps to the principles of rock n roll sound, so you could imagine musicians slotting in and out without missing too many beats. Some new material with herky jerky Talking Heads rhythms got the room moving.
The highlight of the set, though, was a song that must have been penned especially for a Saturday night show at the Midway Cafe. A real custom-tailored number that Berlin performed up the wazoo when he wasn’t sitting back and just watching his band jam.
Jean Paul Jean Paul
Jean Paul Jean PaulAnother party band with some unapologetic Big Rock instincts. It’s Jean Paul Jean Paul. Verse, chorus, hook, fill, solo, and the cellphones waving like lighters at Whitesnake concert in 1984. The acoustic guitar in the hands of the frontman, though, keeps the whole rigamarole grounded in salt of the earth, pub rock ethos.
Big Rav
Big RavBig keytar. Big Rav. The four piece is built for rock ballads, riding the wave of the fronter’s vocals. A mix of originals and covers, including Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know.” How do you close out a night of partying? With more partying.
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