Posted on 08/24/2020 6:25:31 PM PDT by DoodleBob
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage in the U.S., live performance venues will be among the last businesses allowed to reopen–and, even when some reopening is possible, there is no way to know yet what it might initially look like. For large arenas and concert halls, the shutdown has been a struggle–but for smaller operations, the pandemic may turn out to be devastating. Small music venues, the very heart of the artistic scene of any city, are facing an existential threat.
One survey conducted in June found that fully 90 percent of independent music venues in the United States report being at risk of permanent closure as a result of the pandemic. Jef Soubrian told Press Play with Madeline Brand that his venue, Zebulon, could very well be among them.
“I think it’s very important. Every artist and band starts in a place like Zebulon, small venues. These places are in danger now,” he said. “When the pandemic may be over, people [are] going to maybe see then these places are closed. And they will be very sad.”
Justin Randi owns the Baked Potato, the oldest operating jazz club in L.A. The club was started by his father, Wrecking Crew keyboard player Don Randi, in 1970.
“Don wanted a place where he and the other studio musicians could play their own stuff, play jazz, and it continues to be that kind of place for musicians,” Randi says, recalling the role the club and its patrons played in his life growing up. “I set the tables when I was really young, then I progressed to washing dishes. I clearly remember Jaco Pastorius walk over to my father’s young bass player at the time, take his bass, and play with my dad the rest of the night. I watched Al Jarreau sit on my dad’s stool with him and sing lyrics to Miles Davis’s ‘All Blues.’ I had never heard lyrics sung to that song. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard.”
Randi’s club closed up on March 15, canceling a weekend of sold-out shows, thinking they would reopen in three weeks. At Memorial Day, staff prepared to reopen for limited service, only to be unable to operate due to the imposition of curfews. Once they lifted, the venue attempted to do half-capacity indoor bar service, but that too was shut down again.
For now, Randi is looking to streaming audiences to help his family business stay alive.
“A live venue, especially one as intimate and long-standing as ours, is a lot about community. And the Baked Potato community is an in-person community. But, you know, these are the times we’re in for now, and we will adjust as needed,” he says. His team has invested in a state-of-the-art system to capture performers and broadcast them around the world from stage of his otherwise-empty club.
“What we have installed has allowed us to continue to share music with Baked Potato regulars and also music and jazz fans across the globe. People from all over the place have bought tickets to our benefit show with Steve Gadd [on July 25], to save a club they’ve never physically stepped inside of. This part of it, the outpouring of support, from all over the place, has been overwhelming in the most beautiful way. I never imagined we’d grow the Baked Potato community like this, online.”
He notes that, while the Baked Potato has played host to hundreds of benefit shows over the years, a recent streaming fundraiser was the first time they’ve been in a position where the benefit was for the club itself.
“I never thought such a day would come, but here we are and its standing between continuing on or closing for good,” Randi says. “The bills are still due. The insurance, mortgage, water and power, property taxes. They are all still due.”
When asked what the future holds for live music, and for his own club, Randi admits he doesn’t have many answers yet.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” he says. “For me and every other business owner who has put their heart and soul into something they believed in.”
Many clubs are hanging their hopes on federal intervention. The National Independent Venue Association, a trade group formed in April to lobby for music venues amid the pandemic, has backed two specific proposals, the RESTART Act and the Save Our Stages Act.
The RESTART Act, which would cover a variety of small business categories, has been on the table for inclusion in a second federal stimulus bill, but talks between Congress and the White House on that package are currently at an impasse.
PPP loans are an ill fit for most venues, as payroll is typically not the largest expense facing the businesses. According to NIVA, venues typically have relatively small staffs of largely part-time or seasonal workers, but carry substantial overhead costs due to the expense of paying rent on large—currently empty—physical spaces. Further, the group says, since there’s no clear date on which venues may be able to resume business, taking on additional debt in the form of loans might be a burden that many venues would never dig out from under.
Specific to the live-performance industry, the Save Our Stages Act was introduced in the Senate in late July by Senators Amy Klobuchar and John Cornyn. If adopted, the bill would provide for six months of financial support to venues, in an attempt to help them cover rent and payroll for the short-term.
“There is an estimated $9 billion in losses expected should ticket sales not resume until 2021. And so we really tried to focus this on the independent, smaller venues,” Senator Klobuchar told Rolling Stone. “[With music venues], it’s not like some of the businesses can be half-open. It’s either open or closed for the most part. You could envision a day where maybe they can do social distancing, but it’s really hard in mosh pits to do that.”
Klobuchar, who likens the industry-specific legislation for music venues to a much larger bail-out program created specifically for airlines, says Save Our Stages could be passed as a stand-alone bill, or incorporated into the HEROES Act (it does not appear in the House-passed version of that act as it currently stands).
“I would say if you’re willing to put all that money into the airline industry because they’re uniquely affected, you’ve got to start looking at the music industry. That is a huge, huge part of our economy and such a unique American export,” Klobuchar notes.
NIVA participants in Los Angeles include the Bootleg Theater, Teragram Ballroom, the Regent, Zebulon, and the Troubadour, among the dozens of venues, promoters, and festivals in the region, and hundreds nationwide. Amy Madrigali of the Troubadour told Press Play that lobbying for pandemic relief has become her company’s top priority.
“That’s our main objective at this moment, working with NIVA to help both of our venues and our 2,000 members across the United States,” Madrigali said. “We’re down to zero revenue. We closed our doors with no shows, there’s no revenue really. And so these are small pieces to try to just hold on.”
If these spaces disappear, there will be the loss of jobs and small businesses and economic activity–and there will also be harder-to-quantify type loss to culture and city life itself.
“The small venues are where the diversity in Los Angeles exists. It’s the soul of the city,” says Andrew Lojero of ArtDontSleep. “If large corporations buy up all of the venues, we will see a sweeping homogenization in music. All of the wonderful niches would have no place to exist. The two biggest things we would lose are diversity and artist development.”
Lojero can think of at least 25 concerts that he was involved in that were forced to cancel due to the pandemic. Facing the reality that the months that have already passed without live performances could be just the beginning of a long, dark season, he finds himself struggling on multiple levels.
“This is the first time in 18 years that I’ve not done a concert, a tour, or programmed a festival,” Lojero says. “I really love bringing people together through music. I’ve devoted my life to it, so it’s still taking some getting used to.”
Beyond the artistic loss, Lojero notes the financial hardship aspect of the pandemic as well. On top of losses from not performing or booking events, he co-owns a recording studio which he says has had almost no clients coming in the door, even as restrictions on entertainment industry productions have begun to relax.
“It put a dead stop on everything we had planned for this year,” he says. “It’s been a hard-hitting year.”
Even the music industry is facing an “Existential Threat”.
Flock of Seagulls, Corey Hart, and The Human League.
> All the good music has already been made. <
I get not one but two county music TV channels with my over-the-air antenna. All they play is modern county. It’s all mush.
There is nothing wrong with a modern country band covering a classic country song. So I sit there and scream at the TV set. “Play something classic! Play something made famous Johnny Cash or Loretta Lynn!” But they don’t listen.
Most musicians will say “ I got a gig tonight “. California hates the gig economy and everybody in it.
I’m driving down a red dirt road in my daddy’s pickup truck. Got my girl beside me in cutoff jeans and an ice cold can in my hand. We’re gonna hit the lake and dance in the bed of the truck, watch the fireworks and make some of our own.
It doesn’t rhyme, but it has all the bro country tropes. Gimme my CMA.
That’s on top of the damage caused by AB5.
But there is a substitute for the LA music scene, whatever that is.
As a former Country Music radio DJ, that’s about it now.
Patent Office Commissioner Henry Ellsworth, 1843
I liked Alabama and Restless Heart. I’m sure traditionalists hated that stuff when it was coming in. I hated Garth Brooks when he came in and he seems ultra-traditionalist in comparison to the current stuff. But, while the ones I mentioned signaled a change in sound, it’s still different now. It’s not something to get used to. It’s lowest common denominator cookie cutter garbage. It’s the death of country. And, it wasn’t really a coincidence when a gay, “married,” high-powered country exec. managed to get Mike Huckabee thrown off a country music board for his “radical” Christian views.
BUT...there is zero shortage of new, good, and AVAILABLE music. There are zillions of new bands in a plethora of genres out there. The big diff is that radio and MTV aren't part of the discernment process anymore (except for college radio and XM's Underground Garage).
You, the consumer, have to do a little searching and maybe put in a little effort, but you'll be rewarded richly with new music that rivals that of your childhood heros, and will renew your hope in the arts.
And very often, those new bands have digital AND physical media. It's a match made in heaven - by the invisible hand.
I don't know if LA is done-for, and if venues will survive. I've seen some decent efforts to raise money via the free market for venues - this one is my favorite (the sax player works with Dweezil Zappa). Hopefully a combination of good music and good venues survive the Dem-inflicted economic damage. For any musician still rocking and any venue still kicking, and any city still standing, the payoff may be epic.
Nope, but lots of terrible music has. Plenty of good stuff still rolling out, just not on mainstream media broadcasts.
As far as I’m concerned, the entire country music archive should be nuked from orbit, for example.
Mention an old hound dog and I’ll buy your 45 single.
Wait. I’m showing my age. Do they even issue 45 singles anymore?
It may be good, but it's all been done before.
Yes. I am amazed how little attention this horrendous and destructive law has gotten.
Tell me again how music composed for a brand new instrument that’s not existed before has ‘been done before’?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQKy67j4hr4
Nope, thank god.
Sounds like Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
Yeah, no. It isn’t. Check my other video linked above.
You’re like the idiot 1843 Patent Office Commissioner, Henry Ellsworth. “The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.” Or, put another way “Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
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