I’m playing at the Ocean Charter School Winter Faire tomorrow afternoon. The one time before that I played for kids was great at its best. The teens were too uptight and not a lot of fun, but the younger kids got up and moshed and were generally a stellar audience.
Location: 12606 Culver Blvd, Culver City, CA 90066. The nearest major cross street is Centinela. Time: 1-1:30.
It’s good to play outside of bars. My music developed in the context of my blog, and the vibe of my blog matches up better with galleries and schools than bars and parties.
I play too much in bars. It’s like going to a football game and already knowing the outcome.
The times that I have had an opportunity to play for kids, have all been a blast. Kids give honest reaction with no preconceived notions.
Have fun.
Yes, exactly. Bars are fine for what they are, but it’s really nice to go beyond that. You have to play to the environment, so if people are chatty and drunk the music becomes the same way.
…and there’s a lot more to music than that.
Live performances being relegated to bars and stadiums is part of the non-interactive flavor of the music industry during the heyday of the record business. When it’s interactive, like it is in a bar, it’s in a marginal setting.
So I really like playing in ordinary life situations, outside of designated performance spaces.
“…and there’s a lot more to music than that.”
Dead on Lucas. Playing in bars is all about reducing the musical experience to the lowest common denominator. I’m not complaining. I’m glad to have a chance to fire up the Tele tonight regardless.
“Live performances being relegated to bars and stadiums is part of the non-interactive flavor of the music industry during the heyday of the record business.”
I think you are right as rain again. T-Bone Burnett once said something like; “The music industry is based on the principal of selling music to people who don’t like music”.
Who knows how the selling of music shakes out in this “brave new world”? Personally, I don’t care.
I have a hunch that when the dust settles, there will be more opportunity to find a venue to play live for people who do like music.
Lately, I want all music to be in matinee’ form.
The “nightlife prison” for music does conjure up some rich, almost cinematic associations. Yet live music becomes so limited when its trapped in that dates-and-drinks-and-diversion mesh, and perhaps limited in a different way in the “concert as religious experience” groove.
I don’t play live, but if I did, I’d always play starting no later than 2 p.m.
gurdonark, my impression is that the main context for your music is in relatively fluid online forums like CC Mixter and NSI. Is that right?
If so, you are a truly next-generation player. You don’t play live, making CDs is pretty much an afterthought, and radio is just not on your mind. At the same time you have a healthy listenership and do a steady stream of fresh music.
This is exactly what I’m thinking of as far as next-generation contexts. Your notes aren’t played in real time, but you are surely performing, and the chronological flow of your new work is in real time.
Similar musical projects — Calendar Girl; Kristen Hersh’s regular blogged releases.
That part of the overall change is pretty firmly established at this point. The part that isn’t clear is how meatspace performances will be affected. For example, maybe playing in schools and retirement communities will be a higher visibility gig.
Also, I’d rather have my music accompany a planetarium show or a multi-media presentation than be a performer. I am all for concerts and performances, but I like the idea that one can be one component of a fun in which music is incorporated into a multi-media activity.
I just posted before I saw your post.
Most of my things appear at netlabels like NSI.
I am not opposed to CDs, but they’re almost irrelevant to me, as you suggest. I made and even sold some a few years ago, but now they’d be more a curious gift for friends than anything like “music distribution”.
I love meatspace performances. But I think the consructs for them are all rooted in performer/audience assumptions that are no longer the right assumptions. By this, I mean that
I have no desire to hold a candle up for a superstar anymore, but instead want to be drenched in an interactive medium. I love what Kristin Hersh and radiohead and Issa (nee’ Jane Siberry) are doing with self-directed payments, and what numerous people are doing with netlabel creative commons. I recently was on intelligentmachinery.net’s “collusion” dark ambient piece–12 artists contributing to create one whole–not for the glory of anyone, but for the sheer participation of the thing. That’s the present, and the future.
Accompanying a planetarium show or a multi-media presentation is a great example of a next-gen performance.
The last live show I did was a band reunion where most of the audience was made up of band members’ kids, nieces and nephews. Playing for kids is really great–in many ways better then when I was a kid and most of the audience would be our parents, aunts and uncles.
btw, Seattle has lots of live music in bars, pubs, coffee houses, laundromats, etc., and it’s really a great thing to be a music fan and be out at night and be around live music. It looks like it’s a lot more fun to play here than the places where I used to play (in LA, SF). Bar gigs are not glorious for a musician, but they’re often a big break from spending one’s whole life in a cubicle, etc. And, if there’s a crowd of real music fans in the mix, it can approach some real glory, IMHO.