MDID

I attended a panel discussion held at local 506 a couple days ago, hosted by a new loose "organization" called Secondhand Freespace

The panel was made up of 4 local club owners/bookers (Glenn from 506, Mouse from the Cave, Dayn from Jack Sprat, and Jenks from Nightlight.) and and the topic was generally how to get your band booked at a local club. I don't have a lot of skin in this game as MDID rarely plays live these days, and when we do it's usually some kind of special occasion where we normally don't have to "sell" our ability to bring quality alcoholics to shows. Still, I've felt less than involved in the local music scene than perhaps I should be given my decades of experience with the bullshit of it all, so I thought it was a good opportunity to mostly listen and get a pulse of the local club happenings.

First of all, the idea of having quarterly gatherings to discuss the current state of a local music scene is one I appreciate and commend. It's sometimes difficult to get people with diverse opinions all in the same room much less talking to each other. Anyway, what I took away from the discussion was:

1. Every promoter has his own way of doing things, and what "works" for some bookers is the very thing that will turn other bookers off completely. So don't try to figure them all out. Just don't lie about your capacity to fill their club.. (they ALL hated that…)
2. At least in this market, what mattered most to these club owners is whether you can bring bodies into the club. Not to say they were all totally jaded about music, but there was definitely a sense that the "giving a new band a chance" scenario works only a couple of times and by the third time you'd better have at least a couple dozen friends showing up at your gigs.
3. There's a sense that there was a "golden days" in Chapel Hill, I guess in the 90's, when bands like Polvo, Archers of Loaf etc, were at their peak. Some discussion was spent on how to "get that back" and basically how the UNC students don't care about live music like they did back then. I wasn't here to know, but my sense is that many of the local "scenes" I experienced in the 80's and 90's were loose conglomerations of a lot of unconnected things happening at the same time that only looked like a cohesive movement of some kind when viewed from far away.
4. "Schtick" goes a long way to generating an audience. Guess that's true for some. For me, the music has always been enough.. I don't need scenery, dancing girls, or performance art to augment the musical experience, but I realize that's just me.
5. I need to go out more. I appreciated the point made that if musicians want people to come to their shows, of course they should show up to others'.

No one seemed to talk about or notice the irony that Indie rockers (at least the ones I've known and met over the years) aren't exactly social butterflies. Also not discussed was the intense distaste some of us have for the profit motive in music.

I understand that running these clubs is these guys' jobs, but I found the whole discussion of "If you don't plaster your fliers on every available pole and stand out on the street handing out flyers, or if you're not out there on the streets somehow drumming up support then you're not working hard enough for me to book your band" anathema to how I've always approached music. I don't agree that it should be the musician's job to wear the salesman's leisure suit as well. Probably a good reason among many for why MDID never became "popular".

Still, 2 issues about this approach..

1. Some musicians are good musicians, but lousy businessmen. What does it say about our society that the lack of good business sense can keep these otherwise talented people from being heard, and enriching others' experiences of life? To me, the classic Republican "survival of the loudest" attitude when it comes to artists and musicians is one of the great negatives of unfettered capitalism as it exists in the U.S.. It's always disheartening to me to talk to musicians from other countries at festivals like SXSW and find out that their trips are subsidized by their governments' support for the arts. I ache for a time when my thousands of dollars of taxes go for paying artists to perform in other countries rather than bombs to kill them and their families. This country can be so utterly backward about some ideas.
2. Some great artists are very difficult people to be around. Don't have a lot of friends. Don't make me name names or look in a mirror. Again, should social connectedness drive the exposure level of a musician?

It seems maybe yes on a local scale at least.

What surprised me most was that there was relatively little discussion about live music being a dying dinosaur, which it definitely seems to be to me..

MDID audiences, which regularly numbered in the several hundreds in several cities (including right here in Chapel Hill, where we normally played the largest place in town, the Cat's Cradle when we came here) in the late 80's and early 90's, have steadily dwindled over the last decade, to the point where it's a damn good show if 50 people show up. Is that because my music was so much better back then? Believe me that thought has crossed my mind more than once. Is it because I'm not "working hard enough?". Maybe, but, regardless of whether it seems smug, I feel like I've "paid my dues" by dedicating 10 yrs of my life to the poverty of being exclusively in a band, before I had to get a real job, so there's certain things I'm just not going to do, and that includes standing on street corners hawking upcoming appearances. There ought to be some benefit to a "grizzled veteran" of the indie music scene besides the occasional outrageous fun of having to outline a 20 year career to someone that's never heard of you and why did you name your band "THAT" anyway?? Am I wrong to feel that way?

So you probably won't see a lot of MDID at your local club with any regularity, even though I think the new material we're writing now is quite good, and worth hearing. I do continue bugging Glenn now and then for an opportunity to play, but I also understand that we're not a "house packer" these days.