Is this happening to your local music scene as well?

In Australia we have this phenomenon occurring where our once power local music scene is slowly detiorating. The music scene here used to be huge. It contained all manner of acts in a variety of styles & genres. If you were into any kind of music you could find some where to go.

We had the "Pub Rock"/RSL Club "Circuit" which gave birth to acts like AC/DC, The Angels (AKA "Angel City" in the US), INXS, Men at Work, Cold Chisel, Jimmy Barnes, Dragon, Radiators, Choirboys, Hoodoo Gurus & Rose Tattoo (Guns & Roses covered "Nice Boys" on their lies album) as well as infinite numbers of good cover bands.

We had the Indie scenes concentrated around inner city areas that produced acts like Nick Cave, VSPY VSPY, Lime Spiders, Triffids & The Hard-ons. Then to go with this Blues, Jazz, Opera & country scenes. In short, heaven for musicians (work wise) & the music fans.

Back 20 years ago if we were not playing ourselves we would get the newspaper & read the gig guide. It was usually anywhere between 4 & 8 pages long & had all the shows for Thursday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday performances. There were that many choices we actually used to fight amongst ourselves on where we would go! We would even go from venue to venue in the same night!.

All this has changed. Venues where you can see a live band are at an all time low even though there are more physical places to eat/drink/socialise. The newspaper "Gig Guide" is a shadow of its former self.

The "stadium Acts" are still big business. Acts like AC/DC, Pink, Bon Jovi & Kylie Minogue generate huge attendances & revenue. However for the rest it's really tough going. One of the Pub Rocks acts mentioned above recently had a show at 3000 person venue. They only got 400 people when they were expected to near fill it.

There are extremely talented veterans & new younger acts that actually struggle to make a complete living out of their musicianship. As you can imagine this is extremely frustrating to the younger acts who have taken the veterans work, refined it some more made it their own & have little places to show their wares. It retards growth & development of the craft.

Fee's for Musicians live work is also down. Recently I spoke with a relatively famous solo cover artist who has told when he play a famous venue in Sydney called "the basemant". He gets paid the same fee he was paid 20 Years ago & has to play longer to get it!

This has been discussed at length amongst the musical community & they have come up with some reasons for the problems we have now.

1) Increase in the use of Gambling Machines. We call them "Pokies" or Poker Machines here as well as card game machines. I believe in other parts of the world they are known as Slots or Fruit Machines. Venues fill their floorspaces with as many as these things as they can afford, thus removing space for bands & the fans. Many venues will now only hire Solo or Duo performers who play along with "Backing tapes" on puny 400 watt PA systems. Karaoake systems are popular as well scratch mix & standard DJ's.

2) Current trends among younger people go against the grain of this culture. Older fans who were into this scene no have families & don't go out as much.

3) Violence & trouble associated with some live music. One venue owner recently told me the best thing he ever did for his business was to allow the entertainment license to lapse & fill it with gaming machines. He claims his revenue is up, violence in his establishment is down (against staff & other patrons), less problems with Police, less late night noise complaints from neighbors & he does not have to fish out syringes stuck in the toilet after a nights trade.

Reason 2 & 3 they are hard to compete with but reason 1 is the main one that has the Musicians community up in arms about. Governments a running out of things & reasons to tax us with. We even have one government here that has introduced mobile radar speed traps designed to penalise you for doing only 4 KM an hour over the speed limit (They dress it up in the name of safety, promise to divert the funds to improve road safety, it never happens and goes elsewhere. thus it is revenue raising). They do the same with Gaming Machine Tax. On one hand they put out advertisements saying "don't gamble too much" etc etc but we all know they would be screwed without the revenue so again it is clear revenue raising & no chance to reverse it. This greediness has decayed the music culture & character of all styles of music in this country & put many people out of a job. They don't seem to care their attitude appears to be "Oh well" go find another occupation.

Tim Freidman from band "The Whitlams" best summed up this problem with their song "Blow up the Pokies" - www.youtube.com...

Here is a link to the same problem in Adelaide Australia - www.abc.net.au...

Another Link: www.abc.net.au...

And Another: www.marcuswestbury.net...

Is this happening in your country as well to true musicians of all styles?
What do you think we could do to improve this?

Cheers

Well here in US, in my state, there is an overwhelming amount of hard-core, scene, screamo, screaming heavy bands. Nothing wrong with it, just whats passing by these years in the local music end of things.

I'm more of a psychedelic music guy myself.

reply to post by pinealexplorer

Same thing is happening in my state, in fact, most of the bands I've been a part of were metal or hardcore, like you said.

The local music scene around my area is pretty dead right now, though. And it's starting to grow out of the hardcore phase and back to just rock.

reply to post by phatpackage




Oh for the good old days.



Apart from the drink driving laws, another contributing factor would be the fact that you can't light up a ciggie in a pub anymore.

I understand exactly where you are coming from. It started when more pubs began selling meals and filling the dance rooms with dinning facilities.

The hand of greed was still evident even then though. I remember playing pubs that would fist check out your rep before employing you, purpose being to see if you played music to make the punter thirsty. Their was no money for bands that had a following who just stood and just watched.

Sometimes we would play the casino and where told not to be too exciting in case we pulled people away from the gaming tables.

That vibrant scene has long gone friend, I don't know what it would take to make it reappear.

reply to post by kennyb72


Thanks for sharing your material. I take it you were the Bassist. Listened to a couple of your songs. Good sound

Around the sound ( Puget that is) I agree with the other posters that death metal and its many definitions has permeated the scene, these types of bands will play for free usually , to try to attain a bigger audience. Nothing wrong with that but musicians who feel like they should be paid for their craft have a hard time competing against "Free".
The mainly younger audience equate free with not really worth seeing , they would rather download the latest single and watch the video of whats popular, rather then try to catch an artist on the way up. And who can blame them ? As mentioned earlier, drunk driving patrols, fights, date drugs, and all that negative BS don't make driving to a new area to watch a band very appealing, even with the hip hop clubs and blues bars, quality brings in the people on the weekends and the rest of the week is dead. open mikes, Karaoke. trivia night etc the choices are wide and varied but its just simply easier to stay at home and watch it on the "new " tube ( so to speak). Hmmm Just like with movies really.

reply to post by phatpackage

I really miss the thrill of those times, It was a good time to be gigging. I just can't see the support we used to get from the pub going public these days. Live music seems to be sneered at these days. Perhaps people have become hardened to everything and no longer know how to enjoy themselves.

To be honest I don't think many can tell the difference between Midi and live nor why there is a difference.

I blame rap for a large portion of the loss in interest in live music, well Rap and techno - neither one requiring any real musicianship. The explosion of digital media has democratized the music scene and not for the better. It seems every other kid has a band nowadays. As others have said, midi is substituting itself for real musicians.
Perhaps people don't know anymore if the band is actually playing their instruments. That would be a turn off for me.
I played in bands for 25 years and had a lot of fun with it. The punk scene back in the early 80's was the best. Hair metal went mainstream and things got stagnant around that time, IMO.
Making a living as a musician anymore? yeah, right,
There was a time when you could do it if you had a dedicated band with some talent.
I do believe that eventually people will tire of digital entertainment, games will no longer excite anyone and CGI movies will move over for more real human interest stories.
Someday people will want to recover their humanity and live music will be a part of that.

reply to post by kennyb72


Great band you had there Kennyb!
Thanks for sharing the vid.

reply to post by Asktheanimals


I agree with you Asktheanimals, The advent of House-music and Rap was a game changer for the worse and I do believe that Games like Guitar Hero have persuaded some youngsters into believing it is easy to play guitar or any instrument for that matter. In recent times I have played gigs as a solo performer with just acoustic guitar. Folks, not just youngsters tend to see you like a human juke box. If you don't have a rep of 500 songs stored in your RAM and sounding like 5 instruments + harmony they are not impressed. Needless to say I am feeling a little disillusioned.

I do believe that eventually people will tire of digital entertainment, games will no longer excite anyone and CGI movies will move over for more real human interest stories. Someday people will want to recover their humanity and live music will be a part of that.

As I alluded to earlier, when the SHTF which unfortunately I believe is inevitable, acoustic will be all that is available. I made it a mission to learn as many of the classic pop, rock tunes as I can feasibly remember so that if technology dies, at least there will be some kind of record of what music was like before the event.

I used to be such an optimist

quote by phatpackage
Tim Freidman from band "The Whitlams" best summed up this problem with their song "Blow up the Pokies"

This is such a good song, I do an acoustic cover of this also but the reaction I get is almost one of, "Don't criticize our pokies you 'Andrew Wilkie' freak.

Great band you had there Kennyb! Thanks for sharing the vid.

We where just one of a hundred bands playing in our town at the time. We all got regular work and had a fantastic time doing it. "Sigh"

I would always encourage youngsters to get in a band and enjoy the sort of life I did. I really hope those days return for their sake.

I just listened to The Whitlams 'Blow up the pokies' again, It would have to be one of the best songs of it's day and yet it didn't really get out there "criminal" Wasn't a silly love song I guess! Just "wow"