The plight of Bay Area Rock Bands and Clubs by Theo Cedar
As a singer in a rock band in the Bay Area for the last 12 years, I have a pretty clear vantage point on the economics of local live music and nightlife, and I believe that the overall condition of this vital part of our culture has been in a depressed state, and is very much at risk today. I will try to lay out some of the reasons why I think we should care about this, and some of the things I think can be done to improve the situation.
Live music venues in the Bay Area have been closing faster than they are being replaced. Some examples of closed clubs are The Berkeley Square, the I-Beam, the Heinz Club, the Formula Club, Klub Kaos in Fremont, the Trocadero and the Nightbreak have all closed in the recent past. Other live music and dance clubs are at risk of being closed due to harassment from the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and the Police, who have the ability to revoke a club's entertainment license. The City of San Francisco, and other Bay Area cities, seem to show little love, concern or appreciation for the work and contributions of many generations of artists and musicians who struggle to bring their life's work before live audiences. Benign neglect or overt repression have been the characteristic attitudes of those in city government to performers who have, in spite of the resistance, created world class bands and music from the Bay Area year after year.
Alcohol, I believe, is one of the key issues that keeps night culture in general from achieving more prosperity and legitimacy. Alcohol is used as an excuse and a tactic to segregate youth from the most vital expression of their own rightful culture, namely live shows. The drinking age in California means that most small and medium clubs restrict or prohibit access of people under age 21. This represents the loss of a huge potential market for bands who desperately need as large an audience as they can possibly get, especially in the early years of their development. In addition to this, most clubs live an economically marginal existence, getting little from the public welfare trough, while being overly dependent on alcohol sales for their survival. Clubs' over-reliance on alcohol sales puts the clubs at a social disadvantage because the clubs become an engine for socially offensive behavior and toxified people. This helps to reinforce the negative social stigma that many clubs suffer, while increasing their financial liability for policing youth underage drinking, drunken behavior and ill-health reactions to alcohol and cigarette consumption.
Our vibrant nightlife is also stymied by inadequate public transportation. AC Transit discontinues transbay service at 11:30 p.m., and BART discontinues all service at midnight, while drinking legally continues at the clubs until 2 a.m. This means that people who have been drinking are disgorged from clubs at 2 a.m. with no recourse but to get in their cars and drive home. The hazards of this situation are obvious.
The quality of nightlife is compromised not only by the problems facing clubs, but by the problems facing musicians as well. Those of you who know from personal experience what it means to live day-to-day as an artist in America know that much of your life is spent working two jobs. And if you're an artist with kids, call it three jobs. And I advance to you that many of the social services and supports that have formed around other threatened social populations are hardly to be seen when it comes to the plight of the working musician. Musicians are routinely penalized in their day jobs and their financial status. Many musicians live in a state of severe financial insecurity because they are not granted leave from their jobs to tour, or because they are turned down for jobs because of their appearance or lifestyle. Musicians often lack health insurance, and insurance companies generally will not grant policies to musicians who want to insure their equipment. The nine-to-five work schedule also places a burden on both the artists who wish to perform as well as the audiences who wish to see them.
And yet, live bands have provided a host of social benefits to the society at large in the form of providing entertainment services, constructive behavior channels for youth, job creation, joy to the masses, money vectors into local economies, as well as spurring the continuing growth of a multi-billion dollar music industry.
SOME SOLUTIONS: I would like to suggest a number of solutions to these issues. First, all cities should provide publicly funded street kiosks for posters and street advertising. Free street advertising is part of the life blood of musical culture. But in spite of this, many cities place undue restrictions on the legality of posting flyers. As an alternative to this repression, publicly funded street kiosks could have a covering of removable matt board that posters can be stapled or wheat-pasted to. When the layers achieve a certain thickness, the entire matt board could be removed and recycled, and a new, clean one put up in its place. Also, city and commercially funded computer kiosks should be placed in well visited parts of the city that would enable citizens to quickly find out about events and entertainment within walking distance of that computer.
Further, we must create a world-class midsize venue, such as the Fillmore, in Oakland, to attract audiences of a size sufficient to support the work of successful bands. To facilitate transport to and from clubs, BART must run trains at least once every two hours from midnight until 6 a.m. We must also create a great commercial modern rock station in the East Bay. Musicians, fans, clubs, music stores, radio stations and others should form an industry organization and lobby group dedicated to securing the interests of nightlife lovers. Alcohol free nights at clubs should be instituted, with the lost alcohol revenue being replaced by dot.com and youth-oriented corporations providing sponsorship in exchange for reaching the market that nightlife lovers represent. In addition, this industry organization should make every effort to increase the amount of public money flowing to musicians and to nightlife- oriented businesses.
The assembling of a comprehensive economic white paper on the complete economic status and profile of the live band economy within the U.S. is a critical task if we are to assess the true benefits and needs of this population. We must be ready to justify our case for more of the public-funding pie with credible research and statistics. Finally, creation of a viable middle-class of musicians should be our long-term goal. I think it is important to remember the awesome contribution that Bay Area musicians in particular, and musicians in general, have made to the quality of life of all people, as well as to the improvement of our democracy's health. Music has been a de facto secular religion where groups of people can achieve spiritual and emotional healing and joy, where divided racial groups can achieve common ground, and where new growth in the body of our culture and civilization is perpetually occurring. Musicians should take pride in their contributions to society and step forward to demand better amenities and social support for themselves and their audiences, as well as an improved economic environment in which to produce their magic.