Hey Darren, great to hear you talk yesterday and I’m glad it led me to your quietus article.
In regards to your point on venues and community is that the cost of putting on a show has skyrocketed:
venues in my city (Toronto) are also increasingly hostile, extractive and suffering from scarcity mentality. I have a lot of sympathy, of course, being a bar or a venue has never been more difficult as people drink less and go out less.
Perhaps this quiet, cultural shift towards the real world will save these spaces, but I have tried to book shows on my own and hear various horror stories of high rental fees or break-even deposits (“you need to sell $1500 worth of beer or owe us $1000) or just flat out rejection based on metrics or draw, plus a lot of just toxicity and disrespectful behaviour. Again, I know it’s hard being a venue owner/promoter.
I’m sure there are DIY spaces in the city which have their own built-in communities still — when I was younger I remember tons being shut down after the Ghost Ship warehouse fire, and then the high rent eliminated the rest — Hopefully the young kids are finding it, but I am hearing a lot of frustration from younger bands too so I know they’re not as plentiful as they used to be.
So it does feel like social media has provided this cost-effective proposition and lives shows are increasingly becoming an out of reach thing, or a very risky investment for bands trying to start out (or in my case “restart”)
Again, great talk and hope something brighter is on the horizon for music!
Great article D- couldn’t agree more. Expressing success in anything meaningful - whether that be music, education, health - in terms of metrics is an inherently reductive act and creates an incentive for people to forget about doing the actual thing in favour of making the numbers bigger. And of course numbers are important- but they are a way of talking about the world, not the world itself
Great article so many great points! The idea that social media is the be all end all of the attempt to reach people is so short-sighted. I agree with you, a reckoning is coming for these companies, and I can't wait to see it play out! Ditch Meta. Ditch X. Ditch Spotify!
"In the face of all this, those small communities that feel so niche at present could be the word on everybody’s lips, in time. I, for one, sincerely hope they will thrive offline, in clubs, in bars, through word of mouth and through any medium that can’t be instantly copied and transmitted."
Hey Darren, great to hear you talk yesterday and I’m glad it led me to your quietus article.
In regards to your point on venues and community is that the cost of putting on a show has skyrocketed:
venues in my city (Toronto) are also increasingly hostile, extractive and suffering from scarcity mentality. I have a lot of sympathy, of course, being a bar or a venue has never been more difficult as people drink less and go out less.
Perhaps this quiet, cultural shift towards the real world will save these spaces, but I have tried to book shows on my own and hear various horror stories of high rental fees or break-even deposits (“you need to sell $1500 worth of beer or owe us $1000) or just flat out rejection based on metrics or draw, plus a lot of just toxicity and disrespectful behaviour. Again, I know it’s hard being a venue owner/promoter.
I’m sure there are DIY spaces in the city which have their own built-in communities still — when I was younger I remember tons being shut down after the Ghost Ship warehouse fire, and then the high rent eliminated the rest — Hopefully the young kids are finding it, but I am hearing a lot of frustration from younger bands too so I know they’re not as plentiful as they used to be.
So it does feel like social media has provided this cost-effective proposition and lives shows are increasingly becoming an out of reach thing, or a very risky investment for bands trying to start out (or in my case “restart”)
Again, great talk and hope something brighter is on the horizon for music!
Great article D- couldn’t agree more. Expressing success in anything meaningful - whether that be music, education, health - in terms of metrics is an inherently reductive act and creates an incentive for people to forget about doing the actual thing in favour of making the numbers bigger. And of course numbers are important- but they are a way of talking about the world, not the world itself
Great article so many great points! The idea that social media is the be all end all of the attempt to reach people is so short-sighted. I agree with you, a reckoning is coming for these companies, and I can't wait to see it play out! Ditch Meta. Ditch X. Ditch Spotify!
Very nice article - I loved this:
"In the face of all this, those small communities that feel so niche at present could be the word on everybody’s lips, in time. I, for one, sincerely hope they will thrive offline, in clubs, in bars, through word of mouth and through any medium that can’t be instantly copied and transmitted."
🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Thank you so much, Darren
Not at all Chris; I'm just sorry it's taken so long for me to write about the book. I'm pretty embarrassed about it TBH.