Fwd: Re: how to promote a show (was: Re: Voices of Masada, et.al)

[manny@telerama.com]

Quoting "Deeann M.M. Mikula" <deeann at d33ann.com>:

> On Thu, 22 Sep 2005, Brian J. Parker wrote:
>
> > places left to put them since Oakland's been decimated!  Anyone who'd
>
> Huh?  What happened?  You can't just drop bombs like that with so many
> of us ex-pats on the list...
>
> WHAT HAPPENED TO MY HOMELAND????

What happened is that the forward-thinking action in the past four years
has moved out of Oakland and Squirrel Hill (chain stores, Walnut Capital
yuppification etc) except for a small part of South Oakland (Brave New
World etc).

The forward-thinking action is now located in the four-neighborhood
area of Friendship/Bloomfield/Garfield/Lawrenceville, even extending a bit into
East Liberty. It is now the main area that is crawling with progressive
& avantgarde hipsters. This is evident when we can get 100-150 people at shows
such as The Gossip, Gravy Train, Hella/Outhud, Freezepop, etc.
Some forward-thinking goth/industrials have also noticed this, and they make
possible the smaller scale G/I shows that have been happening at GA (mostly
thanks to Jim Semonik) to relative success.
We have *much lower costs* and can break even at 50 people at GA on a band that
would have taken 150 people to break even on at Laga.

Thus, instead of the rare six-per-year 'event' style show presentation
previously pursued by Ceremoniacs, now a show can be presented cheaply and
easily, on ANY day a band wants to come through town, with little fuss
and muss. In other words, goth/industrial has become DIY/indie. The way it used
to be before the danceclub mentality crushed interest in live music.

As for the Voices of Masada show, no one needs to make a big deal about the
small attendance at it. The band was totally unknown. And there were no locals
on purpose because I chose to try and help two out of town artists play the
show (not knowing at the time that Black Dice would be the same night). I only
expected that 20 people would be there. So there were actually 11 people. No
big deal. I gave VofM a small guarantee just to be nice, and put them up for
two days (once on the way to a Scary Lady Sarah show in Chicago, and on the
way back). Whatever happened at that show - which by the way was a good one -
shouldn't be extrapolated to the state of the 'scene' as a whole. If any
G/I band wants a show at GA and they have reasonable requirements and
expectations, it should be *always* possible to do. This was *never* true
before of *any other venue - ever- in Pittsburgh*. And it is a simple matter
to get here and get home, using the 54C (Oakland/South Side) or 86 B (from
Downtown), or 10 minutes at most by car, with tons of free on-street parking.




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