promoter's

[Chris Rapier]

On 3/5/06, Patrick Bowers <magus30 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> As a former DJ, bar manager and club promoter i would like to give my
> perspective on things.
> I've been on this list a few months and can see this discussion going
> nowhere.

I've been on this list a wee bit longer than that. Maybe 12 years.
We've been having the same discussion with almost the exact same group
of people for all of those 12 years. One thing our scene does have is
an unnatural longevity.

> I hope everyone in PGH can forget about the BS and help the scene out.  It
> seems that the eliteist goth/industrial people in every city decide not to
> support other peoples shows, thus making what little scene there is a PIECE
> OF SHIT that flops.
> Club Nights will Stop
> and people will do house parties.

Oh noes not house parties!

I've been sayng that would do more to help the scene that anything
else. Of course, I also believe that if you base your conception of a
scene entirely around music you really don't have a scene, you have a
fad. A true subculture is based on the person interactions of people
with an ideal form and the vitality of culture comes from the frission
created as the reality rubs against that ideal - sorry to get all
platonic on you there - but its true. Only a sophomoric interpretation
bases a long lived scene on music.

> So it falls on bothe the promoters to sell thier shows, and the people in
> the scene need to make it know what shows they want to see and go to them.

I do agree with you on this. But you don't understand a very important
part of the pittsburgh zeitgeist - which is very strong sense of
intellectual elitism thats born from the high concentration of
universities in this region. As such many of the promoters and DJs
that are weaned in a collegiate environment spend most of their time
trying to figure out what the people should listen to rather than what
they want to listen to. The really smart ones grow out of this though.

> I have been to Cleveland to see Front 242 a few months ago, it was awesome.
> Its a shame there isn't the GI scene in PGH that there is there.

Yeah, we let them have that to make up for living in Ohio.

> Stop BITCHING and start FIXING your local GI scene.

The best thing that could happen is if the entirely fucking thing
imploded - I mean a world wide implosion of GI. Imagine it - suddenly
disaffected youth would have to come up with their *own* thing to do
instead of sucking on the withered teats of the dying whore that is
Goth/Industrial (I hate using that term - I remember when it was goth
or industrial instead of a Blues Brothers joke brought to horrible
life. It always seemed to me that hitching the two together only
showed a morbid lack of creativity. Sort of like sewing two corpses
together hoping that something living will slide off of the table - we
all know that its been done, it won't work, and they'll still smell
like crap)