The slow death of live music

BrizzleRocker

It’s been mooted before but pre-lockdown I was seeing 2-3 pubs a month moving away from live music and less attendees at gigs I was doing. I can only imagine what the situation will be like in the next 6 months to a year. Any thoughts as I’ve always loved / preferred playing live?

monquixote

Even when I was last playing pubs about 4 years ago half the venues I used to play had shut down.

It's one of the reasons I gave it up as it's just not worth putting the effort in for a handful of shitty gigs.

maltingsaudio

Well I’m hoping that it will come back with a bang as people are realising they’ve missed it. Wether or not it will be good music and profitable remains to be seen. Pubs have taken a beating through lockdown so budgets will be tight, a local concert venue I work at on occasions booked out till June 2022

Danny1969

I've just come back from a live gig in a pub garden, was nice to hear live music again, it's been a long time. 

I think it all depends on where you live. In my area just about every pubs hosts live music .... I can play (and do) 10 pubs in a 5 mile radius of my house ... 2 actually in my road and 5 within walking distance. The better bands at the busiest pubs can pull £500 a gig so the moneys ok too. The pubs that don't put the music on tend to have quiet weekends so they always seem to go back to hosting bands. If you take the music out of pubs then you need to compete price wise with Spoons, keep the music and you can charge a lot more for the beer. This point was well proven when Wetherspoons opened a pub right next door to our busiest music pub .... on a busy Sat night there are 10 times more people in the Music pub despite the fact every drink is a lot dearer. 
Fullers have been a great supporter of live music and we have a lot of Fullers pubs locally so that helps. Pubs without major brewery support have a harder time paying for quality live music and they will generally be the first to have to cut back on spending. 
This year and next year is mainly theatre gigs for me paid on pure ticket sales so if there is a pub live music downturn it hopefully won't affect us to much. Obviously we took a right spanking money wise last year and the first half of this year. 

BrizzleRocker

It may sound a bit pretentious but I never really did it for the money. We usually got 160-200 for a 2 set gig (in a four piece band) and we're happy enough. We played a few bike rallies and bigger shows for more, New Year's Eve was often the money maker. We also made a point of doing at least one or two charity gigs per year (although we made sure that we kept it to friends and family!) Fingers crossed and if anyone if looking for an experienced guitarist in the South West then let me know!

CountryDave

I’m looking forward to some gigs starting towards the end of July.
As @BrizzleRocker says above, it’s not about the money. My band generally pulls about 200, maybe 250 for a normal pub. Bike rallies and bigger shows get more. We are a 4 piece, so 50 quid a man. The way I look at it is I get to play guitar with my mates and get my money back for the night out, the rehearsal and a set of strings, so it’s a hobby that effectively pays for itself.

edit. Plus it’s an excuse to buy/sell/change a guitar every now and then.

oh_pollo

I'm listening to the audiobook of Richard Thompson's autobiography 'Beeswing' (highly reccomended) and what was startling to me was just how much live music there was happening in the 60's. Fairport were playing 30 gigs a month - sometimes multiple sets a night. Many bands made a living by having a residency in a pub or club - almost all of which are now gone. The past really is a different country.

Musicwolf

oh_pollo said:

I'm listening to the audiobook of Richard Thompson's autobiography 'Beeswing' (highly reccomended) and what was startling to me was just how much live music there was happening in the 60's. Fairport were playing 30 gigs a month - sometimes multiple sets a night. Many bands made a living by having a residency in a pub or club - almost all of which are now gone. The past really is a different country.

Back in the mid 80’s I dep’d for a guy who’d be a pro musician for his whole working life.  Nobody outside of the local area would have heard of him but he’d bought himself a nice house and raised a family on the proceeds.

During the course of a week I think that I played two pubs and a couple of clubs.  I was given the chance to play a third club but I already had a gig with my own band.  His view was that the music scene was already dying back then.  During the 60’s and 70’s he was playing two clubs a night on a regular basis.

In close to 40 years of gigging I think that I have only twice played two venues in a 24 hour period.

McSwaggerty

As Danny 1969 says, l think it depends in which Town/City you live.
Before Lockdowns Heaps of Glasgow pubs and clubs at Weekends were  rammed with people watching all sorts of live music from Midday until Late...
I don't expect it to be any different when everything opens up again.... 

Stratavarious

900 pubs closed in the year before the pandemic.. unless the old boozers reinvent as some food, music, and entertainment venue, it does seem to be a disappearing sector.

Mini beer and town festivals and special events seem popular replacement - beer, dancing and music.

The pubs that plan to change or engage customers in new ways will probably keep going and may make more of live music.  

Interact with them.. make proposals.

Keefy

There is another insidious factor reducing the opportunities for musicians to play live, and that is the trend towards acts comprising one or two singers performing to backing tracks. This is now the norm on the country covers circuit - maybe 10% of acts are actual live bands, and the clubs have come to regard them as an expensive novelty.

hollywoodrox

Keefy said:

There is another insidious factor reducing the opportunities for musicians to play live, and that is the trend towards acts comprising one or two singers performing to backing tracks. This is now the norm on the country covers circuit - maybe 10% of acts are actual live bands, and the clubs have come to regard them as an expensive novelty.

The club I used to work in Skegness in the 80s used to have live bands on , looking at recent ads 
 it’s one guy singing to backing tracks ,literally karaoke gigs , it seems a popular thing now as landlords can pay a pittance , 

Neill

Keefy said:

There is another insidious factor reducing the opportunities for musicians to play live, and that is the trend towards acts comprising one or two singers performing to backing tracks. This is now the norm on the country covers circuit - maybe 10% of acts are actual live bands, and the clubs have come to regard them as an expensive novelty.

I used to know a drummer who was a seasoned session player and had for time been in Joe Brown's backing group.  A few years ago he had to start going out on his own, just him and a guitar doing covers, as it just wasn't practical to make a living from being in a band anymore.  

Granted, this was in a mainly rural area, but it's the way things are going.  In my youth the opportunities for listening to live music seemed limitless, but back then there was a massive difference in the way people accessed music.  A lot of folk didn't even have a record player so when you saw even a mediocre band live it was like "wow!"  I remember going to see The Sweet when I was maybe 15, the first time I had heard proper live rock music, and the effect was staggering.  I just don't think people are as easily impressed today. 

Musicwolf

One of the big differences between the 60's, 70's and even the early 80's compared to today has been the demise of the working men’s and social clubs.  These clubs would host live music at least 4 times per week.

These were the sorts of clubs where you'd get a couple or more generations of a family enjoying a night out together.

It's gone, move on adapt or give up.  We've just undergone, or rather are still undergoing, a seismic event which may reshape our society in many ways.  I don’t know what effect it will have on the live music scene.  Maybe it will further damage it or maybe there will be pent up demand which will reinvigorate it?  Whatever happens, it’s the bands than can adapt who will survive.  I’m certainly not expecting to do what I’ve always done.

Neill

Musicwolf said:

One of the big differences between the 60's, 70's and even the early 80's compared to today has been the demise of the working men’s and social clubs.  These clubs would host live music at least 4 times per week.

These were the sorts of clubs where you'd get a couple or more generations of a family enjoying a night out together.

It's gone, move on adapt or give up.  We've just undergone, or rather are still undergoing, a seismic event which may reshape our society in many ways.  I don’t know what effect it will have on the live music scene.  Maybe it will further damage it or maybe there will be pent up demand which will reinvigorate it?  Whatever happens, it’s the bands than can adapt who will survive.  I’m certainly not expecting to do what I’ve always done.

Exactly.  It maddens me when folk talk about a "return to normal" - what does that mean exactly?   Why would anyone expect life to rewind to the ways things were a year ago?

I've been on this earth 65 years and it's sure as hell a vastly different place to when I was born.  We are constantly reacting and adjusting to changes in society, the environment and technology.  The alternative is to try and live in some snapshot existence when you personally thought life was perfect and it's ridiculous. 

If we still lived in the world where people relied on clubs and pubs to be their main source of fun/entertainment, most of us wouldn't be playing guitars and have all these wondrous toys to play with.  The tech that has created the affordable wizardry we enjoy is the same tech that has done for the pub/club industry.    

p90fool

We're getting more enquiries than we can handle at the moment, from either weddings or birthday parties, as a well as a couple of pubs who want us the first night it's legal again. 

I think people will always want live bands, but around here it's always mostly been about private parties if you want to make money. 

There are two pubs locally which we love playing because we're popular there, but we sacked off slogging round shitty boozers years ago, they mostly can't afford to pay enough to make it worth it. 

Caffeine_Vampire

I'm joining the Masons to get gigs.

Musicwolf

p90fool said:

We're getting more enquiries than we can handle at the moment, from either weddings or birthday parties, as a well as a couple of pubs who want us the first night it's legal again. 

In the last week we've taken three bookings for July.  This is a band who averaged a little over one gig per month pre-pandemic.

The demand for live music is there.  I'm not sure how long before we're doing indoor pubs again as I suspect that they will be full in the short term anyway without entertainment.  Should all have settled down again by autumn.

jeztone2

The biggest problem with original live music in pubs is the pubs and venue promoters themselves. 

I grew up in the early 90’s playing no more than a three band bill. Usually well promoted & curated nights. By the mid to late noughties this had descended into 5-6 acts with no discernible similarity just treading on each other’s gear and getting no sound check time. So the quality went down and lazy ness and apathy set in. You’d have a metal band one side of you and a beat poet the other. So how do you pull in an audience beyond friends & family? 

I’ve been offered some work with a tribute act in October. So I’m taking it. Because they will pay me. I will get a sound check. I will likely get a rider even. 

26.2

jeztone2 said:

The biggest problem with original live music in pubs is the pubs and venue promoters themselves. 

I grew up in the early 90’s playing no more than a three band bill. Usually well promoted & curated nights. By the mid to late noughties this had descended into 5-6 acts with no discernible similarity just treading on each other’s gear and getting no sound check time. So the quality went down and lazy ness and apathy set in. You’d have a metal band one side of you and a beat poet the other. So how do you pull in an audience beyond friends & family? 

I’ve been offered some work with a tribute act in October. So I’m taking it. Because they will pay me. I will get a sound check. I will likely get a rider even. 

The solution is - organize it yourself. Target venues that are not running bands 6 nights a week but have the space for live music, as long as they are happy to have a full band. Bring a PA if they don’t have one and invite one or two bands that fit together well and will draw a few people. Run the night yourself. 

 

You won’t make a ton of money, especially if split with other bands, but pubs are usually happy to pay in my experience, as long as there’s a crowd. Alternatively if they have a separate room, charge a few quid on the door. 

I know the concensus is that you need to be playing covers to do the pubs, but pre-Covid we often did a whole night playing 2 sets of originals to a pub audience and we always got asked back.