Uh-Oh
The live business is imploding.
Common wisdom is it has to do with price, but it appears that the cancer of
the major labels is starting to impact gigs. You see, nobody wants to see the
ACTS!
But it’s more than that. The heritage acts, the ones that have supported the
business for years, nobody wants to see them either.
Make no mistake, people want to see Celine Dion, the Eagles, and even Kenny
Chesney, at almost ANY PRICE! And Green Day might not be charging much, but
they could and still sell out. But when you dig deeper…
Let’s start with the Zooma Tour. My initial reaction was it was cancelled
due to Trey Anastasio’s overinflated sense of self, thinking that he meant as
much solo as he did with Phish. And I do believe that’s an element, that people
were buying culture along with Phish’s music and there’s no culture with
Trey. But then I checked the grosses. In theatres, LARGE theatres, Trey sells
out. The Fox in Atlanta, the Auditorium in Chicago… Could it be less of a
factor of not enough fans and more of an issue of Trey’s fans NO LONGER WANT TO
GO TO THE BIG SHOW AND SIT MILES FROM THE STAGE??
Yes, hate to break it to you, but Phish fans are in the neighborhood of
thirty now. And when you hit that age you start to have money. And you no longer
want to rough it, no longer want to commune with your buds. Rather, you’d
prefer to drive your near-luxury automobile and pay a bit extra for convenience.
But it gets worse. Who ARE the acts these thirtysomethings want to see in
mass quantities?? Who ARE the acts that have been working for ten years that
hit this demographic that can draw like the baby boomer superstars and the
fortysomething U2? Shit, I’m scratching my head, I can’t think of ANY!
Then let’s get to the new acts. That tour with the rappers? The one with
SNOOP DOGG! The teflon-coated, always in the press superstar? Rappers don’t do
well in concert. This show ain’t no guaranteed sell-out, FAR FROM IT!
But it’s not only rappers… Look at Maroon 5. Clive’s darlings have sold
out a number of 10,000 seat arenas. But they only did 75% business in St.
Louis. Maybe an anomaly, but the real question is, WILL ANYBODY WANT TO SEE THEM FIVE YEARS FROM NOW??
Then there’s the other end of the spectrum. The tour with Joe Jackson and
Todd Rundgren. I just heard Joe on XM last night. A true talent. I used to
see him ALL THE TIME in the seventies and eighties. Todd…he’s God in my book.
But not in too many other people’s books. Oh, the show sold out in New York
City. But is doing half capacity, barely over 1,000 people elsewhere.
Bottom line? The baby boomers are done. That’s it. Kaput. They’ve become their
parents. There IS a hard core who will support the old acts, who will come
out, who are fans. But the majority of baby boomers see live music as
spectacle, they only want to go to the big shows, the ones that cost over a hundred dollars a ticket. Otherwise, they’d rather stay home and watch a DVD. Or go out
to dinner and purchase a hundred dollar bottle of wine. That’s right, the
demo is OVER!
At least the baby boomers lived through the heyday. When music drove the
culture. The generation after them lived through the advent of MTV, but if
Culture Club reformed and went on tour today, how many fortysomethings would CARE?? Yup, as this generation, the true Generation X, ages, THEY’RE only gonna
want to see the big acts, and WHO ARE THEY?
The younger generation… They think that music is something you dance to,
in a club. Just watch MTV for instruction, that’s the key activity on all the
reality shows, dancing and drinking and flirting. Music is NOT a key element.
It’s just the grease, at most.
You can’t steal a live performance, you can’t download it off the net. And
no matter how fine you make the theatres, it all comes down to the acts. And
major labels haven’t been making acts you want to see, want to BELIEVE IN, for
a LONG TIME! The Good Charlotte and Simple Plan tour can’t sell out six
thousand seaters. Hell, in some places it can’t sell out THREE THOUSAND SEATERS!
And the vaunted radio shows, the ones stacked with "stars", the shows everybody thought were cannibalizing their business, people aren’t clamoring to go to
those EITHER! Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson, Ryan Cabrera, all the fresh faces
the media tells us RULE culture…it’s just a hype, they, along with the
aforementioned Simple Plan and others, could only pull 10,000 people, fifty
percent capacity, at the 93.3 show at Coors Amphitheatre in Chula Vista. Yup, hate
to tell you, the public just doesn’t care. At least not in the numbers that
the hype machine tells us they do.
The problem isn’t that there’s competition for the entertainment dollar, the
problem is this competition is BETTER! Playing video games, watching a DVD in
your home theatre, SURFING THE NET AND IM’ING! They’re MUCH more enjoyable
than the live SHOW! And, until new acts, that drive the culture, are built,
expect business to continue to be soft.
