S.A. Sebastian: A View From The Bottom

For a long time thse of us in bands in NYC laughed at our Los Angeles counterparts for having to pay to play in bars and clubs. Well, it’s time to stop laughing. Pay-to-play is alive and well, and thriving, in NYC and in the surrounding suburbs. Despite what people are saying about NYC there are plenty of places to play, and it seems like there is a new bar or club opening every week that has live entertainment. Even 3 new high-capacity venues, the Blender Theatre, Terminal 5 and Highline Ballroom opened in the last year. There are so many places now that the clubs and bars are stacking bands 6 or more per night, and charging them $100 or more to play, which guarentees them $600 before they even open the doors. And yes, like, L.A., these are places where you have to buy tickets from the club in order to play, which is something you used to only have to do to get on a bill with a famous band at a big venue.

But now pay-to-play in NYC has a new face in the form of “minimum draw.” Sure, almost all venues have had a minimum draw requirement, but that minumum used to be about 10 people. Now because NYC is so saturated with bands that have relocated here to “make it”, and the audiences are smaller and smaller, the minimum draw requirements in many places have gone as high as 40 people, with the bands typically getting only 1-2 bucks a head. Sure, some places are more generous, going as high as $5, but the catch is that some places pay starting from person 41 that’s a $400 pay-to-play fee! Per band! That’s a lot of money, but only if the bands can draw that many people. And right now in NYC, there are very few bands that are able to draw enough to cross the payment threshold.

How are the clubs and bars getting away with it? And why are we paying to play instead of being paid to entertain?

There are 2 reasons. First, like I said earlier, NYC has reached its saturation point with bands. NYC, like Los Angeles has been a place where people go to ive out their dreams to be a star. But, since so many bands have “made it” out of Brooklyn the past few years (Yeah,Yeah,Yeahs!, Vampire Weekend, Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah, We Are Scientists, etc…) bands from all over the world — each one either sounding more derivative and boring than the next, or trying to be as “clever” and “artistic” as possible — are moving as close to Brooklyn as they can so they can be the next Brooklyn band to be discovered. Look at the entertainment ads in the Village Voice. On a Monday or Tuesday night in Manhattan you can find close to 100 bands playing. Add Brooklyn and Queens, you get close to 200. On a Friday or Saturday more than 200 bands between the 3 boroughs. With all this competition bands are undercutting each other, to get the gig. Which, of course is the real reason there is no music scene in NYC anymore. But that’s a subject for another time.

The second reason is astounding. The clubs and “promoters” say that it its to make sure the bands promote the show, making sure that bands can bring a crowd, protecting themselves if there is poor turnout or slow sales. So, not only are we the entertainers (sorry… artists. I don’t want to offend the folks from Brooklyn or the singer-songwriters) paying them to play on their stage, we pay them to be their promoters (saving them money on posters and fliers and advertising that we pay for), and to find people to drink their cocktails. All this and we only to get $1-2 a head?

As result of this oh-so-clever thinking, the quality of bands performing in NYC has gone down the tubes. It used to be that you had to audition to play places like CBGBs (closed), Arlene’s Grocery, the Continental (now a cocktail lounge); you didn’t have to have to have a following to play, you had to be talented and creative and they would groom you and put you in front of an audience, and let you build a following. Now, anyone can play anywhere (including Arlene’s Grocery) as long as they have a few bucks and can bring a bunch of friends to drink beers. In my opinion this lack of talent is one of the biggest contributors to the lack of people going to shows, and death of the NYC music scene.

What can we do about this? Probably not a lot as long as there are bands that are willing to play for free, the bars and clubs are going to keep on getting away with this. We could go on strike. We could band together (I hate that cliche, but it fits), stage a walkout for even just one night, and boycott playing in clubs and bars that do this. Maybe all of them, just to prove a point. Imagine, a Friday or Saturday night in New York City (including Brooklyn and Queens) with not a single band playing. The day the music died in NYC. Maybe even a national band walkout day. Hmmm… interesting idea. Something to think about.

On Monday, November 19 I was on set for the new NBC Universal television show “Lipstick Jungle” (not to be confused with the Atomic Brother song “Lipstick Lovebite”) featuring Steve’s girlfriend from Beverly Hills 90210, some girl from 24 and Brooke Shields. This came out of the blue, since the last audition I went on was back in September for the role of a musician in the Sex in the City movie. Go figure, I didn’t get the part. I must not look enough like a musician. Of course, I wasn’t told I didn’t get the part, that’s just how things work. I have been seeing them film the movie all over the city since October.

After forgetting that I even went in for that, I got a call from the casting agency that did Sex in the City to play the part of “East Village punk rocker-type” for the new show on Friday afternoon. I figured I could do East Village punk rock-type easy, better than musician apparently, so why not. It took all of 2 minutes for them to convince me and 3 days to clear my calendar and I was in.

Call times were 5:30, 6 and 6:30 AM on Monday morning at the Ace of Clubs in New York City. I had the 6:30 call. There was about 20 people there when I showed up around 6:15, but there was about 50 called for the production, half SAG, half non-union. To my surprise there were a lot of late arrivals, and a lot of whiners and down right angry people. The better part of the morning I spent listening to people fighting over seats, “That’s my seat! I was sitting there a half hour ago. I’m back now, so get up,” complaining that the catering was too far away, complaining that there wasn’t enough choices for breakfast, complaining that the wardrobe supervisor didn’t like their outfit, complaining about just about everything. I was also surprised that so many people showed up late. And these were people who do this regularly. What the hell? Read the rest of this entry »

Morrissey played a 5 night run at New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom beginning Monday, October 22. For this 5-show run Live Nation could offered fans a special package of tickets for all 5 shows. In order to keep things interesting Morrissey performed a different set of songs from his huge Smiths and Morrissey catalog. If you only had tickets for one night there was a chance you might not get to see him perform your favorite songs. Luckily for me, the October 23rd show that I went to was full of my favorite Smiths and Morrissey songs.

To get everyone ready for the show they played some video clips of some really strange, campy 50s and 60s songs from France and England-even a Bridget Bardeau song. These were followed up by a very strange video of James Dean’s East of Eden wardrobe test. Odd. Then was a very amusing montage of clips from an episode of the Untouchables which featured a villain named… Morrissey. They episode was edited down to all the parts where they mentioned Morrissey. Very clever. “It’s Morrissey’s gang they’re down at the docks!” “Where’s Morrissey? We gotta get Morrissey!”

The show opened up with “Stop Me If You Think That You’ve Heard This One Before” which was very cool. A lot of friends didn’t want to go because they heard that Morrissey is depressing and goth. Well, Morrissey live was fun and exciting. He and the band were so full of energy even “Death Of A Disco Dancer” wasn’t a downer. And, Morrissey was jumping around having a great time, and was telling jokes and poking fun at himself all through the show. He played for about 2 hours, and during the encore was attacked by almost a dozen gay men rushing the stage. One guy was reaching for the stage and Morrissey pulled him up and lead him off to the side. This encouraged dozens of gay men to try the same. When Morrissey didn’t oblige they tried climbing the barrier and jumping on stage. Several made it, and many more were taken out by the security team. After that assault Morrissey cut things short and ended the show.

It’s too bad that Morrissey decided to quit performing live, because he is a great singer and very dynamic. At least he hasn’t quit his recording career.