Fear of Men

A new song from one of my favorite bands.

Fear Of Men

England's Fear of Men are on tour in support of this year's record Fall Forever, and surprisingly, the tour actually does include dates in the American South, but unfortunately not in Atlanta.  The closest they'll come to these parts is a November 10 date at the 40 Watt in Athens, which a) is a Thursday night making the long drive back and forth less attractive, and b) the same night that Warpaint will be playing Terminal West, Daughter will be playing Variety Playhouse, and Sunflower Bean will be playing the Drunken Unicorn - another of those too-many-shows-for-one-night evenings, and I've already got tickets for Warpaint.

Economics 102

Faced with fewer bands touring through the American South, club owners appear to have re-evaluated their own profit margins and the sources of their income.  Why pay some band from New York a big fee to perform, when a local band can fill the room or at the very least cover the costs for the night at little or no money?  

Local music is an important part of any city's music scene and part of the joy of living in a city with a thriving local music scene like Atlanta is watching our local favorites grow and mature as artists.  But when the club owners no longer can pack the room with fans of the latest buzz band, they have to figure out how they can afford to keep the doors open with fewer customers, so with lower volume, they have to reduce their costs by paying the locals less and less, and before too long the music fan is faced with enduring whatever band the club can scrape together to play for free that night and with putting up with fewer and fewer comforts (AC, clean toilets) in the club itself.

In a perfect world, our fine local bands would rise to the occasion and fill the empty stages left by the touring bands that refuse to venture too far from home, but in the imperfect world in which we live, there's a downward spiral as owners realize they can make greater profits by paying the bands less, or even nothing at all, and the quality of the music on stage suffers as a result.

So, yes, I've been to fewer shows this year, partly because there's been fewer shows this year, in my humble opinion, worth seeing.

But then, suddenly, an oasis appears in the desert.  Over the next week, Atlanta will get to experience Swans (Friday), Fear of Men (Monday), Marissa Nadler (Tuesday), and Boogarins (Wednesday), and then almost nothing for the month of August.  But then, just as dramatically, we'll get another overload of shows on September 8, 9, 10, and 11, with  Car Seat Headrest, (8th), Angel Olsen (9th), Quilt and Mutual Benefit (10th), and Joanna Newsom (11th).  

So don't lose hope, Atlanta, there's still good music to be heard out there, and in the meantime we can support our local artists like Little Tybee at Terminal West on August 5, Takenobu at Eddie's Attic on August 13, and Hello Ocho and Jeffrey Bützer at The Earl on August 29 and September 3, respectively.    

Economics 101

A couple of weeks ago - although to be honest, it might have been a couple months ago by now - my friend L. noted how few good shows there seems to be in Atlanta lately.

The remark gave me reason to think.  It does seem like I've been to far fewer shows so far this year than I had by the same time last year.  Sure, some of it may have been due to me just not getting out as much, but some of it is also that it seems like there have been far fewer good shows to go out to this year.

Now why is that?, I wonder.  It seems that there are no fewer shows at The Earl, The Masquerade, Smith's Olde Bar, and all the other stages in Atlanta, so it's not that there's fewer shows.  So some of it is probably due to my own musical taste, which is not always consistent with current musical fashions.  To be sure, the indie rock renaissance of the 2000s is now over, and more and more, the clubs are booking EDM and hip-hop acts, which are not my own personal preference.  Nothing against it, but it's just that it was the creativity and artistry of the indie rock renaissance that got this old man back into the clubs again.  But while some clubs are now booking more and more EDM and hip-hop, other clubs are going in another direction, and booking more hardcore punk, more metal, and more scruffy garage bands, and while the overlap of my tastes and the latter group is larger than the overlap with the first group, it's less compelling to me to go out to a club just to be sonically assaulted by a three-chord band.

So the music's changing, and I'm getting even older still.  That's the way of the world, I guess.  But it seems like there's more to it than just that - after all, there still are a lot of new records coming out that I enjoy, but those bands don't seem to be playing here in Atlanta.

Now what's the reason for that?, I wonder, and decide that it's the economics of the music industry. As everyone knows, these days, most bands make most of their money not by album sales as in the past, but by touring, one night at a time, one show at a time, one cover charge at a time.   The tour has become the most important source of income, and therefore, gets planned the most carefully.  

For a band coming out of one of either of the two poles of the new music axis, that is, Brooklyn or Portland/Seattle, there's a lot of logistics and economics that go into planning a tour.  You can knock off a lot of gigs within a few hours drive from each other in the Boston-New York-Philadelphia-Washington corridor if you're Brooklyn based, or in the Seattle-Portland-Sacramento-San Francisco corridor if you're on the West Coast.  But to play the American South means fewer clubs that are further apart with 8 to 10 hour drives in between, and smaller clubs with lower cover charges, so it winds up costing you more in terms of gas, food, and lodging to make less money.  

It's more economical to run a smaller circuit within 12 hours of home at large clubs where the patrons don't mind paying $40 to get in than it is to drive 12 hours from gig to gig to play for a handful of fans who've only paid $5 at the door.

I don't know if any of this is fact - I'm not in the music business, but it makes sense to me.  If I was a NY band, I wouldn't drive across the South to make a fraction of what I could make between Montreal and Baltimore.

So, the shows have been fewer, but I've really enjoyed what I have managed to see down here so far, ranging from Julien Baker at Aisle 5 to Animal Collective at Buckhead Theater to Quilt at The Earl. But there have been long stretches of time between and since those gigs that have felt like a musical desert to me.

And now an oasis is in sight.  This Friday night, four days from now (four!), Swans return to Terminal West touring behind their great new album The Glowing Man.
  

And then the next week, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, we'll be graced with Fear of Men at The Masquerade, Marissa Nadler at The Earl, and Boogarins also at The Earl, in that order. Four great shows in six nights, and there hasn't been four good show in the previous six weeks, or even two months, so let's enjoy it while we've got it, my friends.