Saturday
Aug022008
Turning off the power
Saturday, August 2, 2008 Email received this week:
A disturbing and unsettling new social practise is occurring in pubs and clubs throughout England - disturbing for those who like their music and unsettling for the musician. For although the smoking ban means a musician can return home with smoke free clothes, the cost is yet further erosion of the power of music.
We've already had the 2003 Entertainment Licensing Act closing live music premises, then the smoking ban in 2007 creating further business casualties. Ignore the complete implosion of the recorded music industry, or the 1008 EU legislation that forbids noise over 85 decibels in the workplace, which is playing havoc with the classical music world - the issue here is aimed at the grassroots performer.
Now, at any venue that does not have designated seating, there is a constant ebb and flow of folks popping out for a cigarette.
"This not only causes distraction for the focused listener," says guitarist Billy Jenkins (above), who has been a bandleader and performer for over 35 years, "it erodes the confidence of the performer. Why are they walking out? Is someone leaving because they hate the music? I've seen troops of four or five people walk past the front of the stage ... past the sight lines of keen music fans. Bang goes any empathy you've built up with those in the room."
Something to seriously ponder when you have your next cigarette.
Any thoughts?
Reader Comments (4)
The last time I went to an 'informal' performance was to see a re-formed 'Pentangle' in a cafe/pub in Aberdeen. This was pre-ban but the performance was not disrupted by people going to the bar and I doubt that, post-ban, it would have been disrupted by people leaving to smoke.
It must be more difficult for musicians who are trying to build their reputation and who don't have an audience which has come specifically to hear them play, although haven't such musicians always had to contend with people going to the bar?
They say that show business is tough. Perhaps these musicians need to take the view that it's just part of the toughening up process, a bit like the rite of passage that comedians went through by playing to Glaswegian audiences! They should take heart - in the Eighteenth Century performers had to put up with members of the audience in the theatres playing cards, eating, milling around to greet friends, in fact, basically ignoring the performance!!
It's certainly changed things for the worse. Constant to-ing and fro-ing, icy blasts from the door every few minutes in the winter, greater distractions, but worst of all is the way the ban has killed numbers and atmosphere.
The figure I'm hearing is 20-22%. Takings down about a fifth since the ban, month for month. The l/lord we play for most regularly has told me that it's only live ents that are bringing anyone in at all. When we arrive to set up on a Friday night there, it is rare to find customers outnumbering bar-staff.
It gets busier later on, but the movement of people is continuous: the atmosphere is less pub and more fast-food restaurant. Groups come in, have a drink or two, then go on to the next place, smoking as they go. From one hour to the next, it will be a different set of faces. Requests for songs and dedications now tend to come with a time-limit:
"Can you play ...[usually Fields of Athenry]... in the next twenty minutes, as we wanna go somewhere else?"
Requests are rarely acceded to straight away...
Most uppermost, toppermost of all, is my feeling of seething bloody resentment at the grotesque unfairness of it all. What is so very wrong with people making their own decisions? Having choices in life? I don't blame people for not coming out, I wouldn't be out myself if I wasn't playing. And younger pub-goers can cope okay. But it's the older generations I feel for, especially the older working people who have all but disappeared from the pubs I visit. Labour's people; stabbed in the back by the thirty-something generation of career-creeps who've hijacked the Labour Party and sought to redefine it's principles to encompass the most hateful one-size-fits-all social-engineering as a substitute for socialism, because it's all they've got the balls to do.
Ah, just seen your comment Joyce. Agreed on that point: it does aid the hardening-process. But so much so that I can feel entirely unresponsive to whatever the room's doing, as I just gerronwivvit in a merry la-la land of my own.
And there's no bloody smoker-ban in there.
Adrian,
This business of everyone pub crawling is certainly post-ban, isn't it, and that must be disruptive because there is no chance for the 'vibes' in the room to settle down to allow the performer to create atmosphere through his music.
If the musician can't get into his music and enjoy performing it then it might come across as 'flat' - so, yes, everyone loses.
I couldn't agree more with what you say in your final paragraph - perhaps after the next election when they're forced to get a job in the real world, at least, if they return to politics, it might be with some wisdom and real compassion instead of slavish commitment to a vision that ignores the fact that the governed do not share it.