[Dixielandjazz] New Approach - Was Dead Musicians

[Stephen Barbone]

> DWSI at aol.com (Dan Spink) wrote
>
> Your post on the past greats and not making money on OKOM were most
> interesting. But if you took another look at all of music today, wouldn't you feel a
> bit more positive about OKOM's future? I'm referring to the fragmentation of all
> music to all audiences everywhere thanks to all the electronic media. The
> kids (teens or preteens) seem to create the market for pop music today but there
> are plenty of other, smaller markets going strong. No one has suggested we
> shut down the Metropolitan Opera or Carnegie Hall lately for lack of interest
> yet, have they? Ragtime and Dixie records still sell.

I am very positive about my take on OKOM and the music business today. I am one of the
prime contractors for live music in the Philadelphia Area, have the most popular "Hot
Jazz Band" in the area and probably the second most popular "jazz" Band (by gig count)
in the area. Though I do believe we make more money than the number # 1 jazz band. They
are a "modern" jazz group and give it away to be "heard".

> The message is we got to
> start packaging it differently to the audience that wants to hear it. One of my
> favorite examples is Max Morath. His running ragtime performances still draw a
> good audience; his most recent, Ragtime and Beyond, opens at the York Theater
> in New York this month. Maybe our problem is we're trying to create the same
> OKOM music in the same way and it's the venue that's out of date, not the
> music. For example, when I was a college kid, I used to love to got to the
> Eleven-Eleven Club in Chicago (the 50s) to hear George Brunis and the forever
> mystical Hey, Hey Humphrey but that kind of staged performance is not where it's at
> for college kids today.Sometimes the complaints remind me of an old silent
> movie director who laments there's no money to be made in movies today. Try a new
> approach, old buddy. I'd love to hear you play any way I can.

Precisely. Try a new approach. That is what we have done here. Evolutionary Dixieland
targeted toward the younger market. It resulted in 160 gigs last year including 7
"modern" jazz festivals where we were the only OKOM band and a total live audience of
mostly young people, in excess of 125,000. Plus better money than OKOM festivals pay.
All gigs, except one, were within 80 miles of our home base, Greater Philadelphia. All
gigs except one were self booked. Plus we were virtually forced to record CDs in order
to satisfy local fans. Two issued within 10 months of each other. Since I had to front
the money, you can bet they are already self liquidated. Only the latest release, a
month old, is sitting in my garage. Reason, the guys take the month of January off from
gigs and go Skiing, or to the Bahamas. No gigs to sell them at until this month.

However, I still believe that "live" music is on the way out. Every year will see a
little, less of it until the computer geeks create it all. Rule # 3 is; Nerds Rule.
Soon it will be Rule #1.

Did you notice in the NY Times Post that recently a singer performed in Madison Square
Garden to his records? And that the audience of some 20,000 loved it? Where does that
leave the Boys in The Band?

Cheers,
Steve Barbone