[Dixielandjazz] Lack of Music Venues?

[Steve barbone]

"PATRICK LADD" <pj.ladd at btinternet.com> wrote
 
> Hi All,
> with the constant moan about lack of venues,poor audiences,etc., I would like
> to tell you that in my local paper last week under the WHAT`S ON     feature
> there were no less than 50 gigs within 10 miles in SEVEN DAYS.
> About 12 of them would be music I would describe roughly as OKOM. The rest
> were Rock, Blues, Folk, C and W but they were all LIVE bands performing in
> pubs and restaurants before an audience.
> There may well be other groups performing who had not got their act together
> to get in on the free advertising.
> Not bad , for one little rustic corner  of Old England.

Ah yes, when entering Pat's "little rustic corner of old England", remember
the time change. Set your watch back 60 years. :-) VBG.

Only kidding Pat, heck I have 10 gigs with Barbone Street Bands in the next
7 days. There is A LOT of OKOM around. Trouble is, most folks on the DJML
"Don't Get Around Much Any More." ;-) VBG

Being too wrapped up in the minutia of the "OKOM World" as we know it, they
just don't realize what's out there with the real audience. That OKOM world
is tiny, barely noticed by the other 260 million people or so in the USA
alone, and for the most part, not relevant to the jazz world of today.

When I tell my fellow 70 year olds that I often work till 2 AM and then
drive about 80 miles back home, they are horrified. After all, they think,
"old people don't/can't do that sort of thing". Really?

Case in point this weekend. After night gigs on Thursday and Friday nights,
I'm gigging 88 miles from home in Rehoboth Beach Sat night, till 1 AM.
Driving home after gig (unless I meet up with an offer I can't refuse),
because I have to make a trio gig with the bass player and guitar player in
Haddonfield NJ, 79 miles from home in opposite direction at 11 AM Sunday
morning. So we'll get 5 hours sleep at most.

Then, leave that gig at 2:30 PM to go home for a evening with friends and
neighbors watching the Eagles win the Super Bowl on TV. Finally get to bed
about midnight. Have another gig Monday afternoon and then Tuesday is Mardi
Gras and several gigs. Bass player is 73 and he'll do the same thing. I am
in relatively good health, but bass and guitar are not so good. Yet we still
get around, keep long hours, get minimum sleep, chase women, smoke cigars,
hoist a single malt now and then, and "Once In A While", make love. We live
among the young audiences who love both us and this music.

Proves that jazz for kids is perhaps the best prescription for avoiding the
crippling mindset of old age that prevents many from living life to the
fullest. Why not run like Satchel Paige, who once said, "Never look back,
something may be gaining on you." (He was playing Major League baseball, a
boy's game, well into his 50s).

Even the OKOM literati, who are amateur musicians rather than working
musicians, in my territory, have no idea just how much OKOM is out there. As
"historians", they are just not hip to today's "working music for a living"
world. So there is a huge information gap between what the "Working" jazz
bands do and what the so-called "Art Form" jazz bands do. Not praising or
knocking either. Both have their place. Just telling it like it is.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone