[Dixielandjazz] Boring The Audience

[Steve Barbone]

 Martin Nichols <marnichols at yahoo.com>

Steve Barbone wrote:
 
"But I would point out that it is only us old folks who want to remember the
good old days. It is simply not relevant to the younger audience, which is
why we have none."

> Marty Responded:

> I can't quite understand that Steve. When I started listening as a young kid
> around the late forties and early 50's, it was the "old days" that I was
> enamored with, otherwise why would I have been listening to decades old jazz?
> 
> Also, though I was not one of them, the college kids back then were also crazy
> about jazz from the "old days."
> 
> Another thing- my exposure to jazz originally was only from records not live
> venues; so that tells me the attraction was mainly aural and not visual. That
> is not
> to say I didn't enjoy live performances even more, later when I got a chance.

Steve answers:

What we do individually is sometimes not what the bulk of the people do. As
I recall the 40s/50s most of my friends were listening to OKOM. Both from
the past, and from the current groups like Condon, DeParis, Murphy et al.

Remember, in the 40s, what were you going to listen to? WW2 interrupted our
lives and the A F Of L banned recordings. So we listened to radio and radio
had a lot of OKOM on it.

Ditto for College kids. Heck, I played the Northeast College circuit in
those days, with several young bands, playing to young kids. What attracted
them to the music? Lets get real, it was the booze and the sex and the
partying atmosphere as much, if not more than the music itself. No
difference today with the music they like.

Yes, of course it was aural when we were young. And in those days, we all
crowded around the radio for entertainment. Then we discovered movies. The
entertainment industry has changed dramatically since those days. Movies and
Video changed all that. And so today's kids are very different from they way
we were. Much more visual and much less aural. So what worked for you and I
60 years ago will not work for today's kids.

As an aside, Bob R's point about "imagination" is well taken. Remember how
our imaginations worked when listening to "The Shadow", "Let's Pretend",
"Suspense" and all those other neat programs? Today's kids don't imagine
that, they see it on wide screen. Imagination has been replaced by special
effects. 


> Then from "Robert S. Ringwald" <robert at ringwald.com>

> Steve Barbone wrote: (snip)

> "But I would point out that it is only us old folks who want to remember the
> good old days. It is simply not relevant to the younger audience, which is why
> we have none."

> Bob Ringwald says:

> Steve, You keep talking about your young audiences.  Now you say "we have
> none?"  Which is it?

Bob, it is a case of different responses to different threads. When talking
about Barbone Street's "young audiences," I am specifically referring to the
fact that my band targets and plays to young audiences.  The snip you show
above, refers to a thread about audience age demographics for OKOM. The
plural "we" therefore refers to that specific thread and is inclusive of all
OKOM bands. In other words, generally speaking "we" (OKOM Bands) have no
young audience to speak of.

Barbone Street audiences are an exception to the "general" rule that; In the
USA, the audience for OKOM is OLD, GRAY, AND LOOKS TO THE PAST and that most
OKOM bands here play to that audience.

We figure we're going to outlive that audience. :-) VBG

Cheers,
Steve Barbone