[Dixielandjazz] What we lack

[pat ladd]

I find it almost hard to believe that the US is in such dire straits, that > 
there are no places  to play.  >>

Hi,
its called the `wind of change` or something.

  In my teens I used to hire a hall, usually a church hall,  for about £7 or 
£8  a night,  get a local victualler to supply the beer in exchange for a 
payment to me of about half the cost of the hall (He kept his profit)  I 
hired a drum kit for about 5 shillings (thats a quarter of a pound sterling) 
because I couldn`t afford to buy one.
Hand wrote some advertising posters, sold tickets at about 2/6 (thats an 
eighth of a pounds sterling) I usually used the packs of raffle tickets that 
cost a couple of pennies for 100. Got the boys together and played dance 
music. The band (?) split the take equally.  We were bloody terrible but we 
were playing to our own age group and they forgave us as long as they could 
dance to the music.

Now it would be almost impossible to hire a hall. They don`t exist. The 
churches have either closed or don`t have youth clubs attached with meeting 
halls.. They certainly do not have a large room which is almost unused which 
they can hire out.  Hotels no longer have partially unused large rooms. 
Accountants do not allow any asset to lay fallow these days.
There used to be  at least a dozen halls we could pick from. Now in spite of 
the fact that the town has more thasn tripled in size there is only one good 
one. That is owned by the local Council and they charge the earth. They 
gotta maximise the profit. In the old days the supply of halls by the 
Council was looked on as a public service and the charge was minimal.

We had the best of it without doubt. I wish we had known it at the time

Old guys rant

Pat