[Dixielandjazz] What we lack

[Larry Walton Entertainment - St. Louis]

Pat, they still happen.  Today they are called Raves and get out of hand so 
often that you may very well end up in trouble with the law if you organize 
one and something goes wrong.  Lots of drugs at these things.  They usually 
don't announce where and when but rely on word of mouth in the teen 
underground to pack the place.

When I was 15 I played at what was the 140 club.  It was basically a teen 
club.  We packed the place every night and from it's inception the law was 
trying to close it down.  Nothing happened till they found some young things 
plying their trade in the parking lot and some beer.  They didn't close the 
club but after it hit the papers parents kept their kids from going and the 
police harassed anyone who was driving in or out.  They gave tickets for 
anything they thought up.  It didn't take long before the doors closed.

My cousin opened a teen club, hired bouncers and was somewhat more 
successful.  This was before the DJ thing and they had bands every night of 
the week.  The place was in the basement of a store.  The parking was good. 
Again the police looked and looked for something to close him down but they 
were unable to find any violations on the property but kids parked across 
the street.  Before long they caught some with grass.  The newspapers didn't 
distinguish that it wasn't on his property.  Church groups and the other 
usual suspects campaigned without stop to close the place which eventually 
happened because the city council decided to not renew his business license. 
They cited the number of police calls made to the place and said it was a 
public nuisance.

There was a third teen club in North St. Louis county that opened a couple 
of years later but it didn't last long.

There is a great deal of money to be made in the teen club business but 
unfortunately there are two factors that kill them even if you could get a 
city license.  First is the kids themselves and their lack of maturity. 
Simply put when large numbers of kids gather more or less unsupervised you 
have problems.  The second is the adult community are concerned and afraid 
of what teens will do.  Because of the threat of violence, drugs, alcohol 
and sex there are very few legal teen venues.

I played a couple of times a month at CYC (Catholic Youth Council) dances. 
Every parish had a CYC and they had a dance every month.  It wasn't hard to 
get gigs and you didn't have to be the best.  Several other churches had 
teen dances too.  Because of problems with kids all of that is pretty much 
gone.  School dances are becoming a thing of the past too and many proms are 
held off campus.
Larry
St. Louis
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "pat ladd" <pj.ladd at btinternet.com>
To: "Larry Walton Entertainment - St. Louis" <larrys.bands at charter.net>
Cc: "jazz" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 3:45 AM
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] What we lack


>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
>