Alright I got a lot on my mind. (Overslept and am late for work argh). Two thoughts- how to make art sustainably and how to handle interpersonal friction in public or private discourse. The latter is kinda more pressing but I’ll focus on the former first.
nobody is paying for jazz
Jeremy Monteiro, the jazz musician, wrote a status update on Facebook about how difficult it is for jazz musicians to survive in Singapore, because venue rentals are high, and people simply aren’t paying enough to sustain the musicians and the venues. A part of this is because rents are stratospheric, and another part of this is that people simply aren’t willing or able to spend much money at jazz clubs.
The argument is that they’re unwilling, because they don’t seem to mind spending much more money when big names come to town. The implicit assumption that comes to my mind then is that Singaporeans are selfish and suffer from Pinkerton’s. Famous ang mohs worth hundreds of dollars. Singaporean creatives, eh, friend friend lah, give discount lah.
other live music venues got fucked too
I suspect that it’s not as simple as that, but I’ll present more evidence against my nagging suspicion. In the early 2000s there was a gig venue at Middle Road called Gas Haus and it was set up in the hopes of becoming a flourishing live music venue. They kept the barriers low- they even allowed me and my mates to perform there.
What happened? They got swamped by ‘scene kids’ who were eager to thrash and bang around, yet had no money. The equipment would often get thrashed by unprofessional and disrespectful musicians eager to get their 15 minutes of infamy and rockstardom rather than build a mutually beneficial relationship with the venue.
whose-cock-is-on-my-butt clubs are surviving tho
The fans had no money and would buy drinks from 7-11 instead of the venue itself- a problem that I believe plagues clubs like Zouk and Butter Factory too, but those venues have higher cover charges, the benefit of the illusion of social aspiration (look cool) and rich kids willing to spend big money on bottles of alcohol and VIP tables to lord over lesser mortals. Clubs have a great business model on top of the social and sexual desperation of rich and wish-we-were-rich young folk. A live music venue? None of that stuff.
Today, Gas Haus is gone, and in its place stands a garish and elaborate KTV type place, where rich chinese towkays leer at young hostess girls. Again, a more sustainable business model.
indie cafe also si liao
Let’s talk about the Pigeonhole next, which was a beautiful hotbed of social entrepreneurship and activism and live music. It was a little more ‘upmarket’ than Gas Haus and they built this pleasant indie/hipster atmosphere where you could have pleasant conversations with whoever was having coffee at the table next to you.
I went there to meet an entrepreneur for coffee and I stumbled upon a gathering of Singaporean skeptics and humanists. It was beautiful and I remember thinking, man, the Pigeonhole is a national treasure. Not anymore. They packed up and closed shop because they couldn’t afford the rent, despite being much loved by their patrons.
There was an ‘underground’ venue called Blackhole that I played a show at once and it felt authentically badass- you had to walk through a dark back alley to enter through the rear to get to a show there. I don’t know the story, but I believe Blackhole has closed down too.
There’s a pattern here, folks. It’s hard to sustain an arts/music place in Singapore by making people pay for it.
comedy is surviving tho, hurr hurr
But what are the other things that survive? Comedy Masala is doing beautifully at Home Club week after week. Where does the money come from? The cover charge is tiny. It probably has to do with the crowd- business/CBD folk come there after work to laugh and have a few beers. They’ve got money to spend.
The cost of the production is lower, too. All they need is a PA system with a microphone. The night is guaranteed to be entertaining, week after week. The club had always been packed to capacity when I’m there, two to three times more than the best crowds I witnessed when playing or watching live music at Home Club.
Live music costs more, too- there’s more people per act and there’s a bunch of equipment to worry about. If I wanted to restart my career as an entertainer, I’d pick comedy over music. There’s less stuff to carry, it’s over quicker, you sweat less and you get better feedback to improve your act with.
Okay so comedy is doing well, clubs are doing well, KTVs are doing well. Bookstores, jazz clubs and live music venues, not so well. Why? (I was going to say coffeehouses, but recently as a working adult I’ve discovered all these atas breakfast places that survive well because their clientele are richer Singaporeans and foreigners who want and can afford to pamper and indulge themselves. )
yes i paid to watch esperanza spalding
Why? What’s the difference? I paid 50, 60 bucks for Esperanza Spalding, yet I’ve never actually paid any amount to watch Jeremy Monteiro and gang. Why?
I think it has to do with the idea of the experience and what value that experience has in the past, present and future. By that I mean to say- If you buy Metallica tickets, you’re paying for the anticipation of watching them, you’re paying for the experience of watching them, and a lot of what you’re paying for is the memory of having watched them, and the opportunity to reminisce with your friends a decade from now about how awesome or horrible Metallica was. You pay to be excited, to hopefully be entertained, and to create memories.
if you’re not famous you better be entertaining
It’s going to be hard to sell a jazz performance as it is. I can always listen to good music on youtube, watch live performances there. You’re going to have to compete with every band that’s ever performed!
How do comedy clubs deal with this? Comedy shows are highly personalized. The comics make fun of the people in the front row and you can look at them get embarrassed. It’s recreated new everytime. The jokes might not be the best in the world but they’re current and fresh. You’re pretty much guaranteed of a good time, and it’s something you’ll twll your friends about and drag them along to.
crazy albino guy was entertaining
I can’t speak for jazz, but I can talk about local rock stuff… few musicians aim to be entertaining. I was a big fan of Ronin because they were often entertaining- you’d never know what crazy shit they were going to do next. The frontman would inevitably say some scandalous things about politics ot current affairs (Tammy NYP, James Gomez, once I remember he kissed a random girl in the crowd).
There was almost always some disagreement or scuffle with the organizers- at a Temasek Secondary event, the band circumvented the organizers’ feeble attempt to get people seated, and roused the crowd into a chaotic frenzy. (Some guy fell from a chair and broke his leg.) I’m not saying that these are good things to do, but the point is that you have to be goddamn entertaining to survive and a lot of local bands simply aren’t.
There was a band called Cockpit that was hilariously entertaining, I’d pay to watch them again. Highly-technical bands can be cool to watch, but I’m biased because I play an instrument- and that’s a really, really hard crowd to play to. And it’s a small one, too. Only makes sense if your life goal is truly to push the boundaries of your instrument.
I think a lot of musicians don’t really know what they want. Many want to be on stage and they want an adoring crowd, but you don’t get that just by wanting or wishing it- just as you don’t build a successful business by wanting people to buy your products. You have to get a lot more specific than that. What’s in it for them? That they get to watch you?
Nobody cares about you.
Whether you’re a writer or a musician or an artist or a banker- nobody cares about you. They only care about what you can do for them. So what can musicians do for you? Play you some music? No thanks lol, again, there’s some great shit on youtube.
If you want my money you’re going to have to create an experience for me that’s compelling and unique. Make me laugh, make me cry, make me dance, make me pump my fist in the air, make me lust after your beautiful band members (this is a legitimate form of entertaining), blow my mind, give me something awesome to tell my friends about. It’s not so complicated. Think less about you and think more about me (your potential audience member). How are you going to give me something I simply have to have?
einstein didn’t make money doing physics
Shit I haven’t said anything about business… I think the idea that you have to make money from your art from day one is stupid and flawed and just bad. Rod Stewart was a grave digger. Einstein worked at a patent office. Get a day job, save as much money as you possibly can, and spenf all of your spare time and energy working on your craft. A lot of people list “being paid to do whey I love” as their measure of success. I don’t buy that.
Writing is my passion and I don’t actually want to be paid to do it. In fact I think life might be easier if I decide in advance that I’m never going to write-for-money. I’ll write, and if the money comes, great. But I’m going to build my life around the assumption that nobody cares about my writing and nobody’s ever going to pay me for it. You know how I’m writing this? I’m writing this on the crowded train while the guy next to me is playing Candy Crush.
I’ve taken up a couple of paid writing gigs in the past and I really didn’t like it. (I played covers in a bar band for money for a while and I did enjoy that.) I love writing so much that I’ll write for the rest of my life even if I know I’m never going to be paid for it. So maybe I’ll get good enough at it that people will pay to read what I write. But I get my money elsewhere.
do what you love, make money elsewhere first
I don’t see why you need to make a living as a musician. Why not make a living doing something people will pay you for- copywriting, marketing, emceeing, whatever… and then do what you love because you love it? The idea that “I’m not getting paid for this” is intrinsically, necessarily bad strikes me as myopic and inconsistent with reality. Find out what people will pay you to do, and do that, and do what you love.
I think we’ll see a move to micropatronship- watch Amanda Palmer’s TEDtalk to get a sense of it. Louis CK, Radiohead.
louis ck knows how this shit works
Here’s an excerpt from Louis CK’s interview with the NYTimes.
Does it matter that what you’ve achieved, with your online special, and your tour can’t be replicated by other performers who don’t have the visibility or fan base that you do?
Why do you think those people don’t have the same resources that I have, the same visibility or relationship? What’s different between me and them?
You have the platform. You have the level of recognition.
So why do I have the platform and the recognition?
At this point you’ve put in the time.
There you go. There’s no way around that. There’s people that say: “It’s not fair. You have all that stuff.” I wasn’t born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you’re new at this — and by “new at it,” I mean 15 years in, or even 20 — you’re just starting to get traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that’s in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute.
Reality doesn’t owe us anything. We can complain about it or learn to navigate it. Your call.
watch and read and learn
Here’s a guy who makes a full-time living on micropatronship on his blog
Here’s Amanda Palmer’s TED talk (if you hate her, do better than her.)
Here’s an essay from Paul Graham on How To Do What You Love
I find that high rents and property prices have a huge impact on social life in Singapore. It changes how Singapore looks. Just organizing any event always has a barrier there.
Different example – I lived in Joo Chiat a while ago. Many walk-ups there are in a bad state because of the high property prices. Owners are often elderly and moved into their children’s HDB. They rent it out to whomever will live with paint falling off, hoping some day a property developer will knock at their door. It’s killing the neighbourhood.
Absolutely.
This new format of big fonts for sub-headers works well. Makes for easier reading. Keep using it!