Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Mannahnin]

Acts of the Nuclear War God?

Do you think, because people steal music on the internet and streamers pay almost nothing, we could see a resurgence of small venues with live music, because that is how bands make living now?

I don't know about bands (that is to say groups), but I get the feeling a fair number of individual musicians make their money fron Patreon and its kin.

I remember Courtney Love making a speech in the early days of internet music sharing about how artists were going to have to functionally work for tips/live on ticket sales. That record sales were not going to sustain them anymore. And that seems to have turned out true.

I don't know that's going to happen. Everything seems to be concentrated on the huge staged shows out of stadiums, these days.

Back in the day you could see up-and-comers like Duran Duran at smaller venues like The Concert Hall, in Toronto. Maybe 1000 people, including the open floor. It's still there and has been renovated. I saw Forgotten Rebels at a club called El Mocambo, in the early '80s. The Rolling Stones played there, in a "secret show" in the late '70s, and it was released as a live album. It seated 300 and that wasn't the only time that they played there, with no prior announcement.. We had a Metric Tonne of small clubs, that had big name acts just basically show up, back then.

The sense I have is that there are still some smaller venues, but I live in the East Coast Megalopolis, so my sense of things might be skewed (and I haven't been following the music biz much for a while).

You're not wrong, but most of the old standards have long since gone. In Toronto we lost maybe 3/4 of them, over the years. Lee's Palace, where Clash at Demonhead played in "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" still exists, but they lost the front entrance to a restaurant.

Concur. There are still some smaller and mid-sized venues out there.

I've seen a few big stadium shows in the last few years (NIN, Depeche Mode, The Cure, Smashing Pumpkins, Rammstein twice), but a lot of good shows at mid size (Roadrunner in Boston is 3,500 capacity- recently have seen Viagra Boys and Molchat Doma shows there) (Orpheum around 2,700, last saw Warduna there) (Worcester Palladium downstairs is ~2k, saw Heilung there in 2022), House of Blues Boston (1800, Jerry Cantrell, Caravan Palace, Ministry touring with Melvins & Corrosion of Conformity), Royale Boston (1500, Viagra Boys, They Might Be Giants) or smaller more intimate venues like Paradise (933, Gary Numan, Cold Cave), The Sinclair (525, Twin Temple, Bridge City Sinners) or The Middle East (400, She Wants Revenge, Peter Murphy, My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult).

That being said, certainly some of the small venues have been closing, and ticket prices and drinks at the newer ones (like Roadrunner) have been climbing, while stadium tickets and amenities have been going nuts.

 

[Scribe]

--

This is easily the worst part of the year at my work. It's always like this. Everyone is in hurry up and wait mode.

Meanwhile everyone wants their projects done, everyone also wants to go on time off, and the rush in all segments leads to gaps and missed requirements, every time.

Waste of everyone's time, and we never seem to learn.

 

[RealAlHazred]

everyone wants their projects done, everyone also wants to go on time off, and the rush in all segments leads to gaps and missed requirements, every time.

Me: "Thank you for this high-level Visio diagram, which looks very pretty, but I wanted to ask about the cabling matrix, and to get a list of where the devices are located in the data center, so we can make the connections. It's due December 1st, so I wanted to confirm things."
Them: "Let's link up on this next week."
Me: "Okay."
------------
Me: "Hey, let's link up about those connections. Also, I don't think you ordered optics so I don't think we have the materials to make these connections. I know it's first thing on Monday, but I wanted to hammer these details down so I could complete the task in a timely fashion."
Them: "Thank you for reaching out to me. Your request is very important to me. I will be Out-of-Office until December 1st on vacation. In my absence, please reach out to <this junior guy who has no idea what is going on in this project>."
Me: "..."

 

[RealAlHazred]

I think everybody who works in IT should work for just one week in the actual Data Center, so they have an idea of how it works, so when they plan things they don't always go pear-shaped.

 

[Ryujin]

I think everybody who works in IT should work for just one week in the actual Data Center, so they have an idea of how it works, so when they plan things they don't always go pear-shaped.

I'd like to see more IT people get experience with direct client contact, as well. I don't mean Help Desk, but rather face-to-face. I've been doing it for most of my career and far too many of my co-workers have no idea what it entails. They hide at their desks, in our basement cave, and just hand off any contact at all to others. That's a great way to create a practical version of "The Telephone Game."