99% of you may be too far away to come, or too punk rock to care,
but this Saturday I'm hosting a house concert for my friend and kick-ass musician Corinne West and any of you all (members or lurkers) are welcome to come. It's in Oakland, near the grand lake theater, and if you k-mail me I'll give you the details. Music is 15 bucks, but the sushi and liquor are free!
jake [email] said at 2:51 PM 05-05-2006: You get what you pay for.
Yeah, it's more expensive than a 7$ warehouse show with 4 travelling bands, but this is a different kind of music. Corinne doesn't play random gigs at bars, and she's not a kid doing the music thing for experience or as a side line.
josh [email] said at 3:06 PM 05-05-2006: That's in the range of what I would expect to pay for a show of a well-known artist at the 9:30 club (which would probably be $20) or the Black Cat (not that you know what either of those places are). Is this person an established artist, with a following?
jake [email] said at 3:48 PM 05-05-2006: You're just trying to pick a fight. You should listen to more folk music Josh. c'mon, "smile on your brother, everybody get together, try and love one another right now!"
josh [email] said at 3:52 PM 05-05-2006: i just think it's interesting, if 100 people come, this person generates $1500 dollars. that's a fairly large sum of money for an event with pretty much no overhead.
jake [email] said at 3:56 PM 05-05-2006: Well that's a lot more than I'm expecting... but take out from that cash for her back up musician, and her manager. She's got rent, and she's gotta eat this week. I'm only feeding her the one meal, right? Oh, and she doesn't have any other job, so health insurance? Plus, if she makes that much, it'll go down as actual income. It gets reported, so the Fed and state gov get a bite.
josh [email] said at 4:01 PM 05-05-2006: word, it's just interesting to compare the money made from events like these with money made at clubs... which charge about the same price but have way more overhead.
i'm sure the artists enjoying making more money. but it's interesting that the audience is still charged what the market will bear, even though costs are lower. i guess that is to be expected.
jake [email] said at 4:13 PM 05-05-2006: How do you really compare the overhead though? It seems to me it's like comparing going out to eat at a nice restaurant, or going to a friend's house and spending the same money on a bottle of wine?
josh [email] said at 4:24 PM 05-05-2006: It's very easy to compare the overhead...
A club has employees, licenses, fees, utilities, etc.
A house doesn't have any of that. Not even rent, because the rent is paid by the people living there for that purpose, not directly from the events, like a club's is.
It's just interesting, because part of the reasoning given for ticket prices is the big overhead that it takes to keep a club open/have a show, but this whole music scene has very little overhead and charges the same prices as the clubs do.
i'm not saying you should charge less, some of these shows here charge even more. it's just interesting.
jake [email] said at 4:39 PM 05-05-2006: Okay, but a club spreads those costs across how many shows in a month? And other revenue streams like liquor sales?
I'm not saying that the costs are actually equal, just that the two things are so far apart that comparisons don't make that much sense.
Keep in mind, as well, that when you go to a house concert you're (ideally) getting something intimate and focused in a way that you couldn't at some random venue.
josh [email] said at 4:48 PM 05-05-2006: Okay, but a club spreads those costs across how many shows in a month? And other revenue streams like liquor sales?
That's exactly what I'm saying.
If a show cost $15 at a club, the band will probably only make $5 off of that - even with what you mention. The high ticket cost is attributed to overhead.
In the "home concert" situation, there is literally no overhead, yet the ticket cost is still $15+. Obviously better for the bands, and that is fine. But it's still interesting to me that, even without the "high overhead", the ticket prices remain the same as they are in clubs. This is because they are still charging what they think is the maximum people are willing to pay to see a show, just as the clubs are doing.
Like I said, don't change your plans or anything, it's just an observation.
jake [email] said at 5:13 PM 05-05-2006: I think we're talking past eachother.
Clubs are notoriously hard to keep afloat and make profit, right? So really, club shows should mostly be more expensive, but for whatever reason the market won't bear it. House shows are doing clubs a favor by not charging less and further undercutting the market.
ed [email] said at 8:04 PM 05-05-2006: Statistically, how many people aren't interested in *either* free liquor or free sushi?
Shoot, I don't even like sushi, but if there's free liquor, I'll likely chow on some rainbow rolls just to keep the bourbon at reasonable levels in my bloodstream.
And it's California. I've never been there, but the perception is, things are hella expensive in California. Having listened to one song on Corinne's site, I'd likely drop a theoretically expendable $15 to attend this show, just because she sounded good in the one song I bothered to check out.
Entertainment bux are relative, of course, but I'd expect to drop $15 on a non-matinee movie with a soda and popcorn. Why would I balk at the same expenditure for a live concert with free booze and sushi?
jake [email] said at 3:27 PM 05-05-2006: Yes, Corinne has a following, especially around here where folk/country/mountain music has a broader following in general.
Different music, different market, different prices. I don't think anyone who comes will be disappointed.
josh [email] said at 3:47 PM 05-05-2006: Well, that's kind of what i was getting at: "anyone who comes". $15 to see a show at someone's house probably means a lot of non-fans wouldn't show up, unless the organizer is someone who has a reputation for setting up good shows of this ilk in the past.
Whereas if this was at a lounge or something, even for the same price, people might take a risk because they know where it is, there are other things around to do in case they decide they hate it, they don't have to deal with being in someone else's living space, etc.
There is a pretty big bluegrass/folk "home concert" scene here (There was an article about it that the dirtfarm was mentioned in a few years ago.), but as I understand it, the people who do it do it regularly and build a following for the organizer and their music choices as much as for the individual artist. So they can count on the same people to show up every week, plus maybe one or two new faces. Have you done these before? How many people do you expect to come?
jake [email] said at 3:51 PM 05-05-2006: I'm hoping for 30 people, and I'll be happy with 20.
You're absolutely right about how the house concert scene works. This will be the first time doing one of these, and we'll see how well it goes... But keep in mind when you talk about risk, most of the people I'm inviting know me, know the kind of music and theater I like, and drop 20-30 bucks on similar things every other week or so.
jake [email] said at 1:34 AM 05-08-2006: In the end I think there was about 18? Not the take that we wanted but probably enough to justify doing this again sometimes.
josh [email] said at 4:03 PM 05-05-2006: at first i thought the thing in her lap was a harmonica but now i think she's holding one already... a tamborine?
ed [email] said at 8:06 PM 05-05-2006: Dude, even as the potentially "least likely to enjoy sushi" member of this site, I recognized the drawing as having a plate full of sushi on her lap.
Yeah, mostly because of the title of this post, but once I read the title, there was really no question what the lap-object was.
