RTP-area local music and culture

["Ken M" <snz AT mindspring.com>]

Ross is right..  My wife Beth should be responding to this, but I will
because I think it's important and she's busy.  She and the Library
absolutely would like to see better attendance at the Library Indy Rock
Night.

Beth is doing the booking at the Library for Mondays.  She started the
job around Jan 1.  There are a couple issues that she's been trying to
overcome, including not having an Indy listing and having to scramble
to fill the shows during Jan.  Some confirmations haven't happened
until the week of the shows, so publicity was by poster/newsgroup/WOM.
Hopefully starting next week, the shows will be listed in the Indy, and
will be booked further in advance.

I encourage everyone to support the bands playing at the Library.  Beth
didn't take this job to make money.  She took it because we both see
the lack of interest that the "average" UNC student has in the local
music scene, an issue that has been discussed here before. The Library
is more "frat" feeling than even Wetlands, and though they have music
on other nights at the Library, I never have considered the Library as
a local music club...   it's the student bar on the other side of the
tracks that has music sometimes.  So she wanted to try to force the
local music scene on East Franklin St.

Likewise, playing the Library is like invading someone else's territory
and forcing yourself upon them.  Tom and I and Midtown Dickens had a
good show there.  MD brought people in.  There were more regulars than
on other weeks, which was coincidental.  While I can't say there was
"mixing" of the groups in attendance, I will say that people were
actually watching in the back.  So I felt that the show was worthwhile
from a band standpoint and from a community standpoint.

The point I guess is that clearly there used to be more students who
attended shows and came to the bars.  Thank God for the townies because
every Nut Magnet show would have been 0 audience without them.  And
while I am guilty of not being as supportve of local music as I should
be/wish I could be, I don't think the constants in our scene should
blame this problems on each other.

We need to figure out how to grow the student audience..... or at least
re-acquaint ourselves with them.    Glenn has addressed this issue at
506, and tried different promotions. Did any of them work?

One issue that I found hard to believe until recently was that *shock*
that the students have a different "local" scene.  The Avett Brothers,
who I happen to like a lot, drew hundreds of people at a student union
show on campus.  I rarely if ever see them mentioned by anyone but
their manager Dolph and myself, and thought they were under the radar.
They clearly are not.

If anyone has any ideas for the Library, please respond.  And if you
want to play the Library, please email Beth off-list at our email.

Ken M




The Spinns [http://www.thespinns.freeservers.com/], Future Kings of
Nowhere [http://www.thefuturekings.net/]
The Library, Chapel Hill

Maybe it's just the nights I've attended, but near as I can tell, the
Library's Tuesday-night Indie Rock shows haven't exactly been a
rousing success. I'm not sure why; it's not a bad space, and they've
got more decent beers on tap than most of the other rockclubs around.
Sure, it's on East Franklin, and I suppose after the demise of the
Lizard and Snake there may have been some kind of communal hex cast:
"East Franklin Street, Thou Shalt Never Rock Again!"

But Wetlands is east of Columbia (albeit over on Rosemary) and it's
doing just fine. Is Tuesday just the New Monday? Anyway, tonight it's
the Spinns, bringing their stompy Troggs/Sonics 60s-Garage revivalist
rock to the land of midriff-sweaters.