This is a technology problem. Media technology (radio, recordings, television, and movies) has essentially killed live performance of all kind compared to what it was once like. Bars and hotels that used to rely on gig musicians can now play a Spotify playlist over the speakers. Repertory theatres once existed in every small and medium sized city in the country, each supporting several actors earning salaries sufficient to raise a family—all wiped out by television.
It would have once been unthinkable for even a small city of <=100,000 people to lack multiple live entertainment options 7 days a week. No more—we’re all at home, watching our particular chosen thing, listening to our particular chosen album, playing our own chosen game.
Some will claim this has been an advancement. “How lame,” they say, “it must have been to have to go to the Local Entertainment Venue and just listen to whatever act was on that night. Nowadays I can listen to Acid Techno Super Hop, my particular chosen favorite, as much as I want.” But the losses in communal behavior have been significant. Most critical is the disappearance of dance. Dance is a fundamental human behavior, stretching back to Paleolithic times. It is nowhere to be seen in many cities today, because no one has any occasion to do it except weddings, at which it is very common now to stand around awkwardly after the bride and groom have fumbled through some rehearsed step.
> This is a technology problem. Media technology (radio, recordings, television, and movies) has essentially killed live performance of all kind compared to what it was once like.
Not sure I agree, or maybe just partly. Radio has been around for over a hundred years. Movies too. Bars and hotels have been able to play recorded music on cassette, then CD, now streaming, for at least 70 years.
This decline of the working musician is a much more recent phenomenon.
Radio and TV have not had the addictive effects that 'social media' has on many. So many people of all ages struggle to put their phone down for an extended amount of time. So many choose to scroll or swipe instead of socializing outside/with others.
> isn't social, it's a performance for an invisible audience.
I know what you wrote is fairly obvious but the wording really resonated with how I feel about social media platforms but couldn't quite word it so well.
When I was young (a long long time ago), my family would go up to stay at a ranch in Sierra County California. They had almost no TV or radio reception there -- you still can't get a cell signal at my cousins house. They would have a Friday night square dance that was like a school dance that teens actually attended and danced together, without much irony. Coming from San Francisco it seemed a little weird, even then. It seems so old fashioned now but I really treasure that I got to participate in what people used to do on the western frontier of the US.
I agree but would like to point out that I have seen several groups of dancers practicing K-pop dance or something I don't know outside of Sydney convention center recently. So it seems there is still a social circle where people dance but not ballroom or salsa.
That's what the old men shouting at clouds always think.
"Social connection" and "micro-dopamine hits" are two different phrases for the same thing. Connections through social media apps can be every bit as deep and genuine as those made through standing in the same building.
It's not particularly deep and genuine to double-tap to add a heart emoji to a video of a skimpily dressed complete stranger you "met" 5 seconds ago and will never see again unless Tiktok's algorithms think that would result in greater ad revenue.
It's exactly as deep and genuine as saying hi to a stranger in a bar (and if you think the barman is any less profit-oriented than the Tiktok algorithm you're naive) or whatever the back-in-your-day paradigm was.
Liking a video (and if all your videos are booty shakes from first trap influencers that says more about you than about the platform) might end you up in an interesting conversation, getting laid, finding a life partner, all sorts of things.
Saying hi to a stranger in a bar is exceedingly unlikely to result in any of these.
Some teen dancing on a streaming service is very different from a venue charging admission and beverages for a couple hundred people spending an evening out.
Technology definitely plays into it. As an aside, I stopped in an a old bar recently that was long known for regularly having live jazz and the bartender mentioned that they hadn't had live music since the covid lockdowns.
What is that idea that people don't dance? How and where people dance change, but people still dance. Example are:
- Professional dancers, and other performers with a dance component
- Partner dancers, who usually do in in some sort of club
- Partygoers, going to night clubs, music festivals and raves
- Fitness, doing aerobics or whatever name the latest "dance as exercise" thing has
- People in house parties, dancing with friends for birthdays, new years,...
- People dancing in front of a camera, for some social media
- Street dancers
- People just dancing alone at home
Maybe there are less balls with live musicians, but there are new trends related to dancing. Remember flash mobs? Where people just get together, dance for a few minutes and leave. And TikTok, one of the most popular social network today was built on people doing silly dances, and it is still a major component.
Organised dancing is no more "critical" than cursive. Every generation thinks their version of entertainment and social bonding was better and what the kids are doing is inferior and dumb.
And the reason young people are doing less in-person socialisation is less because home entertainment has gotten better and more because in-person socialisation has gotten worse, especially in America where people have nowhere they could socialise in walking distance, can't afford a car (and would get arrested for drunk driving if they could), can't afford to get molested in a techbro fake taxi, and if they tried to cycle they'll get run down by a boomer in a giant truck who was playing candy crush.
There are some great recordings of music out there but fundamentally their sum is worthless up against a society where there is music and dance being performed all the time.
Maybe modern medicine and food abundance is worth it but the imitation of art is a poor substitute.
Indeed, during my parents generation, the big cities had huge dance halls that were filled every weekend, if not every weekday too. My parents remember going to those places, as did my in-laws. In fact, I got a gig with a band that had been a major touring group in the past, and mentioned it to my in-laws. They said: Oh yeah, we danced to that band in the 50s. They frequented the ballrooms that dotted the Chicago suburbs.
Of course I credit it to people being cooler back then.
And one of my relatives remembers from her early childhood the music scene in pre-war Berlin. There was an opera on practically every corner. And movie theaters. Those are virtually gone too.
Today I play music for a folk dance group, and they have weekly dances, but a dozen people showing up is a lot.
I think it's less people cooler and more they didn't care. There is too much pressure to be cool now. The now ingrained trope joke that white people can't dance doesn't help. If I'm a young white male the last thing I'm going to do to impress young women is the thing reinforced over and over that I suck at/makes me a joke.
Indeed, and this is reinforced by a couple of stereotypes. These are repeated in web forums frequented by musicians: People won't dance to a tune that is not absolutely familiar -- why a small handful of "classic rock" hits continue to be played. Second, the purpose of the music is to keep the women dancing, and the purpose of the women dancing is to keep the men drinking.
Disclosure: I've played in a lot of bands, in a variety of styles.
Having lived in NYC, Broadway, off broadway, off off broadway etc. look like they are thriving. I don’t think recorded media comes even close to the novelty and spectacle a theatre production is. Have small towns really lost all their theatres?
New York City is the greatest concentration of wealth on the planet. The continuation of theatre there should come as no surprise.
I am speaking of the cultural shift in entertainment, from a variety of local live options on most days of the week to just television in most places across the country.
I should also emphasize that the persistence of community theatres that mostly recycle the classics (endless Shakespeare, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and The Crucible) is not a substitute for actual thriving local entertainment, but a shadow and a memory of what once was.
It's not that they lost all of them, but that they make far less money, while the top performers in NYC do well.
It's not unlike what happened to soccer as television got cheaper and cheaper: You can go watch your town's third division team, or you can watch Real Madrid play on TV. In 3rd division nobody can be professional, in 2nd division you make less money accounting for inflation than 30 years ago, but the top players in the top teams are even bigger stars, now that the entire world can watch them play every game.
And on theater, let's not forget that many parts of the spectacle are almost impossible to take on the road. You aren't going to feed a production of Phantom of the Opera in a small town for 3 months: National tours rely on 2 weeks per large-ish metro. And when you are only going to stay there for 2 weeks, there are things you just can't get away with, economically speaking. The equity Hadestown tour would need to remodel way too much to accoout for the lift on broadway. The non-equity tour, which plays even shorter windows, can't even rely on the turntable on the floor. The car in Back to the future isn't going to fly over the audience, do half as much movement, or get fire effects on the scenario.
And even if you look in Broadway itself, many don't recoup their own costs. For every Hamilton or Lion king there are many shows that don't last 6 months.
The increase in real estate costs severely limits the opportunities for musicians to play live. I've seen some cover bands randomly at bars, but it's rough out there.
I also remember in my youth in Miami there were numerous clubs just for different genres of music for Hardcore, Ska, punk and everything in between where people would play local shows. It's all but dead now.
The town I live in has 6000 people and there's a play or live music event in the town hall every couple of weeks, maybe more often in summer. I don't go to many, one or two a year, but presumably enough people turn out.
I think it's more accurate to say it became a "premium". I could probably find some live music at a rinky dink mom-and-pop cafe in a far out suburb even as late as the 90's if I tried.
By now, that prestige of a live music seems to only really come from a bigger joint, or as more of a passion project than as an expected way to get customers in.
>Have small towns really lost all their theatres?
It's mostly a thing regulated to colleges. So it will depend on that. I haven't seen a smaller town without a college that still has traditional theatre around, personally. Though I have seen forums where that scene would obviously have hosted such events, abandoned.
I see small venues that regularly host live music all over the place. It definitely drives business for the bars, but there doesn't seem to be much money in it for the musicians.
> Have small towns really lost all their theatres?
Yes.
I spent the first half of my life as a working actor, and this has been a decades-long process. By "my day" ('90s - '00s) I looked at CVs and heard stories from older actors and said "there was a theatre [by which I meant somewhere that offered paying work] there?"
Summer-stock, where I did a lot of gigs in my twenties, is nothing like what it was then, and I'm sure I would get that response from young actors now, if they heard my stories. Even the larger venues are on life-support. CalShakes closed down this summer. OSF is struggling.
Many places have community theatres, but those are like garage bands: hobbies, pursued for recreation and socialization, where no one draws a wage or has professional aspirations. (And, you know, the vast majority of the attendees have personal ties to the cast and crew.)
I do improvisational comedy, which is a form of theater. it's a niche thing where I will see basically the same faces around town, and that's in a major metropolitan area.
Fellow hobby improviser here (Sydney, Australia). My impression so far is similar: I'd say about a 5-10% rate of new faces attending shows and related gigs.
Comedy festival shows are a slightly different story, but I'm not sure how effectively they lead to new recurring audience members.
I also see venue sizes and hire as one of the largest risks/problems with greater popularity. Venue hire is expensive AF, but smaller gigs in places like pubs suffer all the same problems as described in the article.
A show has to be significant enough for someone to turn off Netflix, Spotify or a podcast AND leave the house AND commute to a venue, for MULTIPLE people*, all at the same time.
* I assume most people go to shows with other people, unless they're already embedded in the community.
One of the most culturally developed and wealthiest places on earth has lots of live spectacles..
Color me shocked.
On the other hand, I my 150k people city in southern Poland there was no shortage of entertainment, theaters, dance halls and parties 50 years ago under the communist regime.
My grandparents partied all of the time, their pictures are an endless collection of parties, literally people bringing a sausage, a potato salad, few vodkas to some elementary school or industry plant warehouse and having fun from 6 pm to late at night. They went to see live boxing, soccer games, theater, concerts, movies.
I'm 37 none of my friends lives like that, none. There are many more restaurants, probably 20 times as many.
I'm strongly convinced that people used to have more fun once.
My grandma thinks 100% the same. She constantly wonders why are people much better now under any measurable metric like education or wealth, yet they seem to really do nothing in their life.
It would have once been unthinkable for even a small city of <=100,000 people to lack multiple live entertainment options 7 days a week. No more—we’re all at home, watching our particular chosen thing, listening to our particular chosen album, playing our own chosen game.
Some will claim this has been an advancement. “How lame,” they say, “it must have been to have to go to the Local Entertainment Venue and just listen to whatever act was on that night. Nowadays I can listen to Acid Techno Super Hop, my particular chosen favorite, as much as I want.” But the losses in communal behavior have been significant. Most critical is the disappearance of dance. Dance is a fundamental human behavior, stretching back to Paleolithic times. It is nowhere to be seen in many cities today, because no one has any occasion to do it except weddings, at which it is very common now to stand around awkwardly after the bride and groom have fumbled through some rehearsed step.