Music Is Thriving Right In Your Backyard

There is music everywhere this summer, and that is especially true here in Martinez. As the concert and record businesses wither on the vine, it is clear that the “amateur” aspects of the music business – the roots, if you will – are very much alive and thriving.

Case in point: Summer is the time for the major tours, when the mega-bands and performers pack their suitcases and their convoy of semi-trailer trucks and hit the road to fill stadiums for fans who pay $75 a ticket, $30 to $50 for a t-shirt, and $25 to park. Except this year, like the previous two years, those shows are not filling up. In fact, a nasty little trend is happening for the major tours – in order to fill the seats, the acts are secretly arranging to give away tickets to select people, or deeply discounting them. A star does not want to take the stage to find half the house vacant, especially around those coveted seats near the stage.

The changes wrought by the digital age have left the music industry far behind, and it’s dying. The record companies now work for iTunes, which is owned by Apple, a computer company. The launch of the music subscription service last week, Spotify (check it out if you haven’t heard of it), launches the way that most of us will begin to get our music for the foreseeable future – streaming tunes from the cloud, instead of buying tunes to store in our devices. Apple will launch its cloud-based service this fall. The record companies, caught ten years ago with no viable business plan for the consumer’s ability to download digital songs, found itself suing its customers rather than formulating a business plan – trying, that is, to stuff the future back into the box, where it definitely was not going to go.

So now, instead of national breakout hits that we all know and love, music has become a much more fragmented market. We get our tunes through viral means, instead of the radio and MTV. We get forwards from friends, we read blogs and getr Facebook suggestions. Rebecca Black has a career now, such as it is, only because her silly little tune got 160 million views on YouTube, without a record deal.

And, finally to the point here, we get our music locally. There are maybe three or four acts I will pay more than $20 to see in a stadium. It’s just too much of a hassle to pay, park, and stand there for four hours squashed and miserable. But I will (and do) go down the street and pay a minimal door charge to hear music. And there is a growing number of venues to do that.

Case in point: today, the Hopeful Romantics are playing for free at 6 p.m. at , and tomorrow they play the , our newest music venue. Also tomorrow, the amazing Steve Freund is playing blues at These are both acts that are well worth travelling miles to see, and yet they’re right here in our back yard.

Doug Wendt plays gorgeous classical guitar at on Thursday nights, and has an open mike every Thursday now. has acoustic night on Thursdays as well, in addition to its Friday through Sunday lineup of rock bands. And of course, Armando’s is the center of the universe when it comes to amazing music.

That’s just a taste – if you want to go to Pleasant Hill, Concord and Walnut Creek, there is plenty of live music there as well. As the mega-music business winds down and becomes history, the local music scene is beginning to thrive again, and that’s good news for all of us. It means that, once again, music can become a personal experience, one that lets you connect close up with the musician. You no longer have to be an unseen speck in a dark stadium, trying to pretend that you matter to the performer on stage. Once again, these days, you are the reason that performer is there, and he or she can see you smile. And because of that, they will work hard for your smile.

WEATHER:

Sunny except for patchy fog in the morning. Highs in the lower 90s. West winds 5 to 10 mph increasing to 10 to 20 mph in the afternoon.

EVENTS:

TODAY IN HISTORY (from Wikipedia):

1916 - In San Francisco, California, a bomb explodes on Market Street during a Preparedness Day parade killing 10 and injuring 40.

1933 - Wiley Post becomes the first person to fly solo around the world traveling 15,596 miles (25,099 km) in 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes.

1934 - Outside Chicago's Biograph Theater, "Public Enemy No. 1" John Dillinger is mortally wounded by FBI agents.

1937 - New Deal: the United States Senate votes down President Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court of the United States.

1942 - Holocaust: the systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto begins.

1992 - Near Medellín, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar escapes from his luxury prison fearing extradition to the United States.

2003 - Members of 101st Airborne of the United States, aided by Special Forces, attack a compound in Iraq, killing Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay, along with Mustapha Hussein, Qusay's 14-year old son, and a bodyguard.