Sunday, February 1, 2009

Why people stay home

I'd planned to catch an hour or so of an Earthlingz gig today. Due to stuff that held me up at home, with the help of my utter lack of time management skills, I only got to see the last ten minutes. On the bright side, it was a fun ten minutes, and I got to talk to the band afterward.

In particular, I picked the brain of one of the musicians, Chet Gardner, about why it's so hard to get people to come to your gigs. He said many fans stopped going to shows twenty-five years ago, and he had a theory as to why: VCRs and drunk driving laws.

Interesting. It's obvious that people watch movies more at home than in theaters now because of VCRs/DVD players. It never occurred to me that it would keep them from going out and doing anything else. As for the drunk driving laws, it's sad to think that drinking is more of a draw for so many people than music.

If Chet is right, we have even more of a reason to get listeners to give our music a try and buy the album via Internet. I don't care how people choose to listen to us as long as they listen to us.

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