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Live Music in NY Bars is DEAD


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From the article

 

A new wrinkle in the state"s coronavirus guidelines for bars, restaurants and similar venues in New York state prohibits them from offering live music that customers pay for separately. It seems to have suddenly popped up in the rules this week.

 

It means no events where patrons buy tickets to see a performance. It also appears to ban events with cover charges. And it prohibits venues from advertising live entertainment.

 

The rule, posted in Q&A format on the State Liquor Authority web site, does allow what it calls 'incidental' live music at venues that have permits for that.

 

'This means that advertised and/or ticketed shows are not permissible,' the SLA guidelines say. 'Music should be incidental to the dining experience and not the draw itself.'

 

Clonk

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Look at the bright side: It only took 91 years to repeal NYC"s Cabaret Law, so we should be able to gig in 2111.

 

:facepalm:

 

Jake

1967 B-3 w/(2) 122's, Nord C1w/Leslie 2101 top, Nord PedalKeys 27, Nord Electro 4D, IK B3X, QSC K12.2, Yamaha reface YC+CS+CP

 

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The way I see it, 1 year from now, various vaccines will be availble.

 

That distribution 'should ' blunt the community spread.

 

There will be other medical steps in place to help.

 

Live music will return and be a force some time in 2021.

Why fit in, when you were born to stand out ?

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When I lived in Boston in the late 80's early 90's bars were banned by the Blue Laws that were still in effect. Restaurants could serve alcohol so every bar in town server something. Most would have a tiny grill and sell hamburgers, hot dogs, or sandwiches, some actually got known for their burgers or sandwiches that people went for the food. So can see something like that as a work around in NYC. All the bars and clubs sell some token type of food and know that great musicians or bands happen to play "background" music.

 

I know politics are a no-no so all I'll say is this has an odor.

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New York City emerged from the three waves of the influenza pandemic (September 1918 to February 1919). We"re a bit more capable technologically in 2020. This too shall pass. In the meantime, make music from a distance until the live music returns.

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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I had 4 gigs this summer luckily.

I had three this past weekend alone and a dozen over the summer albeit playing with three different bands. However this coming Saturday's show was just cancelled. I guess overall I've been lucky.

57 Hammond B3; 69 Hammond L100P; 68 Leslie 122; Kurzweil Forte7 & PC3; M-Audio Code 61; Voce V5+; Neo Vent; EV ELX112P; GSI Gemini & Burn

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You mean I won't be able to pay some tolls to drive into NYC, search for parking less than 10 blocks from the venue (or pay >$40 to park closer), then hump my gear to a bar gig where I can make $50 and maybe some tips? Oh man, it's over.

 

/s

Ooooh, don"t forget schlepping it down the stairs to the basement and smacking your head on the drain pipes because the raised stage makes the ceiling even lower than it already is (... thinking of Café Wha?).

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We had our August gig already.

Outside, on a large porch for a fairly small crowd off yonder a bit.

 

We each brought our own food this year. Maybe next year, they always throw a great feed too.

 

Still on the right side of the grass so I'm smiling!

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Crowd control is the biggest pain in NYC, even if you properly distance at an event, it all goes to hell as crowds travel to/from the venue. Even something as wide open as Central Park, will have throngs of people bottle-necking at the entrances, paths and sidewalks. Especially any route that leads to a subway station or another attraction. Indoor venues only make the problem worse.

 

More to the point, dense cities like NYC are fundamentally incompatible with the idea of social distancing. So yeah, until we find a solution to the need for social distancing - live music in NYC is going to be pretty dead.

 

Keep in mind, New York State ranks with the top 10 countries in most infections - and NYC accounts for 50%+ of that.

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You mean I won't be able to pay some tolls to drive into NYC, search for parking less than 10 blocks from the venue (or pay >$40 to park closer), then hump my gear to a bar gig where I can make $50 and maybe some tips? Oh man, it's over.

 

/s

 

I've played this exact gig. Minus the $50! :laugh:

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Live music in Manhattan has been dead since the early 2000's, once The Wetlands closed everyone knew it was over, and it was.

 

We still have the occasional gig in the city, but it's nothing like the glory days of the 80-90's. Even Brooklyn that was a nice respite for a while is now pretty much dead.

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I can see it now. Venues with a 3 hotdog minimum. At $10 each.

 

A venue here in NC is doing this now. Bars aren't allowed to be open yet, but restaurants are. So they started serving sandwiches and hot dogs to become a restaurant, then add food vouchers to the cover charge to try to meet the required ratio of food/alcohol sales.

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what tunaman and pinkfloydcramer said.

 

emperor nipple rings (cuomo), blas and their minions and henchman are tyrants bent on destroying whats left of our once great city in preparation for the great reset.

 

my buds who manage clubs are being hit left and right:

 

No forgiveness on rents due to closings in addition to getting tax bills from their landlords.

 

Even with those venues that do live streaming, they are having 1 set a night only, which mean the club STILL loses 66% of revenue PER NIGHT, not to mention food and drink sales.

 

It"s time to French Revolution these tyrannical bastards and say NO

"I have constantly tried to deliver only products which withstand the closest scrutiny � products which prove themselves superior in every respect.�

Robert Bosch, 1919

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I have had a once a month gig on the upper east side for the last 10 years playing to a packed house. Looks like it is finally over and not likely to come back. In the 90s I played Wetlands, Rock and Roll Cafe, L'amours, Webster Hall, Mercury Lounge, and other venues. Usually made a couple hundred a night back then. My more recent regular gig only paid $120 before toll and gas expenses. While it was nice to play for an enthusiastic full house monetarily it really didn't make sense and it was more of a vanity gig for the band.
C3/122, M102A, Vox V301H, Farfisa Compact, Gibson G101, GEM P, RMI 300A, Piano Bass, Pianet , Prophet 5 rev. 2, Pro-One, Matrix 12, OB8, Korg MS20, Jupiter 6, Juno 60, PX-5S, Nord Stage 3 Compact
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destroying whats left of our once great city in preparation for the great reset.

what's "great reset"?

 

Anyway, I think I get the rationale for these rules, but I think they could have come up with a better implementation. My version would be, if all the patrons are seated at tables, it's fine. But the venue can't have standing-room space, dancing areas, or rows of seats-without-tables. The tables (which are tied to the dining experience they are trying to permit) are also what serve to mitigate having high concentration of people in any x-square-foot area, which is presumably what the actual goal is. But instead of addressing that goal directly as my version would do, they are addressing it sideways via rules about advertising, financial transactions, and terminology.

Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

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Read an article the other day that said only 8% of the normal amount of workers in downtown NYC are coming in. The majority are remote working from home and the rest are laid off. There are now surveys of the major employers saying working from home has been much better than they expected and will probably continue with it going forward. That has huge implications for every downtown city center in the world much less NYC. We could be in the middle of a massive paradigm shift concerning where we live vs where we work. We're focused on all of the music venues because that's who we are but that could be the smallest part of this. Once this pandemic is over if less than 50% and it could be much less than that, return to work in NYC what does that do to city finances? Real estate prices, leases and rents, mass transit and probably much more I can't think of right now. People are starting to have that same conversation in LA and especially San Francisco. Traffic density in the LA area is about 60-70% of normal which is great on the surface but under the surface, it's horrible for the economy if it stays like that. LA is in the middle of a huge revitalization of downtown around Staples Center and it's mostly high rise residences. If people don't need that to work downtown, they can work remotely what does that do to that whole concept? People start moving out and those buildings are sitting on 30% vacancies or more? Major disruptions are coming I think.

 

Most people think that's great if it happens. Much less population density, less pollution, less expense, wonderful. But, look at the economic side for downtown areas. All those buildings have huge mortgages on them based on the value of those buildings which is based on construction costs and income those buildings can generate. If a large percentage of tenants leave, the valuations get cut by a large percentage leaving all those mortgages under water and the banks are sitting on huge losses. It's things like that that cause big recessions. Oh, wait we're already in one now so this would be in addition to what's already happening. That's not good at all. Eventually yes, it will all work itself out and we could wind up with a better world to work and live in but getting from here to there? It could take ten years or more. Here's now it could work for one of those NYC venues you guys are talking about. There's a big recession in NYC because of people moving out and working remotely. The venue is on a lease. The landlord can't get out from under his mortgage and goes BK. The whole building is shut down and so is the venue.

 

Pretty much everyone including me have thought a vaccine and better treatments are coming, it's just a matter of time and things will be as they were. Now I'm not so sure about that at least in the large metro areas.

 

Bob

Hammond SK1, Mojo 61, Kurzweil PC3, Korg Pa3x, Roland FA06, Band in a Box, Real Band, Studio One, too much stuff...
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Pretty much everyone including me have thought a vaccine and better treatments are coming, it's just a matter of time and things will be as they were. Now I'm not so sure about that at least in the large metro areas.

Bob

Increasingly experts are warning that the virus could be here to stay, like the flu, with a vaccine only being a partial mitigation. In that case, every person on earth eventually gets infected like the common cold with the long tail R that never dies out.

 

Hopefully treatments and knowledge of the mechanism of spread and knowledge pinpointing the lethality cofactors will reduce the fatality rate to something an open economy can deal with.

J a z z  P i a n o 8 8

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Read an article the other day that said only 8% of the normal amount of workers in downtown NYC are coming in. The majority are remote working from home and the rest are laid off. There are now surveys of the major employers saying working from home has been much better than they expected and will probably continue with it going forward.

 

And in my opinion, for many jobs this is about time. I work on databases that are housed nowhere near my office, I have few person-to-person meetings (though to be fair they CAN BE an efficient way to get questions answered)...so shoehorning a bunch of people like me into tiny stalls in a loud room that had to sit in rush hour traffic to get there (welcome to "open and collaborative workplaces") is dumb. Literally the entire dev team had to buy noise-cancelling headphones so they can concentrate. It's a 1920s mentality to say everyone needs to be in an office, the internet-driven world has made this obsolete for many jobs.

 

Obviously some jobs aren't like this and can't be done from home. But I'm glad to see work-from-home, for those that want to do it--and I worked from home when my oldest son was a toddler, that's very difficult. Everything changes, professions come and go (imagine all the angst in horse-related industries when cars came along...). I would be sad to see live music go away but frankly it was already dying due to audiences willing to accept DJs and karaoke (tracks).

 

Everyone has anger over this and wants to lash out and blame someone for some conspiracy, the man wants to hold us down...it's a fricking once-a-century pandemic. Do people truly believe hospitals and scientists have some nefarious scheme to play this up? All the while believing POLITICIANS who, if anyone has a motive to lie, it's them. And they are very good at it, it's a job requirement. I'll answer that--yes, they do. My co-worker said as much, despite some fact-checking articles I sent him on whether hospitals were making money from covid...his response: "those articles are biased." LOL, everyone's in their own reality bubble these days.

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