My hometown saves a whole year for three days of expensive stage shows, but a small local music scene has died. I think it’s sad that the music world has broken up into a bombastic, expensive, commercialized scene one hand – and on the other hand a dying suffocating music scene with personal contact in cozy pubs or during meeting with friends…
above: music world divided between stage-actors and passive audiences …
below: me on acoustic guitar, remembering days in cozy music pubs …
maybe my next video shows a compromise:
local musicians on a stage, paid …
Flickr Comments 
You’re right… In France, during music fest (the first week end of summer), local musicans can sing and play in the streets…Only one day and during the year, there’s no place to play or sing, especially for some musics like metal, rock, blues, folk, …. France is not so openminded 😦 And not only France. And one day, you’ll have to pay for singing a cover of a major’s artist, even in your shower 😀
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you write: “…And one day, you’ll have to pay for singing a cover of a major’s artist, even in your shower…” – yes, that’s the problem; every pub owner has to pay a lot of money to the big music distributors, he has to send them (in Germany: the GEMA) a list of all titles played in an evening; in Germany even most of the actual youtube videos cannot be watched, because the GEMA copyright restrictions made it black for visitors, coming from Germany; maybe I should change the country …
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I agree FT. We have a jazz group in charleston that has totally revitalized the local music scene. One of them combined w a local restaurant and opened an upstairs jazz lounge that is always full. It’s been terrific. Don’t give up hope!
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congratulations to Charleston!
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Music is a great indicator of how well a local scene is doing, so it’s just not the music scene that is dying but the roots of the community as well. Sad times in a lot of communities.
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you are right with: “…it’s just not the music scene that is dying but the roots of the community as well…” – for example: every Sunday morning I had my audience in a little pub, discussing politics; after a while I did not continue – even the local newspapers lost 50% of their readers…
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One can summarize say
that corporate greed
destroyed many local
infrastructures …
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about ten days ago in quito, my friends took me to the ‘local’ night scene in quito. although many many bars and restaurants had live music, we found zero with acoustic guitar and music tranquil enough to hear each other while enjoying the music. of course is there’s someone there sharing acoustic music, i would not want to be talking w/my friends!
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you are right, Lisa, with your comment “…music tranquil enough to hear each other…” = mostly the music they offer is much too loud, much too loud …
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We still have both here. The big productions and the local music in pubs and on the street too. But I am often surprised by the great success of those big productions. It seems like a lot of people are willing to pay a very good price for the ‘show’. Loved listening to your guitar Frizz. And the video of the music was really fine!
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they are dancing there in my video, featuring my current hometown center place – and every time I am glad, when I watch people dancing in Israel … – no country should lose the joy to dance …
for you, Shimon, and for your Jerusalem again:
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