Small and scrappy sometimes lives through disasters.
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The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.
Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.When I compare January – September 2019 with January – September 2020, there’s a stark reality that emerges: My audio-human revenue is down 64%.
Yeowch.
But I’m still getting some shows and some work on that front, while big pieces of our industry are at a dead stop. It’s a bit surprising to me, but not without plausible explanation.
It has to do with my understanding of how the dinosaurs died out.
When the asteroid hit and the environment changed, being a huge creature with huge energy needs was no longer an asset. It was a liability. You might have been monstrously vigorous. You might have had oceanic reserves of nutrition.
But your size meant you burned through those reserves at a terrifying pace, and when the resources you relied on suddenly disappeared you were stuck. Stuck with being enormous and resource-hungry. Stuck with seeming so strong, yet being deceivingly fragile: Your environment was the source of your strength, not yourself, and when that environment ceased to serve, you quickly found your end.
I feel badly for the folks running a kind of shop that absolutely, positively requires large-attendance gigs in order to pay the bills. That sort of outfit has big resources, but also tends to have big outlays – outlays that often can’t be shut off easily. Big venues can’t simply offload a building and then get it back when it’s convenient, for example.
But, for those of us who are smaller and scrappier, who can find a market connected with house-shows and DIY, our troubles aren’t as existential. It’s not that there isn’t a famine in the land, it’s just that we can hold on with what’s available for a longer stretch of time. It’s not a guarantee that we’ll make it, but we may have better chances in a proportional sense.
I’m a lot less gloomy than I used to be. In some ways, I’m excited. An event that causes so much disruption to an industry can be a surprising source of opportunity for the folks who can look down the reshaped waterways of the business and go, “That looks interesting down there.”
I have real hopes of being one of the little creatures that emerges as the Earth warms again, blinking at the light of the sun.