If you’re a boomer or Gen-Xer, you probably have a definite mental picture of what going to a rock concert is: a crowd of thousands, huge sound and light shows, beer — or worse — spilled
Liz Garo (Photo by Tessie Borden)
down your back. Even the live and local music scene, despite its more intimate venues, can be rather raucous and, let’s say, not so much about the music.
But a funny thing happened in the last decade: bands are moving out of the arenas and night clubs and into less conventional spaces like museums, says Liz Garo of Spaceland Productions Presents, a Los Angeles concert promoter. For fans who just want to hear good, live music without the reverb and grime, now there are options.
“Bands and agents for the talent love playing alternative spaces,” Garo said. “It’s the biggest request: ‘We want to do a show but we don’t want to play a club. We’ve already played the club three times; we want something different.’”
Justin Townes Earle (Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins)
Take blues/country singer Justin Townes Earle, scheduled to perform at the Autry’s Heritage Court on Feb. 25 with Dawn Landes and traditional string band Triple Chicken Foot, who will be out in the plaza. We hear ticket sales are going very well.
“There’s a certain amount of prestige to it, to be able to say, ‘Oh, we’re performing at the museum,’” Garo said. “It’s not just like you’re in a dark room drinking a beer watching a band…. There’s a kind of interactiveness to it.”
Besides the Autry, Spaceland has been programming concerts at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and The Getty for several years now. It is also one of the forces behind L.A. Unheard, a concert series based on the Brand X column that features up-and-coming, largely local bands. The kickoff concert, with Lord Huron, Gamble House and Abe Vigoda, took place in January at the Autry.
“We’re always looking for new spaces, new alliances with museums and institutions,” Garo said.
The Chapin Sisters performed with John Grant at the Autry in December (Photo by Danielle Klebanow )
“For us it’s a challenge and it’s a great creative opportunity. The uniqueness of the space opens it up to different ideas. So you’re not just booking a show, you’re kind of creating this event. I think people like that.”
Garo said music acts now have to deal with much more competition in terms of entertainment options, from live performance to live-streaming on the Internet. So the novelty of an unconventional space may encourage those not familiar with a particular band to check it out because there are bonuses: usually more than one group plays, and between acts the concert goers can also take in an exhibition or art show. There’s also a comfort factor, given that the Autry is in an area of Los Angeles that is home to many members of local bands.
Garo said the music business also has changed dramatically in the last 20 years or so, given that
Audience members listen to Lord Huron from the Autry atrium in January (Photo: Grimy Goods)
sales of recorded music have become a much smaller part of how artists make their living.
“The live performance (and) selling your merchandise is the one area where the artist can really create a strong income for themselves,” Garo said. “Now there’s new deals, they’re called 360 deals, where the record labels also get involved in the merchandise and the live performance … It’s not just the recording thing; they’re looking at essentially the whole package.”
All that notwithstanding, the changes in the business have made for openings for all kinds of groups that, though dynamic onstage, might have been shut out in the past because of paltry record sales. And that’s encouraging to Garo.
“I think it’s good that the independents can have a career,” she said. “You can be a small band and
The Lord Huron concert at the Autry (Photo: Grimy Goods)
tour a lot and be really good and credible and you don’t need the huge corporate campaign.”
She was particularly gratified to see that Arcade Fire won Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 13. (If you don’t know who they are, you’re in good company, by the way).
“That was a huge thing,” Garo said. “They were essentially this band that started out on this small label, Merge, and they’ve stayed on that label their whole career and they’ve continued to grow. The booking agency they’re with is an independent booking agent; it’s not a William Morris or a CAA. They’ve grown with the agency.”
Garo says independent acts have a flexibility that the larger industry now needs.
“You can do things quicker and cheaper and you can make changes really easily,” she said. “You can be very responsive, very proactive … The major record companies are shifting because they can’t survive it. When you have that hierarchy and all that, things just take a lot longer.”
