Quit Your Band! Musical Notes from the Japanese Underground by Martin Ian F

Author:Martin, Ian F. [Martin, Ian F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Awai Books
Published: 2016-11-24T16:00:00+00:00

(1) Make tickets cheaper and more people will come

This is certainly true up to a point. Ticket prices in Tokyo and throughout Japan are stupidly expensive: easily double the equivalent prices in London and quadruple what you could expect to pay in somewhere like LA. Making prices cheaper does encourage more people to come, but not enough. Events in rehearsal studios and some other kinds of music bars, where they’ve compromised on the number of staff employed and/or the quality of the sound gear, are often half price compared to normal live venues in Tokyo, but halving the ticket price doesn’t bring in double the audience. Of course a larger audience buys more drinks, and if venues were willing to loosen their grip on the bar money, formalising a system where event organisers receive a portion of the drink profits over a certain quota could encourage more events to take risks with lower ticket prices. Some venues will make allowances or give bonuses when drink sales are high, but rarely on anything other than an ad hoc basis. Given the low and declining alcohol consumption generally among young people in Japan, one must have at least some sympathy with the venues’ caution here.

(2) Make drinks cheaper and you’ll sell more off the bar

Probably true up to a point, but again not by enough. I’ve known several venues that have tried setting a ¥300 instead of ¥500 standard drinks price and almost without exception they were forced to put the prices up after a while. The truth is that young people in Japan are drinking less and less every year. One venue manager I spoke to complained bitterly about an event with a capacity crowd of a hundred people, and when it came time to tot up drink sales at the end of the night, they’d sold one single drink over the minimum compulsory order the audience pays for upon entry. The hard drinking music fan is a dying species in modern Japan.

(3) Make the venues nicer and they’ll be more attractive places to hang out at

Live venues in Tokyo tend to be drab, featureless places, with rare exceptions – the gorgeous Aoi Heya in Shibuya for example. A typical venue will simply be a black oblong with a bar at one end and a stage at the other: functionality incarnate but a place designed for standing in darkness, staring at a band, not for socialising or having any other kind of fun. One possible reason for this is that venues are seen as interchangeable spaces while the best events and organisers move around from one place to another, bringing their own atmosphere with them wherever they pitch camp. Giving the venue itself too much character might limit moneymaking opportunities from different kinds of event. That aside, it’s hard to argue with the suggestion that the best venues in Tokyo tend to be the ones with a bit of personality, either in their interior design and layout, or their provision of

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