Quote:

I think you have a 100% incorrect view of the "home concert" scene.



No, I have a 100% correct view of the home concert scene HERE. I don't know where you are, but the only one I know of here is a guy who holds "concerts" in his breezeway once a month with little known country and folk artists. I went twice to check it out. It was the same 30 people there both times, all totally hammered by 9pm, with a covered dish food spread in the garage. It was a nice party atmosphere, but hardly a concert. As the night went on and people became more intoxicated, the little conversation groups started to where I couldn't even hear the artist over the low rumble of conversation with people talking about how good the dip was, asking who needed another beer..... that is not a concert by any remote definition of the word.

A "concert" is where the artist is on a stage a few feet above the rest of the room, and people actually pay attention because they have paid money to buy tickets to see THIS performer, not just whoever Bob found to play this month.

This is closely related to how fading artists who can't fill the Mega Mondo Enormodome anymore play 200 seat rooms and rationalize it by spewing the over the hill artist party line of that "I wanted to do a tour of more 'intimate' rooms so I could be closer to my fans" nonsense. Why not just admit that your fame has faded and you don't have enough fans to fill a 20,000 seat hall anymore and move ahead with your life?

A place very near my home, just this year, has The Rippingtons, Eddie Money, The Tubes, and whatever remnants there are of Blue Oyster Cult playing there. I saw all of those bands (The Tubes 3 times) play a venue (since torn down) that held 20,000 and they all sold it out. When you reach a place where you are straining to sell 350 tickets, maybe it's time to learn how to weld, sit back, and pray for royalties while you patch motorcycle frames with your welder.

I saw John Elefante, one of the AMAZING vocalists in the alumni roster of Kansas, ran a Kickstarter project to raise $35,000 to put out a new album. A guy with that kind of pedigree needed to beg the public to give him money to make a CD? Marshall Crenshaw, someone who I think is a GREAT writer, also ran a Kickstarter to raise $32,000. This is a guy who wrote songs that Bette Midler covered and was the John Lennon player in Beatlemania and he has to beg the public for money? There isn't a label out there who will front him $32,000 to produce a series of 6 small EPs?

If those 2 guys needed to beg for funding, what chance does a nobody level guy (like me for example) have?

I'll answer. None.

Steve had it right in the other post. It's a shame we gotta get old. When Todd Rundgren, my all time ultimate musical hero, is playing rib burnoffs......

I am using the new 1040XTRAEZ form this year. It has just 2 lines.

1. How much did you make in 2023?
2. Send it to us.