We've sort of beaten the dead horse enough about old songs so I'll relate this story since Gangham Style was mentioned.

A sax player buddy is a member of the Manhattan Beach Country Club. It's not golf, it's tennis. We've done one or two gigs a year there for 20 years doing mostly Real Book and light fusion stuff. They had a nice restaurant/bar with a Yamaha grand and a small dance floor. This is exactly your type of place Notes. They decided to completely shut down and remodel about 3 years ago. My friend calls me to say he got us gig by the pool about 18 months into the renovation. We show up, and start doing our stuff. The gig was for the end of the tennis tourny. They always have a few touring pros show up for it every year. I notice the crowd around the pool is mostly 25-35 or so. In the middle of the third song the manager comes up to him and says "Sorry, Jerry I have to shut you down, here's your check. We're bringing in a DJ who's going to be here in 15 minutes, please clear the area by then."

The DJ shows up, I had managed to get my keyboards packed up and off to the side but I hadn't schlepped my stuff out to the car yet. The DJ immediately set up one of his speakers and plugged in his phone just to get things started and what was the song? Gangham Style. It was blasting right in the side of my head while I grabbed my stuff. That got the party going, seriously. This was what that gig truly was. At the Manhattan Beach Country Club!! The cheapest house in MB starts at about 1.5 mil and goes up from there. I said the crowd was mostly young. There were maybe a half dozen older folks lounging by the pool and they immediately left along with us. Talk about getting booted off a gig! At least we got paid.

That's when I knew it was the beginning of the end for all of our traditional classic jazz, MOR type of gigs I've been doing for 30 years. This crowd is the kids of the older members and they are taking over.

It makes sense when you think about it. How old are the children of 55-70 year old parents? What music did they grow up with? They come from wealthy families, they're professionals just like their parents, have plenty of money and they're the drivers of the culture now not us. I guarantee these kids wanted to do this 10 years ago but the old guard dies hard.

Like any other revolution it doesn't happen all at once, it's gradual but man, what a wakeup call that was. The renovations completed a few months later, my friend is still a member but the bar is gone, the piano is gone along with the dance floor. No more inside gigs, they'll book parties by the pool and afaik, it's mostly DJ's.

If this happened at the MB Country Club, it's happening at other clubs too.

Bob

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