Era’s End

Liddel Power Station (decommisioned) with Bayswater active behind, Hunter Valley, NSW.

I find it difficult to imagine a dazzling future for traditional musicians. I mean those operating within the paradigm we associate with that era of popular music… you know, the good-ole stuff we grew up with. I see it disappearing faster than I’d ever imagined. I’d say straight-up , I’m not exactly being stopped in my tracks, but the shape of things has changed and I don’t see how the practice can stay completely healthy, let alone return to any version of former glory. It simply has to change, or just stop existing as some would like it to. Of course, COVID had a hand in banging a few nails into this coffin… even though venues were already on their knees. In Sydney, the lock-out laws a few years earlier did a power of good for property investors, many of them off-shore, that just fed into the after-hours ghost town we see today. It’s awful. Even Kings Cross is a corpse. When younger acts talk about a tour, they usually mean going away for a couple of shows over the weekend. There’s just very little cache left. Kids at school talk about the gigs they are gonna do when they are set loose in society, but what exactly will be left to do? House concerts? I’m still grateful for Melbourne though. >>>> Naturally, things evolve. They have to. Liddel Power Station is decommissioned now, a casualty of the advancing renewable power market, the big players in the game deciding to let it slide into obsolescence. I’ve traveled past this place more times than I care to imagine. As a kid it was like some kind of powerful symbol. I used to stop now and then to listen to it rumbling away, sending out all it’s volts, many of which I thoroughly enjoyed using. But I’m happy for that to fall silent. There’s other way of skinning a cat. Day by day, those ways are arriving and taking the place of the old.  Bring that on.  >>>>  My brother bought a Tesla last year, the more humble Model Y, yet the performance of that thing is insane. There’s little doubt it’s the future of motoring, but I’d be loath to take one out into some serious bush. Sure enough, something will arrive to take care of that side of things, but I wish I could say the same thing about playing live music on a stage in front of interested people. Several large scale festivals have bitten the dust, the overheads simply being too much and the number of ready punters seemingly too few. Let’s not even discuss the prospect of recorded music. Daniel Ek refers to that as “content”. He also reckons it costs us peanuts to produce. Insulting at best, but it’s a lie. If Metallica’s Lars Ulrich seemed petty and enraged at Napster a number of years back, I’m assuming he has his ducks in a row with Spotify and Tidal and ——- insert your favoured music app here ——-- . My own group struggles to pull together a decent run of shows today that would’ve have been a cakewalk 15 years ago. I just think it’s end-times for this era. The sun is setting on it. It’s hard to see it any other way.  >>>>  See you at a gig soon.