Generally, I Don’t Speak Ill of the Dead
I refuse to accept that punk is less appealing to kids than it was in previous decades. Gigs are still just as slimy, dark, and angry as they ever were, and I truly believe that teenagers live for dirty, angry, dumb garbage. But, as I’ve gotten older, the crowd at your average show started looking like the crowd at a Smiths DJ night (which, as a teen, was nearly as unappealing as a high school dance or some adult cocktail party). This is an almost universally accepted demographic shift, and I’ve heard a lot of people speculate on the reasons. Rather than ask what the reasons might be, I’m here to offer some (probably fruitless) solutions.
1. Book All Ages Shows
This is nothing new, and I’m sure I couldn’t say it any better than that raving lunatic from Another State of Mind, So here is his take: “The cramps come through here and they play a bar—21 and over. They ultimately eliminate three quarters of their audience by playing a bar. What the hell are they going to play a bar for? Who can go see them? Their fans can’t fucking go see them. It’s bullshit.”
2. Free Gigs for everyone under 18
There are a ton of laws that prohibit or restrict child labor here in the USA. The result being that kids are dead broke. Some freshman in high school might want to come to your dumb gig, but he doesn’t want to have to beg his mom for the $8 you are charging at the door, on top of begging for a ride. Just make you gig free to everyone under 18. Put that shit on the flyer in big letters—”Free for kids under 18.“ Do this for all your gigs, and try to convince everybody else in town to do the same. It’ll work best if all of the DIY shows in your town are known to be free to everyone under 18. High school kids you don’t really know that well aren’t going to be sitting around trying to figure out what promoter is doing a show. They want to go to all of them, and if it’s a well-known fact around town that all punk gigs are free to all kids, they’ll know that they can bring any friends that they want and they might even be able to pool their money together after the gig to buy a record from the band, or maybe a pizza to share with each other.
Just take the hit. No kids are coming to your shows now anyway. Sacrifice the $8 dollars in the short term so that the scene can be young and vibrant again. Don’t be the selfish dick that fucks this up, ok?
3. Free Beer
Do you know what 16-year-olds want more than anything in life? They want a safe place to drink beer where there isn’t any risk of their parents catching them in the act. The trouble is, none of their friends are of age, nobody believes that they are 31-year-old Greg Solarz as their fake ID claims, and little Billy’s mom walked in on them the last time they were all drinking the rum they stole from their father’s liquor cabinet.
The good news is that little Billy just saw a flyer outside of his school for a gig that happened to say “Free Beer” on it. He and little Timmy are going to check it out. And when they get there, the music will be great, sure, but there will also be two 30-racks of Genny Cream Ale open and available for everyone to help themselves. Timmy and Billy are going to get a little tipsy, and come Monday morning, tell all their friends at school about this basement paradise where bands play hard, idiots beat on each other to the music, and the beer flows like wine, regardless of age.
*Idea #3 has been redacted because some people are just creeps.
4. Flyer
You know how I used to find out about shows when I was in high school? Well, a quick Google search (though I think I was using Yahoo! at the time) of “buffalo punk shows” returned a forum, buffaloshows, that had a really good calendar of shows for reference. I was able to find it because it was an easily searchable neutral space. Facebook is not that. Sure, keep making your facebook event pages, but know that you aren’t going to get little Timmy and his friends out to gigs anytime soon. You have exactly zero mutual friends with any of them and they won’t be able to find your shitty facebook event page, even though they desperately want to find out about gigs.
So, if you want little Billy to get out to gigs, you need to make sure he at least finds out about one.
Start flyering. And don’t just flyer at other shows. Billy hasn’t been to a show yet, so he won’t be able to get one of those. And don’t just hang flyers up near the bars that you and your buddies go to on Saturdays (and Wednesdays and Thursdays). Billy isn’t old enough to go to bars, so he’ll never see that. And don’t just flyer outside of the local alt-leaning restaurants. Billy and his friends only go to Denny’s because that’s the only restaurant that is in walking distance of all of their houses.
You need to get your ass up and start flyering all the trees around the area high schools and middle schools. Your city has about 100 schools. Hit them all.
Have your flyers ready at all times, so when you are driving back to you parents’ house to do your laundry at 3:30pm on a Friday afternoon and you see some 12-year-old with blue hair and a Dead Kennedys t-shirt that you’ve never seen before, you can quickly pull over, yell something like, “hey freaker, you like punk? Come to this gig. Bring your idiot friends too.”
5. Create a scene that’s worth asking your parents for a ride.
Look, I get that you’re 29 years old. I get that you are really into Superchunk right now. I get you’re trying to focus on your pop project that reflects your diverse influences. I get it. But you know who doesn’t get it? 15-year-olds. They want to rage to bands that sound like Jerry’s Kids. They’re just waiting to have their minds blown by a ripping hardcore band at the first show they go to, because there might not be a second show for them if the first one doesn’t blow their mind. And if your new pop project (the one that doesn’t even have a drummer yet and plays songs with really intellectual lyrics) is playing, instead of some Neanderthal-ish, booger-eating hardcore band, well, you just lost us all a potential lifer.
So, what can you do? Well, why don’t you put your pop project on the backburner for a while? In fact, maybe just table it indefinitely. Focus on a real band. You know, the one you wished you could be in when you were 16 if you and your friends could just learn to play your instruments. You’re 29 now, and you can play. Time to start that band that sounds, as you said thirteen years ago, “just like the Faith/Void split, only harder.”
6. Give young bands preference
Ok, so maybe you’ve done everything on this list so far and by some miracle, four 15-year-olds actually start a band (with a really great name like Fart Brigade). Just book them. They want to play a show? Great, book them. It’s already booked up? Kick xAcceptxAllxAlliesx off the gig and put the 15-year-olds on it. xAxAxAx are all 42 years old and they suck anyway. I don’t care if they are your friends. One of them had a baby. They get the boot so that Fart Brigade can play. Make Fart Brigade feel important. They’ll probably flyer to their friends at school. Maybe their friends will be so jealous that the idiots in Fart Brigade are actually playing real shows (and not just the school sponsored pep rally), that they, too, will start bands with equally ill-conceived band names.
7. Record them (for free, jerk).
Kids only learn how to record by watching somebody that knows how to do it. Don’t let them flounder with that 4-track they got at guitar center. Don’t direct them to some professional studio that will make recording seem lofty and too complex to eventually do on your own. Just bring your 8-track and four mics to their practice space and help them record a demo. I know they can’t play to a click. Just help them do the best they can, and have some patience—they’re 15.
8. Put out their demo.
I don’t care that it sounds like garbage. All the best punk records sound like blown out garbage and were made by 17-year-olds. You’ll look back on this as the finest tape you ever put out—the best $100 you ever spent.
And again, they’ll learn by watching you. Walk them through the process as you put out their tape. Maybe they’ll be able to do the next one on their own.
9. Talk to the kids
If you see a random kid at a show, go out of your way to make them feel welcome. Give them a free copy of your bands 7″. Give them a flyer for the next gig with your phone number on the back so that they can call you for a ride if they need one. Maybe offer a ride home. A couple college aged kids used to give me rides to and from shows even though it was out of the way, and that was really encouraging. I felt like I was really welcome, and even though I was 14, I felt like the older guys (Dan and Rita, I really can’t thank you enough) wanted me there and had my back. Even though I was almost too awkward to talk to anyone, I could still count on older people to be my buddies and give me rides, and maybe tell me about cool bands to check out.