Thursday, March 29, 2012
Music Big Condos and Broken Teeth: Celebrating 5 Years of DIY Institution Death By Audio
Posted by Bill Pearis on Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 11:31 AM
Page 4 of 6
MC: This is something both Edan and I feel really strongly about. When we first started out, one of the other guys involved who wanted to use the space for his office, he was all 'Man, I don't give a fuck. I'd totally put a giant Nike swoosh at the front door if we could get $500 from it.' Well that's the difference between me and him. I don't mean to sound like we're the only good guys and everybody else sucks, but I do feel good that our priorities are not about co-branding and banners behind the stage and that sort of thing. For us, this is not about making money, it's about making music. We're a non-profit organization. We're not out to get rich. Our venue will eventually close and none of us are going to be able to buy a house with the money we made from it. And I think as a culture, we need to be thinking more about how we value things. Unfortunately, no one wants to buy music so people have to start making money through branding and cross-marketing. I think itís pretty vapid and pretty pathetic of our society.
You've done some renovations in the past couple years. You have A/C now...
MC: There's air conditioning. We redid our whole soundsystem, it's all new. These days, it's fair to say I have responsibilities but when I'm in the show space it's as an audience member. To my ears, it's the best room to see bands. I say this, believe me, without bias. I just think it sounds really good, especially now. We have a great PA in the room, really nice size. It's just live enough, it's not weird, like you're on the left side it sounds like ass, but if you're close to the band you can't hear anything. There's so many places, especially smaller ones, and I think we sound great.
Any planned improvements in the near future?
EW: I think it's pretty good right now. There was always a list. Next we need these new power amps, we need this new mixer. We need to fix the stage. We need to fix the ceiling. But right now we're pretty much there.
MC: When Edan came in it was like a breath of fresh air. Jason and I... things can sometimes get stagnant when you'e just working with one person. Someone loses interest, it's a stalemate. But it was nice. Edan was like, 'Okay, what are we going to do?' I can't think of a whole lot of things we'd fix. I guess, the only thing I donít like about our venue is our bathroom is always gross. But I don't think there's anything you can do about that.
EW: He's tried. I've tried.
MC: I hand silk-screened these abstract blobs. I said to myself, I'll wheat-paste these over tags, it'll look nice and people will respect this weird art thing. No! No! The fucking first day, full wall tag.
EW: Before that, I painted the bathrooms, wheat-pasted Showpapers... nothing worked.
Comments (4)
Showing 1-4 of 4
People who saved…
Top Commenters
