A problem in the town of Clemson and its surrounding area that affects me is the size and quality of its music scene. The campus and town as a whole is affected by this issue. It really only affects people with more diverse tastes in music. Some people don’t acknowledge this at all if they are not music geeks. Those people are happy with going to see the occasional washed-up band performed. Then they are people like me that have to travel to other cities to catch a good live show. I have not seen much progress towards having a diverse music culture. For instance, the Astro, which used to be a movie theater but shut down years ago, would be a great place to create a cool venue but the owner has not done anything with it.
So, why has nothing been done to move forward? Where's the progression towards having a music culture? My father used to book music at a local coffee shop when my family used to live here and he explained to me the struggle of getting people to come to shows. The concerts at the coffee shop became more popular while my dad was there and Clemson was on the verge of becoming more mature musically. However, because of poor management, the coffee shop eventually closed down and the town went back to being its normal uncultured self.
My research will be conducted performing a musical experiment. I will try to book music at a local venue and observe its turn out. If people show up, then it will prove that the town wants to hear good music but there is just no one providing it. If the turn out is bad and no one shows up, the town as a whole does not care about local music.
Some challenges I know I will face ahead will be the time commitment that comes along with trying to plan a music event. Having volunteers help me out with this will be a HUGE key to overcoming some of the future problems. Other concerns I have are the process of contacting musicians and having a venue let me go through with this. My father will be someone that will assist me on this project because he knows quite a few musicians that would play from when he used to book music at a coffee shop here in town. For this idea to occur, I will need volunteers to help!
I took this picture at a Jackson Browne show in San Francisco.
Credits:
Created with images by Unsplash - "audience concert music" • Pexels - "audience band concert" • jxffsmxth - "concert crowd concert crowd" • thezenderagenda.com - "Reptar (5/22/14)" • thezenderagenda.com - "Parkington Sisters (6/4/14)" • Pexels - "audience concert light"