Toad turns 15!

One of my favorite places on Earth is Toad, a little hole-in-the-wall bar in Porter Square, Cambridge, MA.  

Over the past fifteen years, Toad has served up free, great live music every single night. It's become the focal point of a flourishing community of local musicians and music lovers.  

When I was living just a few blocks away, I'd go there at least once or twice a week. My favorites were Monday nights for Anita Suhanin and Tim Gearan's bands (they've been playing there every single Monday for about eight years!) and Sundays for Session Americana (a mishmash of super talented local musicians; they've since moved their residency down the street to the Lizard Lounge).  

I met a lot of amazing people and made a lot of my favorite memories at Toad.  (Had the pleasure of playing there a few times, too, with The Unlikely Cowboys, Jess Tardy, and Rose Polenzani.)

That's why I was psyched to get an email from Toad's mailing list about their 15th anniversary celebration.  Check out the musicians who got their start there!

TOAD TURNS FIFTEEN! Though it's hard to believe, this June marks the  15th  anniversary of TOAD.  It's pretty rare for a club to thrive for that long, but it seems this  venerable little  haunt is standing the test of  time with flying colors.  With this in mind we've put together a two-day  festival featuring just a few of the movers and shapers  that have helped  mold the club into a premier music destination,  and made it such an integral part of the Boston music  scene.     Given the size of the room, it would have seemed  unlikely that G. Love and Special Sauce, Tracey  Bonham,  Patty Griffin, Morphine, Jen Trynin, Guster, and  Lori McKenna would all have played some of their  first gigs here -- or that Pearl Jam's Eddie  Vedder or Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith would have  dropped in  and played ... but they did.  And while  those stories certainly  help to build an image and create a rich history,  the real  story of TOAD is not just a trip down memory  lane.   It's about what the club has come to mean to the  artists and  patrons of the local music scene.  The  success of TOAD  is evident in the new bands that play here now,  the terrific people who operate, book, and  nurture it,  the great beer on tap, and above all, the  music  that is still going on free of charge, 7 nights a  week,  just as it did the first night we opened 15 years  ago.   We hope you'll celebrate with us this  month!   TOAD CELEBRATES FIFTEEN YEARS! JUNE 21st and 22nd Music, Food and Festivities  Starts at 3:00 As always ... no cover!

Congratulations, Toad gang!

If you're in Cambridge, you should check out the 15th anniversary party.  If you can't make it, make a point of going some other night.  I'd recommend starting with a Monday.  It's across the street from the Porter Square T station (look for the purple neon sign), and it's free.

1912 Massachusetts Avenue

Cambridge, MA 02140

(across from the Porter Square T stop)

www.toadcambridge.com

Fun fact: I was there the night that Eddie Vedder showed up for a little improptu performance with my friend Matt's band (Crown Victoria, with Bill Janowitz from Buffalo Tom).  Unfortunately, I left about ten minutes before Eddie showed up.  =P

Flea breaks my heart.

[ Update (5/18/06, 2pm): This was originally intended as a comment to a post on Fred Wilson's blog. To get a sense of context, check out the discussion here and here. By the way, I've since listened to the record in question, Stadium Arcadium, and it's awesome -- check it out if you haven't already. ]

[ Update 2: Fred responded. Also, he likes my band. =)]

I'm thinking that there are a couple of separate questions here that are getting a little muddled.

High fidelity

1. You can get uncompressed versions of Stadium Arcadium via bittorrent.
2. It's a mistake to assume that CDs represent the upper ceiling of audio fidelity. In fact, most music nowadays is recorded and mixed at better-than-CD quality. It's downsampled during mastering to fit CD specifications. My sound card can decode 24-bit audio; my CD player can't do better than 16-bit. So digital distribution can, and will, enable better-sounding music. It's just a question of bandwidth and storage... and we all know what's happening there.
3. Practically speaking, all this talk of audio quality is irrelevant. The musician (and recording engineer) in me completely empathathizes with RHCP's desire for people to hear their music as they intended it to sound. But, for better or for worse, most listeners don't notice the difference, and most of the ones who do simply don't care. That's why everyone's rocking out to lo-fi mp3s through crappy earbuds.

So, like Bob Lefsetz said, Flea's fidelity argument simply doesn't hold water. The larger question is really about...

Stealing music

Here's what I'm predicting: Musicians will eventually sell their music directly to consumers. Once this day arrives, we'll find that people are far less willing to steal from a struggling independent artist than from Warner Music Group et al., and piracy will work itself out. Until then... well, look at it this way. The $20 a teenager spends on Stadium Arcadium is probably worth a lot more to him, compared to the 50 cents that RHCP sees from the transaction.

Actually, hold on, I'm not totally convinced that musicians really will sell directly to consumers. They might find that they'll have to give their music away for free to get anyone to listen. If you can't swallow that, look at what blogs are doing to print media. Look at what YouTube's doing to TV and Hollywood. Plenty of people are willing to create for the intrinsic rewards of creating... and some of them are actually good at what they do, which is bad news for people trying to sell music. We're all going to be fighting for consumers' attention, and it'll get increasingly easy for those people to ignore music that they have to pay for.

But that begs a very, very important question -- how IS anyone going to make a living as a musician? Ok, here's some food for thought... doesn't seem to be a date on this RollingStone.com article, but it sounds like it's from around '04 or '05. Here's the interesting bit:

ON THE ROAD The Peppers played the world's highest-grossing concert stand last year, earning $17 million for three shows in London's Hyde Park.
ON CD The band's 2003 Greatest Hits CD is still selling, and it earned about $3 million in publishing royalties.

I'm sure Flea's not blind to the fact that the bulk of the money in his pocket comes from the road ($17M for THREE SHOWS?!). File-sharing doesn't hurt concert attendance -- in fact, the resulting word of mouth almost certainly drives attendance.

Flea was one of my heroes growing up. And now either he's sadly misinformed about the state of the industry, or he's pulling some Lars Ulrich bullshit. Either way, he's slapping the wrists of people who love his music. And that breaks my heart.