My Exit - The Nightclub Band Scene, ca. 1990
This post may come across as a self-pity retrospective but let me state up front that the following series of events and trends led me to quit performing music, marry my wife of 30+ years, obtain a college education, and realize a mostly fulfilling and progressive professional career for almost 30 years before returning to (non-touring) music. It casts light on an unusual confluence of several trends and events that practically put a stake in the heart of performing as a cover band (playing popular radio music), at least in Southeastern Massachusetts, which served as my base of operations. Musicians survived, maybe a few thrived, but the overall impact was detrimental to many.
I reference on my home page that my older brother and sister were in nightly-performing bands well before me, touring New England states during the advent and heyday of live, cover rock bands. One aspect of this heyday was a drinking age of 18. A few years before I began performing, Massachusetts (MA) raised the drinking age to 21 following a national trend. Nightclubs (and bands) immediately lost a large chunk of their youthful and enthusiastic clientele. My older brother, Thom, performed in a duo up to 1982, when they would consistently pack a 1600-person-capacity nightclub on Cape Cod on weekends. He re-wrote and sang a parody of The Bee Gees’ “(The Lights Went Out In) Massachusetts,” tweaked to “When the drinking age went up in Massachusetts….Massachusetts was one place not to be / Massachusetts really sucks when you’re nineteen.” This was only one early phase in the denigration of the nightclub scene for cover bands in the area.
Mothers against Drunk Driving (MADD) had been founded in 1980 to address an understandably concerning trend of death, injuries, and car accidents due to drunken driving. Its effects were In full force by the later 1980’s. In MA, the crackdown was steady, and not unrelated to the drinking age change in spirit, with police roadblocks and other disincentives to drive or even get into a car after drinking - especially at nightclubs at 1-2 AM. Risk-averse fans would think twice before heading out to support bands in MA and elsewhere. I recall the Vermont drinking age remained 18 at the time, and a massive club in Brattleboro was my band’s largest crowd venue by far in the mid 1980’s.
In the 1980’s, the VHS - precursor to the DVD and later streaming services (for our younger readers) - became the primary means of home video entertainment. For about $3, you could go to a Blockbuster video store, browse the shelves, select a movie after its cinema run, and view it as an end-around to what was available on network and cable television. You could buy a six-pack of beer, enjoy the comfort and privacy of your own home, watch a selected movie, and evade the dangers of a DUI arrest. This was compared to the cost of paying a possible “cover” (entry) charge at a club and then paying marked up nightclub drink prices, then dodging police on the ride home. No thank you.
Speaking of economizing, the “Gulf War Recession” hit in July 1990, lasting several months. Unemployment rose, and my hometown of New Bedford had been primarily working class to begin with. A large influx of poor and homeless individuals compounded the situation. As someone who was born in, grew up in, and spent a quarter of a century in New Bedford, I can firmly state that ~1990 marked a critical turning point in its transition from a middle class/blue collar fishing and factory city to a (mostly) blighted ghetto. I vividly remember being vigilant and defensive when out late alone during my last year of performances. Not a financially inviting nor safe time for nightclubbing into the AM.
On a lighter note, Karaoke became popular in the U.S. during the 1980’s, and this also provided an active alternative to supporting cover bands: why watch someone else sing if I can sing along with the music from a song myself, in front of a live audience, while being fed the lyrics on a video screen? There were also frequent competitive opportunities to win cash in karaoke contests. Meanwhile DJs, from their Disco heyday in the 1970’s, continued to be in vogue at the time, also muscling in on nightclub crowd attention and job opportunities at a lower cost to club owners than bands. Cover bands were also just much less cool than ten years earlier.
Speaking of less cool, a course correction in popular music also factored into my personally waning club performance days. By 1990, keyboard-focused pop and New Wave music was well on the out, as the almost keyboardless Grunge/Seattle movement was on the rise, serving as a flannel shirt, anti-Duran Duran, 180 degree reaction to 80’s pretty boy and big hair bands, much like ripped jeans and t-shirt Punk served as an in-your-face reaction to fluffy Disco and virtuoso Progressive Rock over a decade before. As a keyboardist, I was more than a bit of a dinosaur by 1990.
The numbers spoke clearly. My crowd sizes went from 150-200 people regularly in attendance on a weekly Wednesday ~1986 New Bedford gig with my five-piece band to playing weekend after weekend for 10-25 lukewarm people with my duo in 1990. A convergence of simultaneous factors pushed almost all nightclub acts into a corner. There may have been some exceptions. There was a Grateful Dead tribute band that maintained its niche following, and Baby Boomer fans from my brother’s and sister’s crowds exhibited more supportive nightclub staying power than my 80’s generation crowd. In any case, thankfully, my decision to get a “real job” was made easy.