Club Troubles

music | Pig - Stage Slut]

I'm troubled by the club situation in Boston. As I've noted elsewhere, the Boston club scene has kind of hit a wall the last few months with the closure of Avalon and Axis, and to a lesser degree, the Modern. They've been closed for "Renovations" into a MegaClub Corporate Entertainment Complex, but since they were still owned by the Lyons group, who has given us 25 years of great clubbery, I knew it couldn't be as bad as I imagined. At that point I didn't know they'd sold the Paradise months ago. How did I manage to miss the entire loop here, let alone be in it.

Now I know it's worse, they're going to become a House of Blues...

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I can't help but think this will be the last we see of Skinny Puppy in Boston, for instance. All the bands that fill a 2000 person club are moving to the horrible seats of the Orpheum, and many others just aren't coming to Boston.

In the thread I was reading, cooler heads did eventually prevail. People noted that LiveNation has booked every show at Avalon, Axis and the Paradise for probably the last 4 years anyway, so it's likely that nothing would really change, other than that we'd get a new room. I still don't think a lot of the acts that I've seen at Avalon will fit into the House of Blues Paradigm. I really don't know about the club nights. What of Gay Night (they still do that right? I don't care, it was rad and should be mourned in any case). What of KMFDM, SP, TKK, etc? Do other House(s) of Blues(s) book industrial?

I am trying to decide whether it's time to accelerate the Move to The Bay Area Plan, Phase 1. I've never even been west of Indianapolis, but aside from the cost of living, which is pretty bad here anyway, what would be the downside? I'm pretty sure I could get an IT/Network Engineer job in about 6 minutes out there, we have enough equity in our home for a solid downpayment on a new one. And we'd be close to good clubs, with good club nights, that book good music.

I feel like we get NYC's scraps, and I'm damn tired of it. Someone give me a reason to stay in Boston. Ok, here's several (upcoming shows, the ones I can remember anyway):

Bob Mould + Halou(!)
Saul Williams
Amanda Palmer + Boston Pops (yay 4th row)
Natalie Merchant + Boston Pops
The Breeders
KRS-One
Pink Martini
(Special Teamz) - maybe

Plus there's still Harpers Ferry for quirky small shows. mc chris, Kook Keith, HorrorPops, etc.