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Whisky's
closing is another sign of decay in the music biz |
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The Whisky
is closing on Sunday and one need look no further than the billboards
along our famed Sunset Strip to realize why. Of the 70 billboards now
there, how many would you suppose are music-industry supported?
I asked this question of a dozen people yesterday. Most said half. Two
said 50, one said 30 another one said less than 30. The correct
answer is three. Maybe I didn't ask the right people. All those
questioned were between the ages of 25 and 41, your basic everyday radio
listening audience - the same audience that has been targeted by radio
over the last five years as music's No. 1 market, the same demographic
group that record companies have sought to attract. Who, then, are the
right people? Well, they're not younger, since the broadcasting
industry and the record industry no longer pursue the teen market. We're
talking geniuses who live by demographic slide rules, wizards who tell
us-that because teen-agers are dwarfed in numbers by young adults (remember
zero population growth?), teens don't matter anymore. Go for the postwar
baby boom, they say. Go for America's gusto; sell computers, rent automobiles,
send a handsome couple to Las Vegas. Do anything, they say, but
don't dare try to hawk a Stridex medicated face pad. This is a no-no
today - economic suicide, they say. Eighteen is out, 35 is in. No
street in America mirrors changing pop-culture tastes quite like the
Strip. Four years ago, the Strip's skyline was cluttered with music
related billboards, and now there are only three. One hails Gordon Lightfoot's
appearance at the Universal Amphitheater. But it's Sept. 17 and Lightfoot
played the Amphitheater in August. The second billboard hypes
Johnny Mathis' most recent album, Friends in Love. But Johnny's album
was released in April and it's long since disappeared from the charts.
The third and last music-related billboard is small, but noteworthy,
since it's the only music-related billboard that almost makes sense:
It's the one for the Alley Cats, a group that will play the Strip tonight.
I say almost because the Alley Cats bill board hangs over the Roxy.
The group is headlining the Whisky, not the Roxy. Maybe I'm
splitting hairs, but the billboard above the Whisky is an advertisement
for Lamb's Navy Rum. A few years ago, Lamb's Navy Rum might have been
thought of as the name of a new local band. Lamb's Navy Rum, however,
is what it always was, an alcoholic beverage. Liquor-related
billboards, as a group, dominate the Strip. Of the 70 billboards, 18
are liquor-related. Movies come in second with 13. Coming in third is
Las Vegas with eight. Then cigarettes with seven, followed by menswear
with five. Automobile ads are tied with music, at three. After
that, it's Fatburgers, doughnuts, soft drinks, banks, cameras, airlines,
UCLA football, "this space available," "CHiPs" and
safe driving. And you thought only radio was fragmented in Southern
California. When the '60s generation discovered birth control,
who among us ever dreamed that kids would eventually lose the power
to dictate what kind of music gets played on the radio. Because they're
outnumbered, teenagers no longer dictate anything. The
record industry is feeling the pain because adults don't buy recorded
music. At least they don't buy it in significant numbers until enough
kids tell them that it's really OK and safe to like bands such as the
Alley Cats the Stray Cats or X. And since radio only cares
about reaching adults, and since record executives blindly promote the
very acts radio wants, we have what author Joseph Heller once referred
to as a Catch-Z. So the music business is dying and the Whisky
is closing. This is hardly a coincidence. Believe what you will about
the Whisky management saying that their club is only "closing for
renovation, and will reopen as a dance club in six to eight weeks."
I remember the Starwood people saying something quite similar. And almost
two years later, the Starwood has yet to reopen to the public. OK,
the Strip looks different today. It changes all the time. Now the question
becomes, has it changed for the better or for the worse? Danny
Sugarman, manager of the Whisky's most famous house band the Doors,
remembers how a walk up the Strip held all the excitement and promise
of what would become the most singularly explosive youth movement in
this nation's history. '' "People walked down the street
with tambourines," Sugarman recalled. "It was music against
the establishment, us against them, and it created a spirit of togetherness
and movement. That feeling seemed to return in the late-'70s with bands
like X. There seemed to exist a new sense of relevance and discovery.
But money then became the point and the punk thing strangled itself.
It was too violent and it cut short the era. "I think Sunset
will continue to have more energy than any other street in America,
but right now Sunset is about hookers." Capt. William
Baker of the West Hollywood Sheriff's Department disagrees. "I
don't think the changing of the Strip has anything to do with prostitution,"
he said. "The kids who come to West Hollywood for rock don't patronize
prostitutes. It is my opinion that from Carlos and Charley's west there
has been a lessening of street-walking activity."
Baker, too, is splitting hairs. The hookers have indeed been migrating
west on Sunset, but there's a fine line here. As far as law-enforcement
is concerned, West Hollywood begins on Sunset at Carlos and Charley's.
That the hookers seem to be running into one another in front of Schwab's
Drug Store is not Baker's concern. Schwab's, although technically in
West Hollywood, is under the jurisdiction of the LAPD. It seems only
a matter of time before West Hollywood's finest must face up to the
problem that continues to baffle the LAPD.
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