COVER CHARGES

This one is easy.... I can not speak for venue owners should they decide that's what they need to or have to do but if comes down to my decision, that decision will be no. First of all, it is NOT a cover charge. A cover charge is money that is paid to an establishment who hosts entertainment that performs 'copyrighted' music that was written by someone else, so that they (the venue) can pay licensing fees to ASCAP and BMI, who in turn pays them (original artists who own the copyrights) for permission to perform their songs. Neither of these corporations feel there is anything to gain by bullying their way into SL and forcing the Lindens to cough up money for licensing so that the SL artists can continue to peform cover tunes therein. If that happens, you can rest assured that the live music scene in Second Life will change drastically. And not for the better, needless to put too fine a point on it. Secondly, I fully

understand the costs and level of commitment that it takes to have a live music venue in a lagging SL economy, but that same lagging economy also determines who can or can not attend a live concert event. Or any event for that matter if there is money involved, no matter how great or how small. Many folks in SL do not have the steady income that many performing SL artitst enjoy. Many will not come if they don't feel that can spare a few lindens to tip the artists. I feel that a mandatory charge to enter a venue will reduce the number of attendees even further, causing greater stress to an already suffering SL live enertainment scene. Lastly, most of the

people who come to hear ME play are repeat customers who come weekly, some even daily and I depend on their continued patronage and support. There is simply no way that I'm going to ask them to pay a mandatory fee to come and hear mostly the same songs over and over again. That is unreasonable. I am for tring to find a way to help out venues to recoup their losses but I cannot agree with a mandatory charge for entrance. My suggestion would be for anyone charging more than 10K for an SL performance to please try to bring it back to SL levels instead of trying to get the same amount of money that you 'might' expect to get in an RL gig. It's not the same thing folks. Let's keep it in perspective please.

 

BOOM PONY MUSIC CLUB

Sept. 2, 2009: Long time faithful Continuum supporters Andi Karsin and Kiran Sporg

(pictured here) opened their very own live music venue called The Boom Pony Music Club and the grand opening party was held on Wednesday night. Aside from myself who opened the show after some annoying lag induced stream issues, Allister Westland took the stage for an hour followed by Funky Freddy Republic and a mavelous time was had by one and all as far as I could tell.

AFTERWORD

Special thanks go to Vid Flinders, proprietor of the Enchanted Beach Club (pictured below) for donating his time and equipment to help set up lighting at Ka Leo Lani Hawaiin Beach club on Discovery Island

RETURN....

MrJoe Minotaur
MsDoctorFeelGood Lovett
Mshenny Lykin
Mysty Mersand
Nany Kayo
Nicholas Charlesworth
Paula Leeming
PeeWee Xomotron
PepperPicaboo Pevensey
Perri Turner
Raquel Perry
Raquella Ella
Raredread Nightfire
Richy Nervous
Riker Anabuki
Rosso Franizzi
Roy Mildor
Sabine Mortenwold
Sandy Griffith
Shaun Macpherson
Shear Khandr
Shilow Carter
Shiny Cristole
sinjin2003 Lean
Sioux Nikolaidis
Soprano Shim
Speights Kira
Stevie Roux
Susan Bearsfoot
Sussie Pera
tallulah Contepomi
tiwiwass Deerhunter
Tom Windlow
Toth Mannonen
TS Darrow
Twilight Lowtide
Tyler Gregg
Whisper Gravois
Wilson Hallison
xO Xu
Zanzibar Beck
Zena Karas

As always, a very special "Thank you" goes out to the following folks for their very kind tips, contributions and patronage

Unplugged continued....

backing tracks, for lack of a better way to put it, I guess because I know what goes into such an endeavor as that is how I do things, but if the voice is good enough to pull it off so that it 'sounds good' then I'm not going to complain. I put a lot of orchestration in to some of the songs that I perform because well... i'm not a singer... never have been other than a back ground singer who might have had five or six songs that I sang the lead parts on, so my voice can use all the help it can get... but I did the work... I programmed the music and performed it in real time into the sequencer. That's one of the fun parts of the process. So at the end of it all, it might not be 100% live, but for good or bad... it is 100% me.

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IN MEMORY OF...

It is with great sadness that we say good bye to long time friend and Continuum supporter, Blood Klotzel who died unexpectedly on Thursday, August 20 at age 37. His RL and SL partner Sandi Benelli and he have been a very big part of the live music scene in Second Life for as long as I can remember and we will all miss him terribly.