10 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
COVER STORY
THURSDAY,APRIL17,2003
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Brandon Baker/Kansan
Kandy the cat sleeps on a warm cd player upstairs at the Love Garden, Lawrence's oldest venue for used records, compact discs and tapes.
Bush said he didn't mind playing and attending shows at smaller venues. That's the nature of Lawrence, and even bigger acts that play at The Bottleneck are closer to the crowd than they might be used to.
chain of business deals.
"Lawrence is snobby," Berard said. "Let's not kid ourselves. But not necessarily in a bad way. People in Lawrence are very punk-oriented, and if you believe in that, you don't really believe in making money on your music."
"It's sad, but if you look at the bands that have gotten really big outside of here, like the Anniversary and The Get Up Kids, those few bands give up school and tour."
"If you look at places like L.A. and Seattle that have been big music cities in the past—those are not college-town bands," Bush said. "The bands that start here are college kids, and college kids can't tour."
Martin Bush of the local band Salt the Earth added that Lawrence bands had a more difficult time going on tour and delivering their sound to the rest of the country.
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"The big venues that I've been to in the last year or so on the coasts seem to have a much more separated feeling going on," Bush said. "There's the crowd and the band, and it's a very divisive line. But in Lawrence, big bands play, and they walk around and talk to people and hang out. At least from what I've seen, that doesn't really happen in bigger cities."
There are other more obvious reasons why Lawrence music can't compete.
Invisible city
Seattle, Nashville and Austin all have
"If you look at places like L.A. and Seattle that have been big music cities in the past those are not college town bands," Bush said. "The bands that start here are college kids, and college kids can't tour."
Martin Bush Member of local band Salt the Earth
Austin recently determined its local music industry was worth about $616 million a year to the local economy. The Seattle and Nashville Chambers of Commerce were not aware of industry reports in their cities, but the idea of such studies gauging the value of local music are always being proposed. The mayor's office in Nashville still gets calls about conducting analysis of the city's music industry.
But Lawrence would never consider analyzing local music in economic terms. It's not likely the Pink House or the Replay Lounge contribute significantly to the city's bottom line. But the intangible value of artistic expression contributes to Lawrence's immeasurable aesthetic.
populations of more than 500,000 people. Lawrence barely reaches 80,000,and about one third of those people are rotating in and out of the city through the University.
That means the more vibrant Lawrence culture becomes, and the less often local
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