BY BEN WINTERS
By all accounts, it was Mayor Michael Bloomberg who personally wrestled the Broadway musicians’ strike to the ground.
"Both sides reported to Gracie Mansion [the Mayor’s residence] about 9 p.m.," on March 10, wrote Times Broadway beat baby Robin Pogrebin, "with the assumption that they essentially would not leave the room until they had a deal." And nor did they. Both sides, the League of American Theatres and P#roducers and American Federation of Musicians Local 802, professed happiness with the results. On the key issue of minimums–that is, how many musicians must be guaranteed employment when a new Broadway show opens–the final number will be 18, down from 24 (the current figure) and up from zero (what the producers were shooting for).
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Mayor
Michael Bloomberg
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Before it was settled, New York’s (and the nation’s and world’s) papers were filled with distressing anecdotes like the one from an Associated Press story, which made it as far as the Hindustan Times in India. It seems a midtown restaurant owner "broke news of Friday’s strike to a restaurant packed with diners rushing to eat before the curtain call. He said a North Carolina girl celebrating her 16th birthday with a trip to see The Lion King burst into tears as her cake was served." True or not, the story says something about how important theatre remains to people. Unless it just says something about 16 year old girls.
Ron Scherer and Stacey Vaneck Smith over at the Christian Science Monitor connected the labor troubles on the Great White Way to those currently going on all over the country amongst those who labor under the baton. "Orchestras are in bankruptcy, performance seasons are being canceled, and violinists are holding strike signs, not a Stradivarius." That includes in Houston, where on March 9 the orchestra musicians walked "after five months of negotiations failed to yield a compromise."
Houston, Broadway, and where else? "The San Antonio Symphony, which has already cut its musicians’ wages by 20 percent, has been unable to meet its payroll. The Savannah (Ga.) Symphony canceled the rest of its season when it couldn’t pay a $1.2 million debt. Even in cultured Boston, musicians are expecting cuts in the face of reduced state grants." (Kind of makes it sound like San Antonio and Savannah aren’t cultured, doesn’t it?)
One of the most troubling elements of the Broadway strike was that apparently theatre in the rest of New York didn’t really get a box office boost. The tourist trade basically said, if we can’t see Les Miz, we’ll just stay in our hotel, thanks.
Listen, Keith: You Are Also Very Old
The Rolling Stones’ first-ever tour of China, supporting their greatest hits record 40 Licks, has generated a lot of press, in part because the Chinese government is being a bit prickly about the whole thing. When they play Shanghai on April 1 and Beijing on April 4, explained the International Herald Tribune, the band "will not be allowed to play 'Brown Sugar,’ 'Honky Tonk Woman,’ 'Beast of Burden’ and 'Let’s Spend the Night Together,’…all of which include sexual references." Has someone fooled the Chinese Ministry of Culture into believing there are no sexual references in the rest of the Stones catalog?
Here’s a great enigmatic quote about the tour that turned up in various stories. It’s from Keith Richards, who may be a comically addled guitarist but who is clearly a statesman at heart. "It’s always nice to go somewhere new. China...is very old."
Speaking of the Rolling Stones, Rolling Stone magazine came out in mid March with its list of the richest people in rock and roll. Number one was Paul McCartney, prompting Reuters to remember him singing "I don’t care too much for money," at some point–whether he cares for it or not, he made $72 million of it in 2002. Second on the list of wealthy pop stars was, yes, the Rolling Stones, and third was Dave Matthews Band.
Most interesting in the Reuters report on the magazine's annual list was this sentence: "Touring was the bread and butter of most of the top entries on the list in a year in which record sales plummeted."
Indeed, the record business is quaking, and casting about for ways to ensure that the whole idea of purchasing recorded music doesn’t go the way of the 8-track tape. Hence a rash of stories recently on SACD and DVD-A, two fancy new audio technologies jostling for space at the Tower, and for a toehold in the minds of consumers who can log on to KaZaA for free.
Lawrence B. Johnson lauded DVD-audio in his techie column in the Detroit News. "Move it on over, CD" said the headline in the Daily Camera, a Boulder, Col. newspaper. (That’s a George Thorogood reference–Thorogood also turned up in an article in the Oregonian, March 14, in the context of a local phenomenon called Klingon Karaoke. 'Bad to the bone,’ as it turns out, is "qqqqab,HomDaq jIqab!" in Klingon.")
Both SACD/DVD-A stories suggest that real music lovers will continue to pay for the "emotional satisfaction" of opening a disc instead of downloading something–especially if that disc can essentially create Surround Sound in your house.
When Will It End?
Just what the national theatre community needs–more bad news. "Major cultural institutions in the Twin Cities announced layoffs and program cutbacks this week," wrote John Habich in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on March 14, "in an economic climate one official called 'The Perfect Storm’ of nonprofit fundraising." Then comes the all-too-familiar laundry list: Guthrie Theatre cutting staff by 10 percent next year, the Ordway doing about the same.
In terms of box office problems, Habich notes "buying patterns" phenomena similar to those making things hard for producers in New York, Chicago, and everywhere. "Patrons are buying at the last minute, purchasing fewer package deals, standing in low-price rush lines and eagle-eyeing discount deals."
Times are equally, and similarly, tough all over.