The Listening Room

Listening and popular music don’t necessarily go together. This was brought home to me again when (my wife) Linda and I were attempting to listen to a fine set by a young Pittsburgh singer-songwriter named Brooke Annibale at the Club Café. We had gotten there later than we should have, and found seats at the bar. Before long it became clear that a multi-generational group between us and the stage were not there for the music—turning their backs to the stage and raising their voices as the music began. In that Pittsburgh’s Carson Street on the South Side is home to dozens of bars without the annoyance of music and that there was a $7 cover charge to get in to the Club Café, it was a bit puzzling as to why a dozen or so people were intent on ruining the experience of the 90% of the room who were listening. Does this make the Club Café exceptionally bad in this regard? No, it’s the best room in Pittsburgh outside of concert halls for listening to music.

The notion of listening to popular music is a recent one. Popular music, even folk music, has had as a primary function providing a sound track for other activities, mostly dancing and socializing, throughout its history. When what is now known as classical music was “popular,” that was its function as well. Virtually every musical genre you could think of began life as a dance music (see Elijah Wald’s new book How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll for a real nice history—more on this later). Somewhere in the 60s, when jazz became “America’s classical music” (as NPR endlessly reminds us), FM album-oriented formats flourished, folk made it to the concert hall, and Sergeant Pepper and Dylan came along to intellectualize rock ‘n roll, listening became a common experience. Listening rooms included rock clubs with tables, coffee houses, and all the showcase clubs up and down Bleeker Street in New York. Not much left of any of that: the tables have come out of the rock clubs, the coffee houses are gone, and the Bleeker St. clubs offer a continuous stream of artists playing short nameless sets for $5 entry. At least there’s some money involved: Austin’s Sixth Street and Nashville’s Broadway offer mostly top-notch musicians playing for tips.

My personal experience includes playing the UK folk circuit in the 70s, mostly composed of the back rooms of pubs, but where people paid a few quid to listen attentively to the locals and to the traveling featured performer. As a listener my recent high points have come at the BlueBird café in Nashville and at the Mississippi Studios in Portland, Oregon. The BlueBird, particulary, showcases the wealth of Nashville songwriting talent (and you pay to get in). On a column opposite the front door (the actual place is in a strip mall) is the admonishment (S-s-s-h-h-h!). The room takes listening very seriously and enforces its no-talking rule. Mississippi Studios until recently was run by a cooperative (like Caffè Lena in Saratoga Springs now is)) and was set up with pews and folding chairs—and a huge sound system.. All these are exceptional now. A dominant form of supplying entertainment for drinkers now is the “open stage” where unpaid performers play to indifferent audiences talking as loudly as they need to make themselves heard.

There is an argument to be made that the most common listening environment at the moment is the space between two earbuds. Nevertheless, I think it’s important to find a space where people are listening to popular music and support it. Or start one yourself…