Miami Music Blog

Damn, Steve! Was that really necessary???!?!

No... we're right in the center of the tri-county area... we all live in different areas but you could say that Pompano is homebase, though one of us lives in Boynton Beach which is very close to WPB. We originally put "Miami" on our MySpace page to let people in other parts of the world know we're from South Florida. They probably wouldn't know where Pompano is, but they'd recognize Miami.

I just find it interesting that every story ever written about us in local papers mentions the fact that we don't play a lot of local shows. Is it praise, or admonishment? I can't think of a single medium-sized venue in all of S. Florida that has a nice sound system, someone who knows how to run it, a stage and some sort of lighting. If you know of one, please pass on the info.

Vagabond is a great club and Rodney is definitely one of the good guys down here. We had a blast when we were there last year, but the show itself was a disaster. We had to hire our own sound person which cost a lot of money and the lighting wasn't set up for bands so we played to an almost dark room. I think there's an outside stage now, but it feels like bands are simply tolerated rather than celebrated. City Limits and Revolution are nice, but you need 300 people (or ten bands on the bill) to make it look even remotely full, and even then they'll only book local acts during the week (if at all). I love playing at The Poorhouse, Repsectable Street and Churchills, but none have the sound requirements for us. We had to, again, hire a sound company for our show this Friday.

On the flipside, we love playing out of town. Why? Well, most other cities like Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Gainseville, and Tallahassee have small to medium-sized clubs with great sound systems, someone to run them, decent lighting, a proper stage and (gasp!) fans of music.

So why can't S. Florida get its shit together? Because the emphasis down here is not on live original music... instead, it's on club life and shitty cover bands. Most of the venues are dance clubs that throw up a stage in a corner, have a shitty P.A. and assume that the band won't mind getting paid for the "priviledge" of playing. There are plenty of places for starting bands to play, and there are great venues for popular touring acts, but what about the tweeners? Bands that have outgrown the small, local venues but aren't big enough (yet?!) to fill the various amphitheatres and halls?

Is this all too much to ask for a major metropolitan area that spans three counties?

And people wonder why festivals die quickly here. It's a transient culture... students, tourists, people moving here, then leaving after a year or so. The thing is, I am not surprised by any of this, I just think it sucks. So if anyone else wonders why The Postmarks are stingy with local shows... there's your answer.

Well, that, and Beat The Press stole all our fans.

I wish that I had ran into this article some time ago. Jonathan pretty much nailed things on the head with the struggle for wanting to put on a good show as opposed to just getting up there and playing. SF just doesn't have the venue for it. I recently have started running into the issue where there is no venue that can accommodate my sound needs and when I do play out need to bring so much stuff out with me that I cannot setup in the allotted 15 minutes in between bands. (I bring my own backdrop, trusses, lighting rigs and sound). It's a pain, but worth it in the end.

I happened to catch the postmarks at a show at propaganda in lake worth and although the sound (and musicianship) was incredible, it certainly felt like something was missing.

Kudos to Jonathan and the postmarks.