What to do if your town has no scene?

[Disco Nutter]

The scene here is also weak (Bulgaria).

We decided to make a night and got 300 people the first time. A lot of them weren't into dubstep, but gradually started getting into it.
What we did was make it a cross-genre night - hiphop, breaks and dubstep.

After I played my dubstep set (main slot) a couple of people begged me to go do another one, so I consider this one quite a success.

So definitely, if you can - gather a couple of mates from the region and host one night.

Cheers,
Jason

[Y_H]

I live in a small, shitty town that has NO music scene whatsoever. the only live music you get around here is blues and reggae (boring). i've been practicing my DJing and mixing with Traktor and once I feel comfortable enough I'm going to hit all the local bars/clubs and see if I can get a night. But I'm afraid that they're all gonna say no because they've never heard of dubstep, drum 'n' bass, etc. I do have one confirmed gig in November at my friends art show. it's in a pretty big space, probably gonna have 150+ people. any suggestions on what I could do to spark a dubstep scene around my lame town?

my town is worse, your lucky to have live reggae!

[86.]

I live in a small, shitty town that has NO music scene whatsoever. the only live music you get around here is blues and reggae (boring). i've been practicing my DJing and mixing with Traktor and once I feel comfortable enough I'm going to hit all the local bars/clubs and see if I can get a night. But I'm afraid that they're all gonna say no because they've never heard of dubstep, drum 'n' bass, etc. I do have one confirmed gig in November at my friends art show. it's in a pretty big space, probably gonna have 150+ people. any suggestions on what I could do to spark a dubstep scene around my lame town?

my town is worse, your lucky to have live reggae!

LOL seriously...aint no live reggae where I'm living right now. just indie-rock...

[s i c k b o y]

blues and reggae arent boring!

[86.]

blues and reggae arent boring!

definitely not

[jsilver]

no town here is worse than craig, colorado

end of

[dignan]

blues and reggae arent boring!

definitely not

when it's the only live music you hear, yes it is. I love reggae and blues, but if you hear something ALL the time then it gets dull. On another note, I played my first live DJ set out last night at a local bar in my town. I did it for free, bought in about 30-40 people, which is good considering my town has less than 2,000, and most of them are senior citizens. It went pretty good, they want me back for next week and the bartender was nice enough to tip me out, so I made $50 out of it.

[86.]

blues and reggae arent boring!

definitely not

when it's the only live music you hear, yes it is. I love reggae and blues, but if you hear something ALL the time then it gets dull. On another note, I played my first live DJ set out last night at a local bar in my town. I did it for free, bought in about 30-40 people, which is good considering my town has less than 2,000, and most of them are senior citizens. It went pretty good, they want me back for next week and the bartender was nice enough to tip me out, so I made $50 out of it.

really....eh?


the town I'm currently living has a total of 5000, 2500 of which are students, other half is locals.

I've randomly thought about doing something at local bars....not JUST dubstep but a lot of the shit I'm into...downtempo, nu jazz, deep house, d'n'b, breakbeat, golden era hip-hop/new underground hip-hop...etc etc.

Whether it'll fly or not is what I'm concerned about. but I guess I gotta try it and see, and stop assuming these ppl aint gonna feel it.

if I was in my actual home city I wouldnt bother, cuz I'd be fine with going to pre-existing shit thats popping off.

but yeah...we'll see

[step correct]

It depends on what kind of town you live in. If it's a small sleepy, conservative like town forget it. You may be able to find a few heads around that are down to drive to NY to go to shows with you. If you live in a place that ha a lot of young people, a college town or something similar..you might be able to get a little something going. Also, if there is ANY kind of electronic type night going on around you go to that and try to meet people and merge with that scene. I live a little under two hours North of LA and have through trials and tribulation managed to get a dope little scene going here. Fortunately Santa Barbara is a notorious party town on the beach with an already established rave/DnB/House scene and has lots of clubs and hipsters and the like so once dubstep started catching on big people caught on pretty quick. Now there are DJs and producers and such popping up all over here, which is great. I see people from here down at the bigger shows in LA all the time now (this is important, you want the local people going to the bigger cities so they'll appreciate not having to drive way out of town when you do your local shows.) Plus when things start catching on you can start booking DJs from NY and local people will get all hype over it. I've also lived in a few more "all American" type towns and tried to things going and it just aint runnin'..so TBH it kind of depends on the demographic. Maybe get with the reggae people? I've gone that route before and it works... It takes alot of work, good luck!

[evil madmen]

Ive played a couple house parties in the past month, almost everyone who hears me play likes what I have which is really encouraging. But next year a couple friends of mine are living in this sweet apartment above a bar and they would be totally down for parties and on top of that a good friend of mine has 4 15s so ill always have a decent rig.

[dignan]

blues and reggae arent boring!

definitely not

when it's the only live music you hear, yes it is. I love reggae and blues, but if you hear something ALL the time then it gets dull. On another note, I played my first live DJ set out last night at a local bar in my town. I did it for free, bought in about 30-40 people, which is good considering my town has less than 2,000, and most of them are senior citizens. It went pretty good, they want me back for next week and the bartender was nice enough to tip me out, so I made $50 out of it.

really....eh?


the town I'm currently living has a total of 5000, 2500 of which are students, other half is locals.

I've randomly thought about doing something at local bars....not JUST dubstep but a lot of the shit I'm into...downtempo, nu jazz, deep house, d'n'b, breakbeat, golden era hip-hop/new underground hip-hop...etc etc.

Whether it'll fly or not is what I'm concerned about. but I guess I gotta try it and see, and stop assuming these ppl aint gonna feel it.

if I was in my actual home city I wouldnt bother, cuz I'd be fine with going to pre-existing shit thats popping off.

but yeah...we'll see

that's what I did man - I played mainly dubstep tunes but I also played stuff like Flying Lotus, Goldie, Commix, The Field, and some more commercial Aphex Twin songs.

[nowaysj]

Congrats, u stepped up. Got 50 bucks for listening to some music for a few hours. Good work.