Keep Up on the Chicago Promotors Ordinance
If you haven’t heard, there’s been a lot of action in the last weeks surrounding a proposal for an ordinance in the City of Chicago that would seem to require licenses and insurance for small show promoters/events. There’s a lot of info, and MIS-info, out there about it. But you can take a few minutes and learn about it yourself. Depending on who you talk to, it could have the effect of further criminalizing the DIY shows/events that are so important to our music scene.
It has, unfortunately, continued the horrid trend of thinking about the act of performing music in terms of business — what is profitable, what will allow “artists” to “make a living”, etc. When music and expression are forced to take on business models, something is wrong. But my fear is that, depending on if this gets passed, and what the final wording is, that someone putting on a small show in their space/house ends up getting arrested and fined big time, thus scaring the crap out of everyone else, and the house show scene dies. That’s not here yet, but we need to make sure it doesn’t turn out that way.
Here’s some links to several articles about the ordinance, the full text of it, and some interesting discussions…
Chicago Reader, Clout City, May 13th 2008
Chicago Reader from July 19, 2007
Jim DeRogatis’ Sun Times coverage (Including full text of the ordinance)
Some coverage over at the Chicagoist