Monday, May 23, 2022
https://www.cambridgeday.com/2022/05/23/more-changes-at-the-cantab-booker-departs-speaking-of-changes-in-club-approach-to-bands/ A message from the Cantab posted online May 9.
The club wants to book more DJs from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. starting June 1
and move live music to a 4 to 9 p.m. slot, Bliss said he was told. “An
established band’s not going to come in from 4 to 9 p.m. and play. If
they do play, nobody’s gonna show up,” he said.
In addition, the Cantab is looking to rent the downstairs space for
private events and will cancel whatever band was booked for that time,
he said, and that also makes him uncomfortable: “When I book a band, I
promised them they have the room unless there’s some kind of emergency.”
History with the club
The Cantab – established 1938 and owned by Richard “Fitzy” Fitzgerald
for much of the past 50 years – was among businesses closed by the
coronavirus in March 2020. On July 19, 2020, Fitzgerald said he was
selling, and it looked as though the good times were at an end; Tim Dibble, a partner in a private equity firm, stepped in to buy
and refurbish the joint. He relaunched with Bliss and longtime partner
publicist Joe Viglione, back from the Fitzgerald days, but Viglione left acrimoniously in January when the club demanded control of social media accounts and his role overall.
The “Bohemia” branding was launched by Bliss in 1993 at the Kirkland Cafe, a club at 425 Washington St.,
Somerville, and he and Viglione moved it to the Cantab when the
Kirkland closed in May 2007. The Cantab rebranded the basement space to
the Underground in January.
Bliss, who said he installed the Underground’s $13,000 sound system
for free, has been active running that board in recent months,
especially after the club first said it would take over running the
upstairs bookings set up by Bliss.
DJs and bands
The club tried emphasizing DJs once before, in 2018, but the experiment ended after three months.
“There are DJs that can pack a place, and we’ve had them in the Cantab
before, but they’re big-name DJs that cost probably a couple thousand
dollars for a night. Usually they’re from out of town and you have to
pay for them to come in, and for a hotel room,” Bliss said. “If you get
that kind of DJ, yeah, you can pack them in for $20 a person and they’ll
line up to the bar and be drinking like fish. The DJs they’re getting, I
believe, are just local guys working for the door [cover charge] or
whatever. They don’t draw.”
While a DJ might arrive with a few people for their night, a full
bill of bands offers the possibility of filling the room just with
performers and their friends and family: four bands of four people each,
with each person in a band bringing in one or more people. That can be
good for a club’s bar revenue, though Bliss said the Cantab went against
his advice and started to let bands drink for free. “You might look at
it like [my approach is] a scam, but you know, the bands are happy to
have a place to play,” Bliss said. “You now have 20 guys getting 40
drinks? And naturally the bands are ordering all top-shelf liquor. So
it’s costing a lot of money and inventory.”
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