[img]1|left|Ari Noonan||no_popup[/img]Pretend you belong to the pocket-sized chorus of critics of the acts Gary Mandell has been booking for the last 10 years for the Summer Music Festival.
A smart, articulate person, you are asked:
“Okay, wise guy, if you want different music, tell me what you want?”
I have tried for years to isolate a definitive answer.
Fortunately, I am patient.
Mr. Mandell, meanwhile, appears closer to being fired than a passel of Democrats next Tuesday night — and we probably will be debating, when he is bouncing grandchildren on his knee, exactly what it was we didn’t like about his choices that only pack the Courtyard of City Hall to capacity every Thursday.
It was kind of..
A little bit less than…
Well, you know, you know…don’cha?
I don’t, either.
Not one of the five ladies on the Cultural Affairs Commission — (here is where we clear our throat and identify all of them as mavens) — came within a city block of answering The Question.
Forget what you do not like.
Tell me the genre(s) of music you prefer to be booked by whomever next year’s producer will be.
Since City Councilman Scott Malsin has led the charge for change among his colleagues, and urged the city to forge a deal with Santa Monica radio station KCRW (89.9), I put the question to him today.
“A lot of people come because it is a nice free concert series on a Thursday night,” he said. “I don’t think there is a lot of excitement about the artists we have been hosting. I know that from talking to people who are there. That is my sense.
“When I talk to young families I interact with there, while my little one is running around, they are not coming on Thursday nights because they are dying to see one particular artist or because there is something about what they are going to be hearing that captures their imagination. The music is not threatening.
“Gary has done a great job,. He does a great job at Boulevard Music. But it is a particular niche, a particular market he serves at Boulevard Music.”
Then Mr. Malsin stepped closer to the core reason that I believe propels him in this venture:
“Culver City has come a long way,” he said. “We are recognized as a cultural center, with our restaurants, with our arts district, with our live theatre, with our phenomenal architectural community.
“We have so much going for us that is cutting edge.”
Mr. Malsin, it sounds as if you are looking more for a promoter than a producer, and that is a niche KCRW could fill.
“No,” he said. “Promoting and producing go hand-in-hand. Going back to an earlier point: There is a reason KCRW has a good brand, because the product they put out is a good one.
“I think it would be terrific to have our concert series identified with what KCRW does. They are recognized for having a good sense of the pulse of the Westside.”
All right, but I am looking for a name for a kind of music as a way of identifying what you want.
That wicket remains stubbornly sticky.
“I am not going to be able to answer that question,” Mr. Malsin said. “I don’t want to be picking the artists myself. I don’t want to be telling that to KCRW. All I want to do is for them to use their good judgment to bring in innovative artists who are going to attract the interest of people in the area.
“I trust KCRW can do that because they have a terrific artistic product, the programming on the radio station.
“I am not trying to program a summer of salsa music or of any type in particular. I want artists who are going to capture people’s imagination with cultural currency.
“Gary has brought in great artists. But they don’t have the ‘edge’ I would like to see. By ‘edge,’ I don’t mean something about their sound that will alienate people who have been coming, whether they are older or younger.
“I mean by ‘edge’ that they are capturing people’s imaginations,” Mr. Malsin said.
“I wish I could get closer. Like I said, to me, it’s not about the type of music. I want to appeal to the audience we always have appealed to. I want there to be a bit more cutting edge quality to it.”
