From our BEST Music of the decade feature:
We’ve seen a lot of venues shutter up these past ten years. Stages have been replaced with seats, identities have changed, and the way people consume entertainment has transformed. A person smarter than myself told me that it wasn’t a cultural collapse, but rather a cultural shift. And I like that way of looking at it, despite the fact that we’re left with much fewer options for taking in a live show.
Through it all, The Canopy Club remains. The work of talent buyer Vanessa Robinson, and owner Ian Goldberg, along with former buyer Mike Armintrout, alongside a handful of independent promoters from here and afar, have kept the calendar in tact. Yes, there are less shows, and YES — a lot of it is EDM or DJ shows. Relax. It’s OK for each generation of young people to define what they like and why. Bottom line, it’s a venue, and it’s large enough to throw a truly epic party, and it does, more often than you probably know.
Of course I am biased. I performed there for the second show it ever hosted. Fell in love on the dance floor, and had to pick up my broken heart in the bathroom, back in the late 90s while Y2K was a major crisis. Spent hours and days and weeks and months and years booking shows there during W > Obama. Produce a great deal of PYGMALION there each year still.
But I can step away and examine from a broad perspective. I feel good about City Center and what it will continue to bring forward. The Rose Bowl is the new spot for the scene, no doubt. The Iron Post gives you jazz and roots and more literally nightly. Blackbird has shows, Pour Bros. has shows, Boomerangs has shows, there are shows, goddamnit, still!
The 2020s will again shift who we are and how we engage. But The Canopy Club is best venue we have and has maintained that in the past decade, overall. Praise them for that. (Seth Fein)
Photo by Jack Pompe
