Light Rail isn’t a nightclub. It’s primarily a recording studio with rehearsal spaces for rent among the stark warehouses and the wholesale produce market jammed between 101 and 280, in the flats east of Bernal Heights.
But Light Rail can turn into a performance space — physically and virtually. From the nearly 200-square-foot stage, in front of an actual audience, bands get live-streamed via a partnership with YouTube. It’s a lifeline for musicians where established spaces for shows in the city are slowly going extinct. It’s also a lifeline for rock music in what used to be a rock and roll town, and reminders of that rich history are scattered about. A piece of eyeball headgear made famous (in certain alt-weird and art-world circles, at least) by the Residents is part of the rooftop practice space, as are a couple Grateful Dead guitars. The red velvet backdrop seen behind the stage in the live streams is a hand-me-down from the Fillmore.
The Frisc sat down with Elton Cunniffe, one of the three owners of Light Rail, to ask about the sound of today’s San Francisco and the soundness of local live music. Things aren’t trending in a positive direction, and he says venues need to change along with audiences. The typical one-room bar and stage — which Cunniffe describes with Yogi Berra geometry as “the rectangle cube with a loud band playing” — isn’t penciling out. People expect cool, creative spaces for viewing art and performances. Bands need an entrée into those spaces, he says, “but I don’t know how to go about that.”
Cunniffe — a Hayward native who started out doing recordings on a DAT machine and renting rehearsal space for $10 an hour in a Lower Haight Victorian in 1991 — is doing what he can at Light Rail thinking beyond the rectangle cube, you might say. Here are excerpts of a conversation one recent afternoon, edited and condensed:
The Frisc: San Francisco is the epicenter of the Internet world and Light Rail has an arrangement with YouTube. From where you sit, how is the Internet affecting the local music scene?
Elton Cunniffe: When we do live streams, you look at the analytics, but I just don’t believe that there are two people in Fiji watching a band they’ve never heard of on a live stream. A lot of the industry is being driven by views and likes. I tell every band in here, “Don’t believe any of this shit.” Steph Curry makes a ton of money. But he’s playing a stadium in New York, then the next night in Chicago, then in Cleveland. It’s no different than musicians. You need to be playing every fucking night and going city to city.
A lot of people chase the likes, not really understanding that the only reason you’d want that kind of popularity is if there were real people who were going to buy tickets to your show. Your focus should be playing in front of people. Ticket sales is where it’s all at.
But the business of playing at clubs and running the clubs themselves, how’s that doing?
Not well. When rents are cheap and drinks are cheap, there’s a lot more support for stuff. Is San Francisco also getting older? What’s the average age? [Based on the 2010 census, the median age was 38.5 years old — two years older than in 2000.] You need people in their 20s who can go out and drink all night. A bar can’t stay in business serving cheap beer. What used to cost $20, a $5 ticket in and $15 or whatever for drinks, it’s now like $80.
When rock was peaking out in the ’90s, particularly in San Francisco, you could get cheap places to stay, everything was kind of rundown. You could be totally strung out on drugs, ride motorcycles with no helmets, have $10 to go to Murio’s for cheap beer and shots of whiskey. The economics of everything were in favor of that.
Today, you pretty much gotta be going to the gym at 7 am, working all day, and meeting some friends after work for something cultural, I don’t know. That’s been a big shift for music in the city, because people can’t stay out drinking all night.
So how does music adapt?
This goes back to millennials who are into paying for experiences. The club experience has to evolve — the rectangle cube with a bar and a loud band playing is not where we should be right now. Physical spaces that show art are super important. You go to SFMOMA and often there are lines, this and that, you think you might blow it off, but you go anyway and you’re glad you came; it’s beautiful just walking around.There needs to be some of that translated into the space music is performed in. I don’t know how to go about that.
I don’t think this [younger] generation will be down for being in a box for hours, at high decibels, just drinking. I could see them Ubering to a club, a diverse group of friends, there’s a band playing Black Sabbath-style music, they like it — but just for a drink or two and then go somewhere else.
What kind of music are you hearing and hosting at Light Rail?
A lot of bands I’ve been recording lately, these younger bands, have been safe — not aggressive, not abrasive. They’re not deconstructing. There’s a lot of safety in music out there right now. I don’t see an appetite for the kind of abrasive industrial stuff. Even Marilyn Manson kind of went blues-rock.
There’s now neo-soul, it’s like Steely Dan-ish. Some of the bands come in here, like Speakeasy, I just did a record for them. It’s like vineyard rock.
My generation was so fucked up on drugs and aggressive and loud. Tons of distortion. Every band that comes in here, they put on their Spotify playlists, it’s all Fleetwood Mac-ey.
People have access to every kind of music right now. What about fans and listeners who are looking for local music?
We did an experiment with one of our events using Eventbrite. Turned out 90% of the people who came down had the app on their phone. We ended up sticking with it and using it. It’s super effective.
You used to identify yourself with groups through music. I don’t think today’s generation in the city does that. Instead of a fan base that’s going to see a band on Friday, with like-minded people — “that’s my tribe” — today there just isn’t that. Hip-hop is so mainstream now, there are no identifiers there anymore. Things have had to get more vanilla to sell a product. There’s no space for super artistic shit like that anymore.