The Bailey Blog

Photo by Oliver J. Lopena: oliverlopena.com

But, the Music Biz Has Always Been About the Green!

The new mantra for every company is "Look how green I am!"

Why should the music business - or specifically, the musicians - be any different?

Ironically music has always been seen as a force of change, rebellion and rooted in social causes.

All of which sometimes seem to be way too fashionable and not too sustainable; I mean, I don’t care if you went to Woodstock - you don’t live on Love Street, you work on Wall Street; Live Aid was great but they still don’t know it’s Christmas time; Live 8? We got to see Pink Floyd come together.

So now the likes of Jack Johnson, Radiohead and the Dave Matthew’s Band keep trying their best of be eco-friendly - biodiesel tour buses, sending equipment to/from internationally via ship to reduce air-freight, smaller LEDs in lighting rigs to consume less power. All this is commendable and necessary - that whole process of thinking differently.

But new data has come from a Radiohead-commissioned study on the damage done to the environment by their last two North American tours; The conclusion was that the problem wasn’t the band, but the fans! The report reveals that 97 percent of the enviro-damage from the band’s 2003 tour - nearly 10,000 tons of CO2, the equivalent of 4,000 trans-Atlantic flights - was fan related. For example, when a festival takes place and there is seven-hour traffic jam to get in? Woops.

That points to the fact that most of America’s amphitheaters are located far from city centers with no means to mass transit.

Reducing fan travel by 10 percent is better than anything a band can do. But some venues are coming on board by allowing special lots and traffic lanes just for carpoolers and groups.

It’s a start.

However, when Dave Matthew’s went to tour stops and tried to convince venues to allow water stations where fans can reuse and fill water containers for free? No dice. Eight bucks for a bottle of water or two during a hot summer festival means a lot of green but not necessarily the environmental type…unless cash gets printed on recycled paper.

So what’s the solution? Education, and getting the word out to fans is the key - what can they do directly at a show and how do they find out how to do it?

Carpooling seems an easy step. The band has the forum via their own and record company Web sites. A communications plan to educate - cd jackets, info in tour announcement press releases, interviews to spread the word e.g., "Here’s what I meant by track five on the cd and if you are coming out to hear it, here’s what you can do…"

One day, instead of "Hello CLEVELAND! Are you ready to party!? Are you ready to have a good time? You’re a great audience!!" it’s going to be "Yo…Cleveland - you guys in the carpool lot ROCK…"

Tours aren’t going away anytime soon.

But nor should creative thinking if the bands and fans really care like they say the do.