MusicUnion Mixer in Downtown Los Angeles
June 4th, 2009
by Andrew McGregor
MuiscUnion continued its monthly get together the first Thursday of each month in Downtown Los Angeles bringing musicians, industry folks, and fans together. The concept is a dirty, sexy networking version of a TED Conference for the music industry. TED brings luminaries from Technology, Entertainment, and Design together around a shared spectacle and the result is a greater experience than the sum of its parts. On a smaller scale, but with the same objective of forging a better future, MusicUnion is striving to have musicians meet fans, music journalists, and people in the music industry to forge a new community of people dedicated to music and its vast potential in the new media landscape of the digital era.
The evening commenced at The Must Wine Bar where Music Union’s CEO, Barrett Morse, hosted a collection of journalist, cultural aficionados, writers, music producers, musicians, and music lovers. Walking through the bar and eavesdropping, the conversations tended towards the state of music, insecurity about its future, and where the digital revolution would lead it all. Little red MusicUnion pins were presented to serve as entrance to an after-hour concert.
Around midnight those with the energy to go forth on a Thursday night were guided through Downtown to ‘The Landing’ for a concert featuring three bands.
The concert was good and stretched until 4 AM when exhausted fans and MusicUnion mixer-goers finally streamed out of the building into the alternate reality of LA’s Downtown, which at that hour of the morning seems like it will never be gentrified completely despite the citiy’s efforts to bring luxury-loft living just blocks from Skid Row.
The impression that remained with me through exhaustion, the bands, and dozens of distinct conversations somehow revolving around concepts of ‘the scene’ and ‘the industry’ is that music as I remember it, music as something sacred, unique to my life, time, and place…has a future. The beautiful things that make music from a few decades ago seem classic and unobtainable are already simmering in Downtown Los Angeles and who knows how many other parts of the world.
Seeing an impromptu community form around that intangible thing of music’s future and appreciation, even if for just one night, gave me an optimistic pause and smile. The evening was more than a night out and a concert, it was a gesture of thanks, optimism, and peaked expectation for all the great music and people that have yet to grace my life.
