A few months ago when we were participating on the “Wheel Chair gig” and were planning some things, we were wondering why not many people show up at shows. Putting aside if the band is well known or not, the number of people that go to a gig is always less than expected. As we wondered we found the answers “No Money”, “People don’t get compromised with the national scene”, “The bands are not well known”.

We made a survey on Facebook and one of the things that popped up on the topic was TRANSPORTATION. Which we think it’s really important. Out of all the reasons, we believe these are the ones that make it difficult to support the bands at a gig, from our point of view:

Transportation: the survey made it clear. Costa Rica’s transportation system is poor, either we like it or not. The “development” that we all talk about is a mayor influence for this. What would happen if I go to the gig, have a few drinks and it ends up being 1am? Pretty common huh? What would happen if there’s no bus to get back home? You can always carpool with friends but sometimes they can’t go, or it’s not the time, or it’s far away, there’s no car, etc. There are many variables, it’s not always that easy…What happens if I go by myself?

The ones who live in Mordor (Cartago) know this very well. After a certain time and depending where you live it becomes pretty complicated if you have no car. After midnight ghosts take the transportation system to the underworld.

Who to go with?: most people don’t like to go to gigs on their own. Work, commitments, children, whatever it is, sometimes it is difficult to get organized. In fact, we don’t know much people that will go on their own.

Money: another main reason… a few years ago people would say that there were not many gigs and also no money, now there’s many gigs, national and international and still a lack of money. When you obtain various contacts, you’re always informed of new upcoming gigs, for different media we can tell we’re not lacking of gigs. But we’re lacking of money. Even if there’s a car, a trip from one province to another can be more than 4000 colones.

Other reasons: Few times you can hear people tal about insecurity and other problems. People who listen this type of music, in general, goes to a gig where there’s a band of their interest. There’s always “closed minded” people that only stay at a specific genre but go to gigs anyway. We all have a good time.

In general we believe that there’s attitude but until all the problems mentioned above are fixed gigs will continue to have small audience. It is not that the country is not as big as others or the attitude, these things don’t appear to be the problem. The problem is access.

More reasons: Those who attend can’t forget that planning and making a gig is really expensive, it’s not only paying the sound system, the famous “backline” and renting lights and other things… it’s also rehearsals before the gig, the maintnance of the instruments (specially the drum set), tranportation, moving from one place to the other. Adding up all the costs a gig is no less than 100.000 colones in estimate. Musicians often lose instead of earning money. And let’s not even mention the “author rights” topic, what some places charge to allow bands perform, and other matters. Things that even their objective is to protect us, from our point of view, is another problem.

Wrapping up:

Every week there’s at least two or more gigs that we would like to go but for all the reasons described above it makes it really difficult. How much bigger would the musical scene be in Costa Rica if there were less obstacles?