My theory, and a good one it is, had always been that the music scene catered to one core audience -- mall and restaurant workers. There was no other theory to account for why the crowd didn't arrive until nearly midnight. Think about it. If you work in suburban retail or at a restaurant, you were closing at 10 p.m., cleaning up by 11 p.m., and ready to socialize and have a few drinks at midnight. You didn't have to report for your next shift until late the next afternoon. How else were these people closing the bars down at 2 a.m., even on week nights?
So any band scheduled to start at 9 p.m., or even 10 p.m., was playing to crickets. The after-work happy hour crowd was clearing out; the mall and restaurant people were still at work. Nobody wanted to be the opening band in that dead slot, so the opening band would delay as long as possible before taking the stage. The drummer-is-missing ploy was a popular one. I used to hate these delays when I was on a tight schedule to try to see a half dozen bands in one night and every band was ditzing around, trying to get closer to an 11 p.m. start. That, of course, inevitably pushed the headliner back to 1 a.m., which I really hated.
Anyway, I don't know where the mall and restaurant workers go to chill out until last call these days. The action has progressively moved out to the far corners of the suburbs where people seem to keep more traditional hours. Out in the 'burbs, the situation is reversed. People are working, or tired, even on weekends, so the action is most intense around 9 p.m. It's the prime of the evening for suburban bars. The place is packed, and when a band takes their first break around 10:15, they come back at 10:45 to much less than before. By midnight, it's crickets and usually it's all over by 1 a.m. No need to turn up the lights at 2 and literally grab drinks out of people's hands (ah, the good old days of Last Call...after being attractively cloaked in bar darkness most of the night, when you are the most soused and scary looking, they turn up the lights and hover over you, desperately demanding you hand over your bottles and glasses as ABC agents lurk).
I thought about this as I ate a basket of tasty pig sliders at Grandpa Eddie's and watched the Harrison Deane Band play to a full, attentive room, clapping and cheering, and it was barely 10 p.m. But after their break, most of those people were gone. Including me. I slipped out a few songs into the second set because even on a Friday night, 11:30 is teddy bear time for my ancient, weary bones. My recommendation is if you're playing in suburbia and find yourself with a very good crowd at the very beginning don't assume they're there for the duration: Play as long as you can stand it before you take that first break. The bar might do another strong 30 minutes or so of business and love you for it, and the audience will probably hang in until you give them an excuse to duck out by putting your guitars down.
