Same Teens Guest Blog: The Recession Connection

By Nicholas Burman

I live approximately 219 miles away from Manchester itself. This geographical hitch doesn’t stop me getting involved with one of the most exciting music scene projects currently in England (as I hope you have by now learnt about), but living in a dozy town in the South West peninsular does stop me being involved in one thing: a budding local scene of our own.

That was until the banks went bust, jobs turned invisible and money might as well have been used as fire wood. What does this have to do with Same Teens and the general underage scene? Well let me try and sum this up without going off of on a tangent…

Alcohol is becoming more expensive in clubs. The old ‘uns will now more than ever decide to stay indoors because it’s become a lot cheaper to (beer is now pennies to buy in crates from supermarkets.) In the boom times alcohol would make a club the majority of its profits, meaning that they’d want to make sure that everyone walking through its doors was buying drinks, wanting to make sure they were legal so that they wouldn’t get legally buggered; over here, it seems the Police would like to lessen their ‘on the beat’ time to zilch if it were possible, leading us to the situation where there were no clubs or nightlife to patrol. Now though, that profit margin has decreased and so venues need a new way of getting money into their tills without having to give a lot of it away to he middle men who supply. The answer is simple, entrance fees. While before the five quid to get in probably ended up being about 1/5 of the profit made from your spending when added up to the drinks you bought inside now that entrance fee is more vital than ever.

(Image by Same Teens)

So who would go out, pay an entrance fee, but not necessarily want to buy drinks? Us underager’s, that’s who. While many adults are sitting on their credit cards us kids still get EMA, pocket money or have the part time weekend/night jobs which many older people can’t do. The teens in the underage scene can now find many more gigs and nights which welcome them in for the admission price.

It’ll help scenes such as Same Teens up in Manchester because more and more venues will want their ever popular nights to take place in their buildings. To sum things up, this is why my local scene just a couple of weekends ago managed to feel a hell of a lot more exciting than it has done in a long time.

Add this to the fact that during down times great music seems to worm its way out of the woodwork, it gets me thinking; a recession which rocks? That’s ok by me.