Eric Jensen

One of the things I have really enjoyed since mov­ing to Los Ange­les a few years ago is the incred­i­ble wealth of skilled musi­cians liv­ing here. The boom years of the record­ing indus­try attracted and devel­oped a remark­able pool of tal­ent. One could work in music in this town for decades and still not meet half of the great play­ers and writ­ers. The live instru­men­tal music scene in LA is per­plex­ing. Any night of the week you can hear world class musi­cians that would be A Big Event any­where else, par­tic­u­larly out­side of the United States, yet the local scene never seems to take off. I would love to do my part to insti­gate change. One of the best ways to start change in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion is to fig­ure out what’s already work­ing and do more of that. On that note I have some ideas to start a con­ver­sa­tion with local music fans: CD release par­ties and spe­cial gigs always seem to be well attended by friends who gen­er­ally spread the word. Even if you don’t get out to see all the shows you would like, keep track of what’s hap­pen­ing each week in the clubs and post upcom­ing gigs by your favorite artists on Face­book, Twit­ter, your blog. It only takes a minute. Email artists you like. Get on their mail­ing lists. Ask them what they are doing to pro­mote local music and what you can do to help. Are they using social net­work­ing and the web to it’s fullest poten­tial? What clubs do…