The Perfect Club doesn't exist on Galveston Island; but we'd like to build it! Read about our proposed design and let us know what you think:

One of our dreams, at Galveston Music Scene, is to own and operate a bar/club as a venue to feature live music. If this ever comes to pass, we'd like to make it as close to the "Perfect Club" as possible.

Since the Perfect Club does not now exist on Galveston Island, and probably no place else, all that we can do to design it is to look at the good and bad points in existing clubs to imagine how we would we incorporate the good ones, and eliminate the bad ones.

1. Location: The Perfect Club should be Downtown or on the Seawall or overlooking the Water in some other location, such as the Ship Channel, the Harbor, or Offatts Bayou.

2. Building: The Perfect Club should be built in a totally rehabilitated historical building. For example, this means that the bathrooms wouldn't look and function like they have been around since the 19th Century. However, it should also have a space for outdoor music in good weather and in the earlier hours.

3. Acoustics: The Perfect Club should be designed for excellent acoustics; that means that acoustics would actually be part of the whole design; not an afterthought.

4. Sound System: The indoor part of the Perfect Club should have a high-quality sound system, and should include all the amplifiers, speakers, mixer boards/PAs and other equipment, so that the effort and time for bands to set up is minimal.

5. Stage: The Perfect Club should have a spacious elevated stage that allows sufficient separation from the audience to prevent people from banging in to the bands or spilling drinks on them.

6. Dance Floor: The Perfect Club should have a spacious dance floor that separates dancers from the musicians and other patrons, which would allow everyone to have their own space.

7. Bathrooms: The Perfect Club should have modern spacious multi-stalled bathrooms.

8. Smoke: The Perfect Club MUST cut down on the amount of smoke now found in most Galveston clubs! Hopefully, we won't have to adopt the ways of places like California, and go to a no-smoking environment; but that is a possibility. The other solution is to go with top-of-the-line smoke removal equipment!

9. Drinks: The Perfect Club should have good drinks at a reasonable price.

10. Food: The Perfect Club will not serve meals, but it will serve delicious finger food.

11. Wait staff: The Perfect Club should have well-trained and efficient wait staff.



12. Cover Charges: There are two problems with cover charges. If you know the band that you are going to see, but you can not, or choose not to spend the entire night with them, a cover charge inhibits your inclination to drop by for awhile. If you don't know the band, you are going to see, a cover charge greatly inhibits the planned or spontaneous notion to go to the club to check them out. Therefore, while cover charges may seem like a great way to make some fast money at the door, both of these problems limit the potential turnout.

13. Paying the Band: This can be one of the key elements of a successful music club, and requires some creative thinking. To optimize the situation, the club owners, the bands, and the customers need to have common interests, rather than adversarial interests.

Obviously, club owners try to pay bands as little as possible, because they want to maximize their profit, but also, they want to avoid a loss if the turn out is low, and they don't generate enough money to even pay the band's fixed fee. This obstacle keeps some club owners from booking bands at all, or minimizes the number of times they do.

Bands would prefer a high guaranteed fixed fee, but by doing this they create their own barrier to maximizing the number of gigs they can book, because many of club owners don't want to take the risk on this fixed fee.

Customers would prefer no cover charge and reasonable food and drink prices, because they don't want to have to hedge the risk for the club owners who pay high fixed fees to bands, so they might take a loss without a cover charge and high prices. Large crowds would tend to eliminate the perceived need for cover charges and high prices.

What is the answer? Profit Sharing!!

We can conceive of the Perfect Club finding the correct formula for sharing their profits with the bands. It might mean something like the club would pay the band 30% of their gross income between 8 PM and closing time for a 9 PM-1:30 AM gig. If a big crowd shows up, both the club owner and the band win big; and why shouldn't they show up with a good band, no cover and low-priced food and drinks? Of course, the band has to trust the count, but with modern computerized cash registers, that should be easy to monitor.

On the other hand, when there isn't a big turn out, the club owner's profits will be down, and so is the band's take, but the club owner isn't thinking that he better stop hiring bands, because he just got killed on the high fixed fee he paid the band. It's still a win-win situation!

Profit sharing will also lead to experimentation. Why not try a band on Tuesday night from 6-9 PM, or Sunday afternoon? Without a fixed fee to pay the band, there's no reason not to!

The Perfect Club might also allow new bands to use it's stage, equipment and sound system to practice during off hours. It would help cultivate new talent, give them a showcase to the club owners, provide free entertainment to patrons, and keep the music flowing all the time.


What do you think about this outline for how to build the Perfect Club?

Send us your comments and ideas!!