Knitting Together Music, Listeners

By DON HECKMAN

Dec. 30, 1999 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Michael Dorf opened his New York club, the Knitting Factory, in February 1987. Over the next decade, what had begun as a small, Lower East Side venue focusing upon avant-garde jazz and alternative music grew into KnitMedia, an entertainment conglomerate encompassing jazz festivals, recordings, the Internet, jazz education, booking and an expansion to Los Angeles.

It’s an impressive series of accomplishments, and not at all what Dorf expected in the early ‘80s, when he was studying art and sculpture in Barcelona, Spain. But a serendipitous phone call from a friend who was organizing a band brought Dorf back from Europe to manage the group.

There was also another critical factor in the opening of the Knitting Factory. Dorf, with what he describes as “quirkily good timing,” opened the room at a time when there were very few performing spaces for the players in the avant-garde wing of jazz.

But it was marketing skill rather than good timing that allowed Dorf, 37, to transform an offbeat venue into one of the most influential companies in jazz, and, in the process, enact some visionary methods of connecting musicians with listeners.

Question: What do you feel were the key elements in the early success of the Knitting Factory?

Answer: One, I was from Wisconsin so I was pretty green behind the ears. But more than anything else, I think it was because I tried to be honest and fair. We created a door deal, which we still use today with most of our artists, which is 75% of the gate. And if one person paid . . . [or] if 200 people paid, they got their money.

But essentially, our mission has been the same since the first day we started the club. It’s basically an effort to answer a few basic questions: How do I bring an audience to the music, in a fair model that can create a living for me, and for the artists? What is the relationship with the musicians that is fair, and that works? And how do we expand the audience for the music?

Q: And do those principles apply to the other Knitting Factory endeavors?

A: Yes. Through our Web site, JazzE.com, we have made 50-50 deals with musicians on digital downloading of stuff that’s never made it to record stores. For example, we just launched a program two months ago--to enthusiastic response--of some tapes that Rashied Ali recorded at his loft. Although he had permission to do something with them he could never manage it because the costs were simply too prohibitive to have the CDs manufactured.

So we made a nice deal with him. We gave him a very nominal advance. We have a 50-50 royalty deal on the sale of any of the recordings as digital downloads, secure, using Liquid Audio. He determined the price point of each concert recording. I think he came up with $6 for each. Three dollars goes to him, and then he handles the [payment] to the musicians; $3 goes to us, and we cover all the delivery costs, Visa, MasterCard, server, etc. And he has to pay the mechanicals on the songs, which is no problem since many of the songs are his and he’s paying himself a royalty. So with a $6 sale, which is a lot cheaper than a record in a store, the consumer’s winning, and $3 goes directly to Rashied, which is the highest royalty even on a $15 CD that he’s ever gotten.

Q: You clearly seem to view the Internet as an important development for jazz.

A: Absolutely. Look at it this way: How do people find and discover music? I think there are five ways: There’s the retail experience; there’s word of mouth; there are the publications where there’s information and reviews in print or online; there’s the radio world; and there’s the live experience. If we’re able to replicate a few of those in a virtual or online way and then connect this e-commerce side to it, then I think we’ve got a really compelling Web site. . . . I think it’s very interesting that the SoundScan figures for the traditional retail markets show jazz representing 3% of the market. Online, it represents 10%. Why is that? Probably because Tower Records is only so big. It cannot hold all the jazz catalog. There is no more shelf space for deep catalog. So the Internet is the perfect place to allow for that virtual shelf space to accommodate catalogs, and jazz is all about catalogs. It’s vintage wine, and it just gets better with time.

Q: Do you think other jazz record labels will take the same aggressive approach to the potential of the Internet that you do?

A: Well, I think they should. But what this really becomes . . . is a discussion about brand loyalty. I mean the only brand that has worked successfully as a large multimedia company is Disney. As a parent you shop for Disney product because you feel comfortable and you trust the brand. And that works in jazz. Blue Note has established certain brand acceptance. Fantasy has. In jazz it works. In pop, it doesn’t. The Internet space is allowing for new brands to develop--Amazon, Yahoo. And in jazz, I think there’s an opportunity for one brand to become an aggregation that would cover the records, the festivals, the radio. Obviously, I’m thinking of the KnitMedia brand.

Q: But, as a club owner, aren’t you concerned that brand loyalty, sophisticated Web sites and so forth will cut into your audiences?

A: The metaphor I use for that question goes back to when the film industry first became concerned about videotape and home cable. “Is this going to kill the theatrical film business?” they asked. Absolutely the opposite. The film industry as a total has tripled since the beginning of the home videotape. And that’s not just in terms of dollars, but in terms of the number of actual individuals who are into film and movies. So the ease of getting film into the home brought more people into the community experience of seeing a film together. And I think exactly the same thing is happening with music.

Q: What’s the target date for opening the Knitting Factory in Hollywood?

A: The facility [in the Galaxy building on Hollywood Boulevard] is taking a lot of time. The typical brick and mortar ones of construction always take longer than anticipated. But we’re getting into it a little deeper than I initially anticipated because we’re trying to develop this facility to be a real interactive venue. So that even though we may be supporting music that is not at the top of charts, the facility we’re building as a prototype for our venues has to be by far the best musical facility anywhere. So we’re investing a lot more money and time.

We’re creating a virtual private network between our New York and L.A. clubs and, in late 2000, our Berlin club. It will allow us to do two things: The customers can talk to each other in this space; they’ll be able to sit at a table, with a little monitor, keyboard and camera and talk with other people, flirt with them, talk about the music. . . . In addition, as with the New York club, we’ll have two performance areas--one seating around 300, the other seating about 75.

Q: What will a typical week’s program at the Los Angeles Knitting Factory look like?

A: Well, it’ll probably range from, say, a Sonic Youth to a Pat Metheny. There might be a special John Zorn project one night, maybe multiple nights with Laurie Anderson. We’re hoping to do a Monday night series called the House of Jews, because we’ve been doing a lot in the klezmer world and with Jewish cultural music. . . . But the idea is to mix it up, to make sure we’re responsive to what people want in this market. If all we do is purely out of our own aesthetic and not with any reverence to what people want, then it’s not going to function. So we’ll keep our ears to the ground. It’ll be as eclectic as what we do in New York, with a pop band such as They Might Be Giants in the big room, and an extremely avant-garde presentation in the small room that might only draw 10 or 12 listeners.

Q: But do you anticipate a continuing dedication to jazz at the L.A. venue?

A: Absolutely. But it will always be a difficult balance. And that’s why we’ve always had the two performance spaces. The big room helps pay the rent, and the smaller room allows us to maintain our integrity, to keep the music preeminent.

Q: And, reaching into yet another important area of KnitMedia, are there any plans to create some sort of jazz festival activity in Los Angeles?

A: Well, it’s interesting that something in that area came up right on our block. They’re going to be unveiling the [Highland] subway station in June, and they asked me to help produce a festival around the unveiling. I got very excited, because it’s certainly been on my mind, if we’re going to be here, that we want to create a festival as well.

Playboy is its own entity, and it’s very successful for what it is. But it’s not what I would consider a true jazz festival. And I think there’s a huge festival opportunity in L.A. We’re lucky to have solid support from Bell Atlantic, and now they’re about to acquire GTE. So if that goes through, and it looks as though it’s going to, there’s a huge opportunity here.

Q: For a guy who still hasn’t hit the big Four-O, you’ve got a pretty full plate. How do you feel about where you are, and where jazz is, as the new millennium arrives?

A: I feel extremely blessed to have been born when I was born . . . in New York when all this wonderful new music was taking place, and to have had a role in bringing it to the public. Here we are in 1999 and this technology gift is here in front of us. And we get to have this huge benefit of supporting this music that has been marginalized for so long. And while it will still be, relatively, a margin, if the Internet has taught us anything it’s that margins flourish in the new economy.

“The Internet is the perfect place to allow for that virtual shelf space to accommodate catalogs, and jazz is all about catalogs.”

CROSSROADS

This is the fifth day in a series of interviews, conducted by Calendar critics, with leaders in the arts and entertainment. It continues in daily Calendar through Friday.

Dec. 26

* MUSIC: Tod Machover, MIT media lab and new music composer

Dec. 27

* TELEVISION: Jeff Cohen, founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

* MOVIES: John Lasseter, creative guru at Pixar Animation Studios

Dec. 28

* THEATER: Cherry Jones, Tony-winning actress

* FOOD: Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panisse in Berkeley

Dec. 29

* POP MUSIC: Tom Morello, Rage Against the Machine guitarist

* DANCE: Judy Mitoma, director, Center for Intercultural Performance, UCLA

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