Thread by @scottwoodssays

I recently did a thread on #PurpleRain where I broke down the ridiculous business model of the (fictionalized) First Avenue nightclub portrayed in the film.

Naturally, I have a follow up on #Prince’s “Graffiti Bridge”, which has not one but FOUR nightclubs...

...all of them run like trash.

So, another dive into the PCCU (Prince Cinematic Club Universe). I have 18 observations. Get comfortable.

The story of Graffiti takes place in Minneapolis at the fictional Seven Corners...art district? Skid row? The Seven Corners AREA is populated by lots of steam grates, nowhere near enough streetlights, the most unsavory creative class to ever bebop in a street, and 4 clubs:

- Glam Slam (co-owned by Prince and Morris Day)
- Pandemonium (co-owned by Morris Day and Robin)
- Melody Cool (owned by the legendary Mavis Staples)
- The eponymous Clinton Club (owned by a not-at-all fictionalized version of George Clinton.)

1. 7 Corners is a really bad place to set up a business.
7 Corners is a Blade Runner set with more nightclubs. The only other business is a law office that's never open. Every other building is boarded or closed down. It's clearly a seedy side of town.

Now, four clubs on a block isn’t a problem. Ever been to Bourbon Street? New Orleans? Any retail strip across from a major college campus? That part is perfectly believable.

What’s not believable is that all of them be run like trash and still stay open.

2. Glam Slam ain’t no First Avenue.
Where First Avenue sits (N 1st Ave & N 7th Ave) has a totally different footprint than 7 Corners, which means Billy sold First Avenue before he died. I wasn't trying to be literal here, but we also know this because…

3. Robin is a textbook silent partner.
Robin is not only the daughter of notoriously suspect club owner Billy from Purple Rain, but is also part owner (or investor) of Morris’ Pandemonium club.

Like most women in Prince projects, she holds little sway in any of the decisions of the protagonists. She splits ownership with Morris but is never part of the management/negotiations. It's mad misogynistic here, but as division of labor deals go, there are worse arrangements.

She dances in the club but by choice. She lives in the club, screws her business partner when she wants, buys gaudy outfits, and expresses zero interest in the business side of things. Billy meant well, but he left his money to all the wrong people if it was about business.

Perhaps Billy was feeling magnanimous. After all, these two clearly talented local acts apparently never left Minneapolis. Or they did and came back after sobering defeats from battling a soul-crushing music industry.

Perhaps Billy felt sorry for them and decided before his death to take care of the fellas and put them down as co-owners of Glam Slam. They'd at least have a place to play and if all else failed, they could sell it later and walk away with a nice check to fend for themselves.

Recap:
Glam Slam is a club Billy owned before he died.
He left it to Prince and Morris as co-owners.
The conflict setup of the film is that Morris wants Prince to sell/give him his half of the club so Morris can own it outright (and kick Prince out of the stage-basement).

(FYI, there’s a TON of existential stuff and symbolism going on here, even in the business part. You know, buyout=sell your soul, yadda yadda.)

4. Glam Slam doesn’t make any money.
The Time shows up after a shift of extorting protection money from the other clubs and we actually get to hear some real numbers. Jesse Johnson - who has to be the softest arm-twister in the history of criminal activity - breaks it down:

Jesse: Well, George is still acting flaky, man. I think the brother’s holding out.

Jellybean: Yeah, we need to bust him!

(Psh, drummers. So violent.)
...

Morris: What about The Kid?

Monte: They’re expecting a little crowd tonight. It won’t last though. Ain’t nobody drinking.

Jesse: Yeah, he’ll be lucky if he make $1200.

This is important information.

Later, Jerome reports that George’s place made $19,500 in one night; it was “a killing.” So now we have some sense of the success/fail range in the Prince Cinematic Club Universe:

Bad = 1.2K a night, hugely profitable = 19.5K a night.

So let’s break down Glam Slam’s money woes:
A club the size of Glam Slam that serves alcohol but has less than engaging entertainment can’t afford to only make $1200 a night.

At $1200 a night that’s $36,000 per month. Sounds like a lot of money, right? If you run a poetry open mic, sure. Not so much if you own a nightclub. The only good news is that the club is already owned so its external overhead is taxes and maintenance.

But the business of a club is entertainment: tickets and refreshment sales (drink or food). The average nightclub can easily spend at least - rock bottom - $1000 a night on staff, entertainment, marketing, utilities, etc.

Glam Slam isn’t making any money and everybody is saying it: Morris, Prince’s own band, his ex, everybody.

5. Glam Slam’s schedule is wack.
One of the pitfalls of clubs is that, because the entertainment rotates, it can be hard to nail down a consistent experience. Retention is part of the game. You have to get people in and you have to keep them in long enough to buy drinks/food.

None of these clubs appears to have a great diversity of product, but Glam Slam is the worst. It isn’t keeping people long enough to capitalize on drinks and doesn’t serve food. The only band we see on multiple nights is the NPG, which is playing music nobody wants to hear.

Prince also isn’t letting TC capitalize on the rap craze as part of the band I GUESS, so the lack of diversity in the Glam Slam experience is rampant.

There is an early Battle of the Bands in which Prince’s crowd gets led out after one song by Morris crashing the stage.

Like, that’s how the whole night ends: no people left in the bar, night over. Nobody even stayed for drinks. That’s a ton of lost revenue.

Prince needs to hire some security or book some other bands. At least have the DJ in your band come on to make the place seem less dead once everybody walks out. 9 people in his band and not one of them puts on a record to keep a single patron.

And look at how the math compounds:
If you have one good night and 4 bad nights, your good night’s profits have to cover 4 other nights’ losses. Profits are eaten up by underperformers. Keep doing that, and you can ONLY lose money, no matter how good your one good night is.

6. Prince paints graffiti on his building, depressing the value of not only his property, but the entire area.

7. Prince changes the concept of the club without any real direction.
He starts playing “spiritual” music, which crowds are not feeling. But this is also a dumb business move because MELODY COOL’S PLACE IS ACROSS THE STREET.

If people want to hear spiritual music they can go across the street and hear it from someone who shared stages with Aretha Franklin. They don’t need Prince’s half-baked rock-gospel.

8. Does Glam Slam serve alcohol?
Yes. You can see people sitting at tables with drinks and a full dance floor.
So money is coming in from drink sales. But…

9. ...not enough alcohol to succeed.

Jill works at Glam Slam, which is perhaps the saddest note of all.

She’s been chasing after Prince since Purple Rain and hasn’t taken the hint in the 6 years since. She worked as a waitress in First Avenue and now works (presumably) as a waitress in Glam Slam.

In the first 5 minutes of the film she’s complaining about not making enough money in his club. It’s safe to assume she means tips.

Now, she may be bad at her job. But...

...the club is, at least initially, packed. If she’s not making money off of that crowd she’s probably giving horrible service, which stands to reason if you recall her icy reception of Apollonia in Purple Rain.

If I had servers who greeted people like that they’d be out on their asses. But if the club only has a good night once a week, she can’t make any real money working there.

So Glam Slam has at least 3 service problems here:
1. It doesn’t sell enough drinks
2. It has a low bar for service expectations.
3. The boss sleeps with his employees (which even before #MeToo was a problem).

These are all disasters of management.

Silver lining: Jill leaves Glam Slam to work at Morris’ club, so while she’s still waiting tables, she at least gets to perform.

10. Glam Slam is uninsurable.
This club is extremely “accident” prone. So much bad stuff happens in Glam Slam it feels cursed. There is a fire bomb in the club. Morris magically sets fire to a plant after peeing on it....

The stage is wrecked after a home invasion. A guitar is thrown through a front window. A jeep crashes into the other front window. The venue is a target of rampant vandalism. All of this means the insurance is prohibitively sky high for someone in Prince’s financial situation.

11. Prince is still playing music no one likes but himself..
At the same time that George is playing to a packed house whose audience includes members of Prince’s crew ACROSS THE STREET from Glam SLam, Prince is performing a gospel orgy, “Elephants & Flowers”, to an empty club.

People are literally fleeing from the club to get away from this song. When your own band isn’t at your show, you blowing it. And speaking of bands...

12. Prince’s band is enormous, aka expensive.
The PCCU version of the NPG has 9 people on stage, more when they’re performing in street battles. That’s a lot of people to pay, even as a house band.

Not to mention the rehearsal time they put in to bust those dance moves, make their costumes, and otherwise serve at Prince’s beck and call for street fights, er, dance offs.

In 1990, this band size was fine if you were Real World Prince. But if you’re working-in-Glam-Slam Prince, it’s absurdly unsustainable.

Of course, like most musicians, they have to take action where they can get it, so Prince’s backup dancers show up in several places, mostly because they can’t make no money just playing at Glam Slam.

But since one of those gigs is backing up Tevin Campbell in the street for one song for spare change, they could have just stayed at Glam Slam that day.

13. Prince’s personal overhead is minimal.
He lives under the stage in Glam Slam. In the spirit of Purple Rain, he continues to dig partial basements, and perhaps, having expressed an affinity for Bela Lugosi characters (see Under the Cherry Moon), Dracula.

In any event he saves a lot of money on living expenses. No rent, utilities or furniture that isn’t wrapped up in the club. It’s not a bad way to live if you don’t mind smelling like beer all the time, and it’s pretty realistic.

14. Does anybody else play in these clubs?
Much like Purple Rain, the clubs of the Prince CCU have “fascinating” booking models.

Don’t get me wrong: a club can run on residencies and house bands. Robert Glasper sold out a month of shows at the Blue Note where he played pretty every day of the month, twice a night.

If you’re in New Orleans and go to a show at Preservation Hall, they have multiple shows a day only featuring a house band.

At the same time, Glasper was a) already a major draw before the residency and b) was only there a month, so he had novelty working in his favor.

More, Preservation Hall isn’t a club so much as a small performance venue that serves no drinks, food,, and rarely alternate entertainment. It doesn’t even allow you to take pictures or video during shows.

Preservation Hall sells only one thing: sets of authentic New Orleans music. It’s a tight business model with tight overhead in a city that makes hundreds of millions of dollars off of music as a tourist attraction.

Compare that to Glam Slam: a nightclub that’s only open at night, only has one band, won’t let TC Ellis rap even though rap is a burgeoning market force in 1990, can’t move its alcohol, and sits across the street from 3 other clubs. That’s not a nightclub; that’s a clubhouse.

15. What kind of club is Melody Cool?
Tevin - clearly a minor - hangs out in it, so we know what it isn’t. It can’t be a proper bar because of his presence and the fact that Mavis Staples is the owner.

She ain’t running no bar. Not unless it’s a gospel bar. In her single real scene, a fully-clothed choir comes marching out the front door and into the street. Is it a nightclub church?

I’ve seen a church with a bar in it, so I guess something like that is possible. Morris has a controlling interest in it, so it's not a on-profit. I don't know. There simply isn’t enough information provided to come down on a definitive answer.

God works in mysterious ways.

AMIRIGHT AURA???

16. The gig economy of 7 Corners is inconsistent.
There’s a guy playing guitar on the corner. He doesn’t appear to be busking, which makes sense, since there's an enforcement racket in the area.

No busker would make any money on the street with Jimmy Jam and Jellybean Johnson out here smashing people’s guitars and what-not.
(Seriously, if I saw a guy with that hat on in public asking for money, I'd hand it over too.)

At the same time, Tevin got paid to perform in the street, so it’s not an impossible hustle. Perhaps Campbell gets a pass because he’s a kid and nobody really messes with Auntie Melody.

17. Pandemonium is the only club that operates like a real business.

It’s a proper upscale supper club with clear branding, serves drinks and food in a clean and well-lit classy establishment. It has servers, in-house dancers, and live music. It has coat service.

It has a dress code, or at least an unspoken expectation. (I mean, the NPG still gets to come in and they look like broke BDSM cosplayers.)

18. Morris Day isn’t a club owner. He’s a crime boss.

The Time in Graffiti Bridge isn’t a band so much as a criminal enterprise that knows how to play instruments.

Morris extorts the businesses around him, he disturbs the peace on other bands’ stages, he pays off the mayor to keep police out of the 7 Corners area, he mickeys women’s drinks so he can take advantage of them...all illegal activities.

When asked about a raise for the “band” by Terry Lewis, Morris’ idea of labor negotiations is challenging him to a hot chili pepper eating contest. I’m not sure how that settles things for 5 other grown men with bills to pay at the table, but okay.

I’m saying, this kind of business practice only flies when business isn’t the order of the day. It’s Mafia style work, inflicting violence and threat of harm whenever a challenge is leveled against the spread.

If Morris were a proper businessman he would have just waited until Glam Slam was on its last ropes and swooped in and bought the place like a proper gentrifier.

In closing, I think it’s fair to say that Prince learned nothing from his years as a performer in Minneapolis clubs about how they run, which is fair, since he was pretty young. And of course Graffiti Bridge is a complete and utter rock fantasy.

Still, as an artist and a venue owner, it’s hard to watch all that madness take place under the pretense of a business war. It’s easily three times wilder as business models go than Purple Rain, which was already pretty unbelievable.
RIP cousin, RIP #Prince