Why Blue Frog Makes Us See Red (*)

Blue Frog was Indiecision’s best live music venue for 2008. In all likelihood, it will be a finalist this year as well. After all, the Lower Parel venue has the best sound in the city, and from what we hear from bands, the best in the country. If you want to see a gig in Bombay, you can’t do much better than Frog. Sadly, the music seems to be the only thing it has going for it.

Having been there at least a hundred times since it opened in December 2007, we find that the Frog continues to be plagued by the same set of problems it has been battling since opening day: it’s a music venue that aims to attract non-music lovers. Everywhere around the world, the most popular venues, and we’re referring to pubs and bars and not auditoriums or stadiums, know that when it comes to new, original and independent music, bands are built by the youth – essentially, “the kids”.

Now, Blue Frog charges Rs 300 from Monday to Thursday and Rs 500 on Friday and Saturday, which might sound reasonable considering the huge investment and overheads it takes to operate the club. But that’s just the entrance fee. A pint of Indian made beer, if and when it’s available, is the cheapest option at Rs 180*. As for the food, we once paid Rs 600* for a charred beef burger that came with precisely four dry potato wedges. Such high pricing  automatically drives away almost everyone who still has to plan their entertainment on limited pocket money. No wonder then that if the same band plays both Blue Frog and Hard Rock Cafe, the latter gets the larger crowd.

Hard Rock does not look or sound half as good as Blue Frog but at the very least, it’s value-for-money. The entrance fee is Rs 100 and Rs 150 on Tuesday and Thursday respectively (the two nights they host gigs), the beer is a cheaper Rs 150 and the food is very value-for-money (the strongly recommended chicken burger comes with a generous helping of fries and can last you through a two-hour gig).

When it comes to service however, Hard Rock and Blue Frog score equally low points. Would you rather see your waiter make an ass of himself every time  ‘YMCA’ comes on, or would you rather he ignore you completely and then look at you condescendingly when you say you just want a beer and nothing else? Would you rather he overcharge you or would you rather he upsell you by telling you there’s no Indian beer when there clearly is? Both venues have been known to arbitrarily up the entrance fees for big-name events without prior warning. Most recently, Blue Frog decided to charge Rs 700 for standing space and Rs 1,200 for a seat (where your line of vision could easily be blocked by a pillar) when they hosted two shows by the MIDIval PunditZ. Such behaviour smacks of greed, because they know fully well that someone who’s travelled all the way to the club is unlikely to turn back when they’ve come looking forward to the gig.

At the very least Hard Rock is quite honestly shameless about the kind of customer they want to attract. They are a please-all resto-bar first; gigs are just an add-on, never mind that their name has the word “rock” in it. Blue Frog, on the other hand, sells itself as a live music venue first, but seeks in every other way, to attract the Page 3-socialites, industrialists, and businessmen who would happily pay two grand to see a band that they care nothing about – as long as they can air-kiss and jabber to their friends and acquaintances in a cool, trendy-looking space.

Blue Frog is confused about what it wants to be. It says one thing, and does the other. We’d hate to see it fail, because it is still the only dedicated space in this city for live music, but unless it puts music lovers first, it will continue to be empty during weeknights. The way things are going, we fear a day might come soon when it becomes an electronica-only venue such as Zenzi because that genre is the only one that seems to draw in large crowds (Page 3 peeps who want to dance). Bands would lose the one venue that does not want them to play covers, and the one venue in the city that they can be proud about.

What Blue Frog needs to do now is to figure out a way of getting genuine music fans to the bands, perhaps by offering student discounts, or by differential pricing on weeknights (Tuesdays and Thursdays are traditionally slow and so the entrance could be lowered). They could also extend their Frequent Frogger program (now a by-invitation only card sent to people they believe are high revenue customers) in a way that rewards people who come for the music – for example, the more gigs you see in a month, the bigger the discount you get on your bill in the next. There are plenty of things Blue Frog could do to draw in more people – it might be the first-of-its-kind in the city, but it’s certainly not the first of its kind in the world. The question is, does it really want to?