Geoff Bartley

Musician

Geoff Bartley 1: By the time 1980 rolled around and enormous amounts of money began flowing from the hands of many into the hands of the few--Ronald Reagan was president, enormous amounts of wealth began flowing into the hands of fewer and fewer people, so the result of this was a lot of the good paying college coffee houses really dried up. In the seventies and the very early eighties they were run by college students who were musicians and who were interested in poetry and self-expression and the arts, and interested in playing guitar and etc. etc. By 1985 they were all being run by business majors who wouldn’t be caught dead there, because folkies were square and it was nerdy, so business majors were running this just to get extra credit on their transcripts, and the whole collection of well-run college coffee houses that paid well began evaporating. Lots of other gigs began evaporating.