Check out this comment left on the Best Of reader poll’s Talent category:

• Well, kiddies ... as you all sit here and bicker amongst yourselves, we've had our first venue casualty.
• Jake's in Menomonie closed its doors this week. In the face of a tough economy, John made the difficult decision to shut the place down. For those of you that aren't familiar - Jake's had great food, a great staff, and was a great venue for live music outside during the summer months. John is a musician himself, and always supported live music at Jake's. It will be sadly missed.
• The lesson here is this: Jake's had good business, with both their food, and their live music. And if a place like that can't make it in today's world, a LOT more will be sharing its fate. Do what you can to support what's left of the already small number of live music venues in the area.     – J

And from last week on the same category:

• ... We as cover bands should be worried about the state of our local music scene. If you have not played O'Leary's Pub or Tailgates since the smoking ban, perhaps you don't know how close we are to losing our local venues. Tailgates business is down 28% and has cut way back on it's live entertainment. If you have called O'Learys Pub in the past couple of weeks to book out 2009, you would know that they are not booking and will tell you they are seriously considering hiring DJ's and Karoake for their weekends after their slow summer. We, need to spend our energy trying to get our Myspace and Facebook fans to support not only ourselves, but, all of the local bands at these venues in the next couple of weeks. ...     – Slant

So what’s up with live music around here, guys? Is there enough interest / money / ambition to keep the scene going? Is this just the scene's normal ebb and flow, or is something changing?