I used to be in a band. We were total noise. If you put 2 gorillas in a room with some instruments with heavy effects on them and gave them a really good drummer, that would be us. We didn’t rehearse, we had no songs, we had no structure. We did have a television that showed unpleasant things like Charlie Brown cartoons, graphic scenes of violence, and parts of the show ‘Friends’. The tv usually was smashed before the end of the set. We didn’t have a record out or t-shirts or anything. It was just a release for us. We had no aspirations. Yet we managed to play Chicago, Detroit, and the Knitting Factory in New York City.
These are the words of a guy who’s been on all sides of the live concert equation. I’ve been the promoter. I’ve been in the local band. I’ve been in the touring band. I’ve been the patron. I’ve been the sound guy. I’ve been the bartender. I’ve been the door guy. I’ve been the janitor. I’ve been the groupie. So there isn’t an angle I haven’t seen.
Check out his amazing article that sets the record straight from the club-owner/promoter standpoint of the live-gig business. Hilareous and informative. A must-read.
“How good you are. Of course you think you’re good. Your music is probably your life. Guess what. It’s just another fucking band setting up and making racket to the club staff. Hard to believe isn’t it?”
That statement applies for the whole music movement nowadays doesn’t it?
Indeed. I can imagine a couple of situations in which your band can be considered like a nuisance while you’re trying to revolutionize the music scene, for instance when you’re playing in your parents basements for the first time with your friends, doing deep purple covers, sure that you’re nailing perfectly Richie Blackmore’s solo of child in time when in fact all you’re actually doing is randomly hitting that poor fret board from top to bottom :) (ahhh the good old days, not even sure they changed that much)
What were you referring to?
MRUFF !! (woof)
I think i was just referring to the good old human self esteem.
Anyway, those days were gold.
Mruff to you
[...] How not to get your band booked [...]
It does sound funny… but in the end it all balances itself out. I played at a bunch of venues here in Montreal where things that happened were as retarted if not more from the venue’s part.
The one to remember the most was at Cafe Chaos. We come in at 5pm (the agreed load-in time) (after making sure our day job employers let us go earlier and also preparing ourselves to unload all the equipment as soon as possible since it was a december show and we didn’t need to freeze ourselves to ice age) and what do we see going on in the room? A union meeting (woohoo gotta love those!) that takes the whole space (there’s no backdoor in the club) and basically we can’t start bringing in all the heavy equipment because it will disturb the flow of the meeting so we’re politely asked to wait “a little bit”. Finally closer to 6pm we’re able to start loading it all in. When the main sound guy introduces me to the chick that will be doing our sound at the same time he throws in a vulgar “oh btw yesterday we unfortunately broke our P.A. so we’re going to turn the monitors into the crowd, but don’t worry it worked ok yesterday”. What can you do? We have to play the show. So we set up for the sound check while we realize that their subwoofer isn’t working either and the soung-girl doesn’t even know how to plug it back to the board because apparently the main guy unplugged it while he was playing with it “yesterday, when he broke the p.a.”. Once again.. oh well let’s play and almost burn our bassist amp but who cares, right? So finally the show is over, everything went well minus the sound, people take time to chat with the band, we’re all having a good time, finally when most of the crowd is gone (around 1 am) and we start to wrap our stuff and bring it to the entrance this moron waiter comes up to us and asks if we could get our stuff out faster because he’s not getting paid anymore since there are no more patrons in the room. That was my last straw…
Anyway this is just one venue. But I assure you that it’s not just bands that are annoying. Mostly it comes down to the fact that we’re all human I guess…
A good and funny article, with many decent points to ponder. However I have a fundamental disagreement with the author’s premise regarding who’s risk it should be (the club or the band) right off the bat. I quote:
“Musicians hate that money actually comes into the equation. I’ve tried to explain this to some. In major markets, there are venues that make unproven bands buy ‘x’ amount of tickets to get a show. The band in turn then sells the tickets to their friends, family, whoever. The Milwaukee Metal Fest survived for years doing this. The response is: “Pay to play fuckin sucks dude..it’s fuckin bullshit.” What no one seems to realize that live music is always a pay to play proposition. It’s just that the venue that has to pay. A mid size music only venue in Memphis usually has a nut of about $3K to $5K to cover monthly. I will not list the expenses here but the fact that it’s a long list should prove my point. Almost all of the venues in Memphis that I know of don’t take anything out of the door for the venue itself except to pay the door guy and sound guy and maybe security if necessary. So that leaves the bar to cover that monthly nut. Risky business eh?”
Yes it is a risky business. But who’s risk is it? Who should pay for their own risk? The club has decided that live music will enhance their business, and therefore made a business decision to have live music at their venue. Why should the band take the risk here? Why shouldn’t the venue pay for the risk, because this is all about increasing that venue’s revenue in the first place?
Think of it this way. A shop owner’s business is sagging, and he thinks that a face lift to his shop will do the trick in attracting more customers. Particularly, he wants his entire store painted with a wild Graffiti style dragonfly. So, he locates a good artist who is capable of doing this and HIRES him to paint the storefront. Does he say to the artist “Tell you what, you pay me for the privilege of giving you my storefront to expose your art to all this foot traffic”? Hell no he doesn’t. He pays the artist out of his own pocket because this is a BUSINESS RISK he chose to make.
I see no difference when it comes to venues paying bands. In both cases, the business owners are taking a risk in purchasing goods or services that might increase their business.
Howdy gang…
I’m the author of that there article. This was originally a blog I posted on my myspace (which is still there, btw) and I thought no one but a fraction of my friends read it. It turns out it’s been copied and pasted all over the internet. If I’d known, I probably would’ve cleaned up the language and maybe sugar-coated it a little bit.
To respond to Mr. Ridgeway, the amount of risk a venue takes vs. the risk bands take do not compare. I’ve been in a band and I’ve owned a venue. You don’t have to sign a lease to be in a band. You don’t have to worry about going to jail (selling beer to minors) being in a band. Who’s more likely to get sued? A club or a band? What do you think there’s more of? Bands or venues? Why is that?
I’m assuming you’re a musician. Think about the amount of money you’ve invested in being a musician. Do you think you could open a decent concert venue with it?
I’m not trying to be a dick but I’m just sayin….
[...] in June 2008 we had stumbled upon a great article of some mystery-promoter dude that, instead of explaining how bands should promote and book their shows, explained on the [...]
[...] the series of ‘How to not get your band booked‘, first off I recommend reading or re-reading the piece I just linked, and second I bring to [...]