An orchestra made of ringtones and mobile phones

Usually mobile phones aren’t that welcome in public places like concert halls. Well in 2001 a team of geeks defied that social convention and created an orchestra made out of the people in the audience with their phones set-up to full volume.

Golan Levin, Gregory Shakar, Scott Gibbons, Yasmin Sohrawardy, Joris Gruber, Erich Semlak, Gunther Schmidl, and Joerg Lehner produced a “large-scale concert performance whose sounds were wholly produced through the carefully choreographed ringing of the audience’s own mobile phones. Before the concert, participants registered their mobile phone numbers at a series of web terminals; in exchange, new ringtone melodies are automatically transmitted to their phones, and their seating assignment tickets were generated. During the concert, the audience’s phones got dialed up by live performers, using custom software which permits as many as 60 phones to ring simultaneously. Because the exact location and tone of each participant’s mobile phone was known in advance, the Dialtones concert was able to present a diverse range of unprecedented sonic phenomena and musically interesting structures, such as waves of polyphony which cascade across the audience. Dialtones was presented at the Ars Electronica Festival in September 2001, and at the Swiss National Exposition in May and June of 2002.”

Truly amazing.

Woof.

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How to lose money at a gig: a recap on the Gigdoggy Showcase!

Ok so as some of you may know, we hosted our first Gigdoggy Showcase on Saturday 18th at the Club Lambi in Montreal. I am now going to take the opportunity to do a little recap on the event, how we organized and how it played out.

The context of our Showcase

Before launching our Fanteraction™ platform (which by the way still hasn’t officially launched – we will open it on May first so stay tuned for Friday’s post on the matter), we were working on a gig management platform to help gig-swapping bands coordinate their efforts to set up their shows. This project is on hiatus for now, meaning we have stopped developing it, but you can still set-up an account at www.gigdoggy.com/gigs and use its existing features.

Anyways, the whole idea of the Gigdoggy Showcase originated with this gig-swapping website as we planned to use it to organize the event. It did help a lot as many logistical tasks were discussed and centralized within our showcase profile.

Once we decided to shift our focus on the Fanteraction™ service, we just took advantage of the gig to promote our up-and-coming idea and to deliver a party full of sonic delights.

Finding the bands

Well that wasn’t that hard actually. We found one band through this blog, 2 bands from Montreal via personal acquaintances, and the three other bands through Craigslist. For Craigslist we just posted an add in Montreal saying we were looking for gigs, and in the days to come we had filled our bill.

Finding the Venue

We needed a nice room to rent that could contain more or less 150 to 200 people. We found Club Lambi via one of the bands on the bill, The Angry Parrots that had already played there before. The venue was $350 for the night, for three bands, and $25 for any extra band (sound engineer fees). So basically we were preparing to cash-out $425 just for the room.

Organizing the logistics of the gig

By logistics I’m referring to promotion, pre-sale tickets, handling compensation between bands, setting up the technical rider for the sound-guy, selling merchandise and employing a DJ and some VJs.

Pre-sale tickets:

As mentioned above, we used our gig management platform to deal with some logistical tasks. Everything that deals with tickets sales and ticket pricing is in our showcase profile (http://www.gigdoggy.com/gigs/paisible-2009-02-04-03-52-07 – click on “12 comments” on the top right side of the “Ticket/Presale” section to expand the conversations).

Compensation:

Well we decided to divide everything evenly between bands at the end of the gig. Not much else to add here.

Promotion:

Offline promo:

• We depended a lot on word to mouth to get people attending. We didn’t do the offline flyer routine at all, and I just put up 20 posters near the venue to grab people’s attention, but apart from that, with six bands on the bill we were pretty confident we would have a good turnout.
• We wrote two press releases (one in English and one in French) and sent them out to major media listings. Don’t think it bared much fruit but we did get featured in some concert listings online and offline. You can download the english press release here.
• Thanks to a close friend who had a contact at CBC news, Greg got interviewed in front of the Club Lambi, and the clip was broadcasted on the CBC channel right before the 7pm news. Check out the clip here.

Online promo:

• We made a facebook event just to get the word out, and used it to have an overall idea of who was attending.
• I also wrote a post on the gig on this blog and promoted it via Craigslist.
• We subscribed to a very cool site called ArtistData that automatically updates a band’s gig schedule on all major social networks and calendars.
• Geoff Marshall from the Angry Parrots produced a great video gig flyer for us that we promoted via Facebook ads with a CPM model. We made it run for three days at $20/day (you choose your model and the your threshold price). We got something like 400 000 impressions for a total of 100 click-throughs. Don’t think it’s really worth the money :)
• We also used twitter to get a couple of people to attend.

So all in all, I would say that probably 95% of the people who came were close friends and relatives of the bands that played, and I’m leaving 5% out just to pretend that most of our efforts maybe helped out. The turnout was around 120 people at the peak of the event and felt a little disappointing. Also I would like to add that on that particular night, the frigin’ Montreal Habs were playing and most certainly contributed to a few dozen people not coming. Plus Boston totally owned them that night…

Technical Rider

Now this was a tough one. Having six bands on the bill obviously doesn’t help. All of it was done via email and an excel sheet that you can download here. One thing I thought of doing on the day of the gig was printing the tech rider for the sound guy just in case (I had only sent it by e-mial beforehand), so I had to re-arrange the spreadsheet in order for it to be displayed nicely on A4 sized pages. This may seem like a detail, but its an important one. Only 15 minutes before sound-check had I realized that my beautiful color-noted tech rider was dismantled into twice as many A4 sheets ’cause of this printing issue. In Excel you can of course set your borders as you wish for printing, but for the sake of the sound-guy it’s best to give him something nice with clean normal-sized font letters.

Selling Merchandise

Before the gig we had set up a big table with all the merch right by the main entrance. Most bands had merchandise, and most of the merchandise were comprised of t-shirst. I don’t think the bands did to well on that front, at least we didn’t although we had a pretty cool design. So yeah, we lost money on with the shirts and we’ve decided to blame the recession.

The DJ and The VJs

We thought that having a DJ perform during downtimes we keep the party going and it did. We got very lucky with the VJs as they accepted to come over the day of the gig! That was cool: they set up their projectors and white panels around the stage and did their thing all night long. It truly added a nice atmosphere to every set.

Conclusions

Well on the party side of thing, the night was a success and everybody seemed to really like the ambiance as well as the bands. Me and Greg spent the whole day more or less managing stuff so it wasn’t really a night out for us, but still we had a blast. Now on the budget side we were in the red. All bands got paid $85 (including us), so if you only consider the venue cost, which originally was $425 but got priced down to $300, we were already loosin’ money. Add to that the cost for the t-shirst ($200), pre-sale tickets ($12), DJ ($40) and VJs ($40) and you realise we are indeed newbies in event organization.

But hey, we weren’t in it for the money and this was our first gig. Take away the Habs game, two bands on the bill (six is a lot…) and level to entry price to 10 buck and we might have broken even. Maybe by selling more shirts we could’ve of made a profit. And besisdes, for a six-band bill, all bands were pretty satisfied with their $85 (although one very big hassle was to know who sold how many pre-sales – this is certainly something we’ll keep in mind for our future shows).

So there you have it. If you have any questions on how to lose money at gigs, give us a hollar. And if you got any suggestions on how to become profitable, please let us know.

A warm mruff to all the bands present at the gig and to all our readers.

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About Gigdoggy’s Fanteraction™ service (CBC interview)

Greg got interviewed this morning right in front of Club Lambi (where we will be hosting our Gigdoggy Showcase tomorrow) by a CBC reporter about our new Fanteraction™ service (I was there too but just couldn’t stop barking my joyful feelings, so they decided to attach me to a post a couple of yards back). They cut him off after just 40 seconds in a pretty abrupt manner, but hey, we doggies are happy enough to be on the news!

We are developing a band-fan interaction service that we are test-driving at tomorrow’s show. We will be ready for an online beta launch by the end of the month, and the service will be available at www.gigdoggy.com.

Mruff!

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Promoting your gigs with video flyers – a web 2.0 approach to gig promotion

Check out what this band did to promote their latest gig:

I noticed this video while checking out my comments on my MySpace page. The band is called Super Lite Bike, they come from Austin Texas, they write amazing tunes, and they make kick-ass video flyers for their gigs. Found this second promo vid produced for one of their previous shows (it’s not on youtube so I can’t embed it in wordpress). Check it out here.

Yeah, I think it’s an awesome idea too. I sent a mail to Super Lite Bike asking them how they got the idea and how long it took to edit the whole thing, and here’s what Jackson (bass and backings) responded shortly after:

The video game one took us about 4 hours. It was loads of fun. We ended up putting it out 2 days before the show, but we got a great response from it. The effects were all done by Jim Jones, a friend of ours who does the videos. The green screen was a fun shot: I had to run in place for about 2 minutes making weird faces. The guy that gets shot had to stay dead on the couch for about 30 mins.

The idea was really just to find a different way to get our shows out to as many people as possible. We all decided that the usual paper flyers are cool at the venue you’re gonna play at, but putting them up all over town is a waste of time and money.

We can get a video-flyer done for cheap and then just put that up on the net. We get way more people to see it than a normal flyer (about 1200 views for each video). If someone could guarantee us that a 1000 people would see our flyers on the street, we still probably wouldn’t do them. We’re in a more visual world nowadays: people just like to sit at their computers and take note of random crazy stuff. It’s also like giving someone a little gift from us. Our fans get to see something different – they get to see who we are, what we look like and get an idea of our personalities. It creates a much stronger bond with people than them just seeing a poster or a flyer on myspace.

Our good friend, Jose Jones got the idea for the videos. He films and edits (the editing process is usually a day or so). The guy is an up-and-coming director/genius here in Austin. He’s great and we’re just lucky to be good friends with him.

Yup, although traditional gig promotion is still a must in some respects, we are indeed in a visual world now, and interactive content is key to attract the increasing number of geeks on this planet.

Check out Super Lite Bike on MySpace: www.myspace.com/superlitebike

and Jose Jones on MySpace at: www.myspace.com/josejonesfilms

And while I’m on cool promo vids, here’s one from the very talented hip-hop/music 2.0  activist Wax (from www.myspace.com/waxandherbalt). Also check out his youtube channel – the dude has made around 20 handy-cam home-made vids and generated around 800 000 views (rough estimate), probably more.

Mruff.

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“Ben’s Big Gig” and the art of crowdsourcing a gig’s logistics

Web based communication tools are becoming so powerful for bands that fans can now deeply get involved in their careers (fans’ is a superfluous term in the current web environment – ‘community’ is maybe more appropriate). This ‘penetration’ in the intricacies of a band’s work ethics can have many upsides for those willing to play the social game (the major downside being the time consuming social tasks themselves that can easily become overwhelming).

One singer/songwriter I have encountered embraces this social game with great ease. This highly skilled player is no other than Ben Walker who in a couple of short years has managed to gain a significant reputation on the web by impressively manipulating these social-tools (Ben is well known for the Twitter Song you might have already heard, for his ihatemornings.com website, and surely for a multitude of other things).

Ben is launching a new project for 2009 called Ben’s Big Gig, a gig who’s concept is to outsource (or like Ben calls it, crowdsource) as many logistical tasks as possible (on Twitter he’s currently asking the community if he should crowdsource the press release:). As of now, the gig is scheduled for Friday May 1rst in Oxford.

Cabaret 2.0 is the terrible name I’m using for a gig I’m playing in Oxford on May 1st. It’s going to have lots of live connections to and from the internet with video, Twitter, photos etc. It’s a gig for normal non-techy people that uses loads of bleeding edge social media stuff. But the most interesting part from my end is that I’m trying to crowdsource all the planning and promotion. We just got stuff set up this week, but follow @bensbiggig (the gig’s twitter profile> or bensbiggig.tumblr.com to see how it goes.

Ben says he plans on organizing the gig in a theater:

There are many benefits of presenting this gig at a theater (rather than a rock venue or a bar). We can lay the place out how we like (probably cabaret-style tables and chairs at the front and seats around the back and balcony). We get access to the venue’s promotion and ticketing systems (the gig will appear in all the local listings without our help, and we can pre-sell tickets through the existing theater booking system). We can also do something crazy, like add another night, quite easily if it sells out. So if we know loads of people are going to come and make it a great night, we’ll expand to fit that space.

Here is the pitch he sent to venues announcing the event:

I wrote a lot of songs in 2008, and involved myself deeply in the exciting world of Social Media technologies (the descendants of Facebook and Myspace). I now have hundreds of ‘followers’ and ‘fans’ and ‘friends’ all over the internet and I’m exploring new ways for musicians to interact with such a disparate community.

There is already a growing House Concert movement which shifts the responsibility for organisation gigs to the fans and lets bands and musicians tour without all the usual expenses. That’s a lot of fun, and I’ve been playing quite a few house concerts over the past couple of years. But I’m thinking of something a little grander, which I’m calling Cabaret 2.0 (for want of a better term ;o).

I’m going to put on a concert in March/April that uses all the latest internet technologies to add an extra level of magic to a classic cabaret-style performance.

I’ll play 15 or so of my songs with my band, some of which will have video, crowd interaction, improvisation and guest musicians. The evening will be compèred by somebody great (probably a poet friend of mine), and there will be other non-musical acts (poetry, comedy and maybe some acrobatics). The whole thing will be streamed live on the internet using two or three cameras and recorded for release as an online album. We will also have screens in the venue which will allow people from elsewhere on the internet to write messages, post videos, and otherwise take part. The audience will also have the chance to record short video clips for instant upload and write messages live onto the website.

It sounds complicated but is quite easy to achieve using current web technologies (Twitter, UStream, 12seconds, etc.). People have done this sort of thing with technology conferences and events, but this would be the first musical event to be so connected and integrated with the internet. I’m sure you can imagine why I’m excited…

So, in the spirit of social frenziness this seems like a great idea, and I’m pretty curious to know how it’s all going to play out. 2009 is going to be a year filled with crowdsourcing experiences and projects like Ben’s Big Gig are of the first breed. If you want to be a part of it and help out, follow-up on the gig’s progress via:

@bensbiggig (Big Gig’s twitter profile)

@ihatemornings (Ben’s twitter profile)

bensbiggig.tumblr.com (the Big Gig’s website)

Bark.

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How to quit the band

“Perhaps it would be good if you and I started seeing other bands.”

I made up a story when I quit my band about being addicted to drugs and alcohol and needing time to get my shit together. Oh, wait a minute, that wasn’t a story, it was true.

www.youtube.com/TonyManns

I left a band of 25 years behind and have had a much more creative and gratifying time of playing the last 4 years. I bought an up to date studio recorder and great monitors and mic’s and keyboard and just decided to put the politics and garbage that goes with playing in a band behind me.The guys I played with were OK musicians but never wanted to progress or learn their instrument to its full extent and were satisfied to do old chestnut covers but there comes a time where you have to decide for yourself whats best for you musically….loyalty and friendship are one thing but being unfulfilled and stagnant is another.At some point you have to bow out and explain that you want and desire to keep learning and growing and if that does not fit with the other members agenda and complacency too bad.How many times has a rehersal or a gig seemed like bad deja vu, near the end it really just boiled down to an excuse to get away from the wife/ family and drink for about 4 hours and of course play the same old **** over and over.

Life is short and if you have served your time like I have then nothing should stand in your way of leaving and really getting to know yourself and rediscovering your instrument.You will also notice that your abilities magically reappear as well. All it took was the final courage to admit to yourself its done.

P.S buying a new Albert and a SuperSport doesnt hurt your outlook either.

Parker

Just tell your bandmates that you want your wife to “sit in” on gigs and be the band’s new manager…worked wonders for the Beatles, Sepultura, and Spinal Tap of course.

Anonymous

“You’re FIRED!” Yardbirds to Jeff Beck.
“I QUIT!” Jeff Beck back to Yardbirds.

“Things are so busy for me right now, I just have time to put into this band”. I’ve used that a few times (most of the time it’s true). Unfortunately, I’m more often willing to ride out the storm, or maybe more appropriately, go down with the ship.

Joseph – bandmix.com/joseph6

I think quitting a band is much easier than firing someone from a band. It’s a lot like breaking up with a significant other because you’ve done so much together. Its explained so well and simply in the song Popular by Nada Surf.
“Don’t put off breaking up when you know you want to, Prolonging the
situation only makes it worse, Tell him honestly, simply, kindly, but
firmly, Don’t make a big production, Don’t make up an elaborate story.”

There’s a lot of life lessons in Mid-90′s alt-rock!

Jimmy – Music Arsenal . com

“I’m going in a different direction, musically.” – used that one once

“Look, we aren’t gigging. I wanna gig. I’m gonna go out on my own & make some bucks for awhile. Call me if & when you’re ready to go to work & actually DO something.” – used that once

Or here are some other ideas:

“You suck. I’m outta here!”

“Um…this is kind of embarassing, but I’ve been having these…erotic dreams about the drummer. My wife is kind of pissed that I keep calling out his name in my sleep. I don’t think I can work with someone who has this kind of effect on me…”

“I’ve decided to run for governor, & I think that’s just gonna take up too much time.”

“Let me tell you about Jesus…”

Philbymon – Bandmix.com/philbymon

I think there are two paths that can be taken here. One is to be honest and tell your bandmates how you feel about continuing with them. While ideals such as honesty are certainly lofty, they are are tricky because we never get to be honest in a vacuum. there are always implications and consequences. So its quite possible that your bandmates may not see eye to eye with you on this. The second and less painful, also somewhat treacherous, would be to tell your bandmates you are taking a break from music for a while. Lay low till the whole furor dies down and start with a new and more creatively pleasing ensemble. This is certainly easier and may perhaps ease the resultant blow to your friendship.

Anonymous

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Why bands should consider playing house concerts

Why house concerts?

Playing bars, pubs and clubs isn’t the only way to host a live show. You don’t always have to cope with the usual business aspects of booking a gig in some rut negotiating with a ill-tempered club owner paying you peanuts (kind of extreme, but you get my drift). There are alternatives, and one of them is performing a concert in the comfort of somebody’s home (or your own by that matter).

There are very interesting advantages to trying this out:

• You usually get to plan it how you want.
• Most house venues demand donations ranging from $5 to $20. In many cases the people hosting the show leave %100 of all proceeds to the musicians. Let’s do some quick math: $15 donation/entrance fee with 40 people attending will net you an easy $600 for the night, merchandise not included.
• The people hosting these shows are PASSIONATE about music, so most will leave you all the earnings, plus throw in a free cooked meal and possibly a place to stay for the night.
• These concerts engage the artist and their audience in a level of intimacy that’s incomparable with a traditional venue. This can lead to healthier fan relationships and of course (sorry to always lay down the cash concerns) better merchandise sales.

A couple of websites so you get the idea:

This one site called Concerts In Your Home is a resource/community for artists and hosts. Hosts can search more than 500 artists on the site, and artists can search detailed profiles of more than 200 house concert presenters in the US, Canada, UK, even Australia and New Zealand. Most performers play blues, folk and acoustic styles, so nothing too extreme. Anyways most places don’t have a PA so musicians prepare acoustic sets.

In the same vein we also have HouseConcerts.com. Here the model is a bit different as this site proposes a listing of people who offer their homes to host shows.

For Canadian house concerts you can also  check out www.acousticroof.ca.

There is also houseconcertsyork.co.uk who conduct these events around York, UK.

Besides ‘Concerts In Your Home’, most sites are pretty local and isolated, but by surfing through the web you’ll find tons of them. The house concert movement is definitely stirring.

A couple of quotes so you get an even better idea:

I’ll leave you to some quotes I gathered talking with some house-concert-aspiring-ministrels:

I haven’t done that many house concerts but the ones that I have done have been some of my favorite shows. I generally feel that I’m “at home” and playing for friends. Pay is generally as good or better than small venues. Success level, attendance wise, seems to relate to the host’s knowledge of his or her environment and enthusiasm in promotion. I absolutely love playing house concerts and I’m very grateful for the trend.
Ronny Elliot – www.ronnyelliott.com

I think they are awesome and a lot of times way better than a club gig. People are actually there to hear you which is not always the case in most clubs. Each house concert is run differently, but for the most part, it seems typical that they charge anywhere from $5 to $20 at the door and a lot of times give the artist %100. Some take a percentage, it just depends. Artists also get to sell merch in an intimate environment, compared to a club where that is nearly impossible. I love these gigs and wouldn’t mind supplementing them for clubs gigs altogether (ok, maybe not completely: most home concert throwers have their own guest list, so I could not omit clubs altogether or else a lot of fans would miss out on live shows!)
Rachel McGoye – www.rachelmcgoye.com

I’m finding myself playing more and more house concerts, though I have not given up on live-music in public settings. The appeal is pretty straightforward, provided the host and audience understand the
casual-but-professional dynamic (or are at least willing to follow): low overhead (save, of course, the benevolence and spirit of the host!) and thus much better pay (even 10 people at $10/head makes for a better night than many places’ll guarantee!); great environment in which to connect and interact (vs. noisy pubs, for instance); not nearly so lonely if attendance is light or I’m not as known in a particular community; etc. Word is out, though, so presenters are becoming bombarded just like everyone else in the community.
Wes Weddell – www.myspace.com/wesweddell

And to conclude, here is an extract of ‘The Complete Guide To House Concerts‘ Kevin Kelly (author of the renowned ‘1000 True Fans‘ manifesto) promotes on his website:

At the end of every house concert, at least one person will approach you because they want to set-up a concert with you at their house. And once people find out the Suzie is going to host one, many more will want to show you off to their friends and family too. Before the night is through you will be in the lovely position of adding several names and numbers to your house-concert file and following up with them to book a firm date for each show.
When you play bars or cafes, it is frequently a struggle even getting the booker on the phone. With house concerts you are constantly juggling plenty of gig offers, which come with guarantee money, a guarantee audience, and a minimum of hassles. What could be better?

Apparently there is a booming market for these shows, so if your set can be performed acoustically it seems pretty worth while to give them a shot.

We’ll be posting other quotes on this subject shortly, so stay mruffed.

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Gig promotion strategies with “Ain’t Yo Mama” (part 1)

Had a little chat John Wilder, guitarist of Ain’t Yo Mama, on his band’s gig-promotion strategies. This is how they do it.

How they deal with concert promotion:

I approach club owners different than most people. I’m not looking for a gig for a hundred bucks in their club. I’m looking for a venue to hold a show in. Most of the time I get the venues for the door. Some resist and I have to eat crow.

1. The first thing I do after getting a date at a venue is come there one Saturday night between 11pm and 1am and see who the party girls are. I get to know them and give them a couple of t-shirts, some stickers, and a cd. I tell them to wear the t-shirts to all the clubs they hang in particularly the venue we are playing in. I go in the men’s restroom and put stickers above all the urinals, and instruct the girls to do the same in the woman’s, and also to put them in any restroom they happen to go to.

2. weeks before the show I go visit the local newspaper and inquire about running some adds for the gig. Then I ask for a free story or writeup in the paper, if you buy a couple of adds they will do whatever you want and papers need special interest stories to fill space.

3. We make up large posters for the show and place them in Wal-Marts, grocery stores, high traffic mall areas and if we can get away with it around other clubs or venues.

4. We are developing an email list, and  everyone I see or meet I mention it to them.

5. I also call the local chamber of commerce office and inform them of what is going on.

6. The weekend before the show I take piles of flyers to my party-girls and have them plaster them on cars that are in the parking lots between 12-1am, I figure this is the peoples cars I need to get at.

You have to take a shotgun approach to getting people. If you are just starting you can count on friends, but over time no matter how good you are they will get tired of going to the shows. I catch a lot of flack about being a sexist on here, but I give 90% of my personal attention to the females to get the word out. Why cause if you can get the hot girls the guys will follow, did everyone read that? Bring the women and the men will follow.

I’m working on a bigger show for later this fall where we will start using radio ads, also I have some friends that own a furniture business that may, and Im keeping my fingers crossed, they may sponsor us and pay for advertising and provide us with a TV or Appliance to give away at the shows. In my case the Band is called Aint Yo Mama, before the last set we are having the AYM “HOT MAMA” contest, we pick 5 of the best looking women in the house get them on stage and judge them by crowd response with our soundman’s db meter. The winner would then draw a ticket out of the bucket for door prizes like the TV or appliance.

If you are in the music business somehow you have to separate yourselves from the pack. It doesn’t matter how good you music is or isn’t, what matters is getting attention to your band.

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Why bands should not sign with a major record label by Steve Albini

These are not Dick Dale’s words but Steve Albini’s. He’s been around for some time acting in all domains of the music industry so he knows what he’s talking about. This article is a classic of sorts. Very good read. Enjoy.

“Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what’s printed on the contract. It’s too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody’s eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there’s only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says “Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke”. And he does of course“. (read more)

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How some bands deal with club owners

If you’re interest in how bands deal with club owners, you might also wanna take a look at:

• How not to get your band booked
• What bands should know about playing in clubs

Dealing with club owners: your best bet is to put a cd together with about 3-4 of your best songs, go and talk directly to the bar owner…don’t bull shit them at all…remember, they deal with musicians all the time. Don’t be cocky, but be confident, this will help you get your foot in the door, also, if you can play the same place twice, there will surely be people who remember you and word gets out“.
Gunner – www.myspace.com/guitargunn

Club owners are always looking for someone to bring in a crowd, they sell more drinks, that’s thier bread & butter.
I only take the door. They can keep all alcohol sales. They like to hear that.
A simple contract always gets signed, 3-4 things on it only, you get the door, they keep all bar money, your sales are yours, ect. Some don’t want to sign a contract. You play at your own risk without it“.
Cowboy Elvis – www.myspace.com/cowboyelvis

Although I’ve tried for a long time to get gigs in clubs, it’s been very difficult. Maybe because we are mostly a duo and clubs like dance bands. But we’ve tried restaurants too. Seems that restaurants have a rotation of bands that play regularly. It’s hard to break into that rotation. We haven’t yet succeeded. We have to leave press kits and cd’s but can never seem to catch the owner in order to actually book a gig. They will not call you ever. They have their choice of bands – they’re not looking for more or for anything particularly special. Some clubs have acoustic nights – most of these evenings are open mic evenings. We are tired of open mics. It’s great for the venue – free music! But lousy for musicians trying to make a living. Some clubs require you to secure them an audience of anywhere from 30-100 people before they will “hire” you. It’s quite a scam – after you secure them their business, they will pay you only a percentage of the door! Sometimes this is split with other bands who’ve had to do the same thing. What a scam! We’ve tried to find managers and booking agents. We’ve gotten as far as sending our press kit and then never hearing from these guys again.
Our problem is that we don’t play covers – we do originals. We are far from mainstream even in our originals so it’s hard to find a club or venue that will hire us. We’re “not what they’re looking for”. If we were a cover band playing rock and blues we’d probably be working regularly.
Payment is hard to come by – because of all of the above. But we’ve managed to be sure to be paid for most gigs – even if it’s minimal. Here’s a good story for you…
After playing the local Pumpkin Festival for a few years for free, my partner and I decided to ask to be paid. After all, the sound man is paid and so are the staff. Why not the musicians whom, without them, the festival would be basically nothing? We approached the organizing committee and asked for payment. They responded that it was not their policy to pay musicians and if we wanted to be paid we should look elsewhere!“.
Rahel – www.rahelmusic.com

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