Watching the other bands

hugbot

fuck the hope and anchor

e; actually that depends if its still managed by bugbear promotions. fuck bugbear promotions.

Deijavoo

Yeah, after playing there for Bugbear four or five times, we decided against any further instances. Twats.

thomasross20

If it's a 3-band thing and you're on first, I reckon you can stick around for the second band but are free to go for the last...?

Deijavoo

thomasross20 said:

If it's a 3-band thing and you're on first, I reckon you can stick around for the second band but are free to go for the last...?

No.

Deijavoo

The amount of frankly awful bands I've endured in the attempt to support people in their passion, and they can't spare 34 minutes and 20 seconds of my awful band? Deeply annoying.

digitalscream

Deijavoo said:

The amount of frankly awful bands I've endured in the attempt to support people in their passion, and they can't spare 34 minutes and 20 seconds of my awful band? Deeply annoying.

A wisdom for this. Tempted to edit the database and give you lots of them, actually...as far as I'm concerned, there's absolutely no excuse for being shit and/or sounding shit (sound guy aside, of course - that's out of the band's control). Definitely not saying my bands have been great, but I've lost count of the number of bands before us on the bill who've emptied the place before we played

IvisonGuitars

John_BlackWolf said:

PolarityMan;835321" said:

@John_BlackWolf


Would still value your insight in getting out of that rut though.

The rut being: Need good gigs to build fan-base > Need fan-base to get good gigs.

There really is no direct answer to this so I'll just highlight a few generalized things that MIGHT help.

What you need:

• Good songs (Songs that your target demographic will consider good songs, they will then buy your music and come see you again live)
• Strong & consistent branding
• High quality product/recording

What promoters and bigger bands care about:

• Money
• Success

How will you being a band on the bill benefit them?

• The show/tour isn't sold out. you will sell enough adv tickets to make you worth having on the bill
• The show/tour isn't sold out and you can financially contribute to the advertising campaign budget which will increase ticket sales
  
• The show/tour is sold out and you can contribute financially to the band/promoter/managements pockets (buy-on)

Great, consise post. And it gets a LOL?? There really is no helping some folk.

Teetonetal

Drew_fx said:

Played a gig last night.

Some kid in one of the bands - borrowed my amp, my cab, and MY PLECTRUM...

And then they all left straight after their set.

He'd be screwed if playing on the same bill as me... I normally don't use a pick and don't carry any

Deijavoo

digitalscream said:

Deijavoo said:

The amount of frankly awful bands I've endured in the attempt to support people in their passion, and they can't spare 34 minutes and 20 seconds of my awful band? Deeply annoying.

A wisdom for this. Tempted to edit the database and give you lots of them, actually...as far as I'm concerned, there's absolutely no excuse for being shit and/or sounding shit (sound guy aside, of course - that's out of the band's control). Definitely not saying my bands have been great, but I've lost count of the number of bands before us on the bill who've emptied the place before we played

Absolutely. We had one support band play for over 90 minutes before us in our venue, after arsing about for nearly an hour after they were to be on. With timings etc... We lost about 50 out of a crowd of 200 wanting their money back as they came to see us and we hadn't even started by midnight.

thomasross20

Deijavoo said:

thomasross20 said:

If it's a 3-band thing and you're on first, I reckon you can stick around for the second band but are free to go for the last...?

No.

To be fair the last multi-band thing I did we stayed for the whole lot, 4 hours. 

Just sometimes people have to get home for kids etc (when it starts getting late)

PolarityMan

John_BlackWolf said:

PolarityMan;835321" said:

@John_BlackWolf


Would still value your insight in getting out of that rut though.

The rut being: Need good gigs to build fan-base > Need fan-base to get good gigs.

There really is no direct answer to this so I'll just highlight a few generalized things that MIGHT help.

What you need:

• Good songs (Songs that your target demographic will consider good songs, they will then buy your music and come see you again live)
• Strong & consistent branding
• High quality product/recording

What promoters and bigger bands care about:

• Money
• Success

How will you being a band on the bill benefit them?

• The show/tour isn't sold out. you will sell enough adv tickets to make you worth having on the bill
• The show/tour isn't sold out and you can financially contribute to the advertising campaign budget which will increase ticket sales
  
• The show/tour is sold out and you can contribute financially to the band/promoter/managements pockets (buy-on)

If we chose to we could be in a position financially contribute....but...and here is the big one, we would only do it if we thought it was going to be worthwhile in terms of a significant increase in our exposure.  Plus tbh I dont even know what the level of funding commitment your talking about here. 

I reckon we have good songs and good recording down, our branding could be stronger but see what you think:

https://prionson.bandcamp.com/

What would be really interesting is, since it sounds like you might have taken some of these options, what your experience was. ie/ what ballpark figure did you invest, how much did you feel you got out of it etc. Where did you find the connections to even get into those discussion?

Also agree that a lol on the post seems ridiculous so youve got another wis from me, honestly do appreciate you sharing your experience here.

PolarityMan

Deijavoo;835641" said:

digitalscream said:



Deijavoo said:

The amount of frankly awful bands I've endured in the attempt to support people in their passion, and they can't spare 34 minutes and 20 seconds of my awful band? Deeply annoying.





A wisdom for this. Tempted to edit the database and give you lots of them, actually...as far as I'm concerned, there's absolutely no excuse for being shit and/or sounding shit (sound guy aside, of course - that's out of the band's control). Definitely not saying my bands have been great, but I've lost count of the number of bands before us on the bill who've emptied the place before we played













Absolutely. We had one support band play for over 90 minutes before us in our venue, after arsing about for nearly an hour after they were to be on. With timings etc... We lost about 50 out of a crowd of 200 wanting their money back as they came to see us and we hadn't even started by midnight.

Bands that run over really piss me off too. Especially if they then hang around on the stage chatting to the audience while you're trying to do a quick changeover to claw the time back.

Drew_TNBD

Honestly, after 8 years of gigging in the rock+metal+post-rock scene...

The UK is fucked. There is very little camaraderie, and very little mutual respect. No-one believes in "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" - I've lost count the number of bands I've personally done favours for (getting gigs, loaning gear, promoting their releases, etc..) had next to nothing in return. No-one seems to want to raise up everyone as a community, it's every man for himself. It's one big fucking king of the kill "crab bucket" wrestle fest. It's depressing. As Vonnegut would say... and so it goes.

Contrast the UK to the US, where it seems like bands are friends with bands, and they put shows on together as one big team, or community. From the outside it looks very different to me anyway.

chrispy108

thomasross20 said:

Deijavoo said:

thomasross20 said:

If it's a 3-band thing and you're on first, I reckon you can stick around for the second band but are free to go for the last...?

No.

To be fair the last multi-band thing I did we stayed for the whole lot, 4 hours. 

Just sometimes people have to get home for kids etc (when it starts getting late)

Then don't gig. You'd manage to find a solution to your 'problems' if you were 'headlining'.

It's sad that a venue felt this needed to be a rule, as it should just be common manners.

Part of the problem is shit 'promoters' though, my death metal band once had a group playing sea-shanties with an accordian open for us....

chrispy108

+Wis @Drew_fx

I could count on one hand the number of good experiences at gigs I've had, not from a performance point of view, but from the other side. I nearly always went home feeling fucked over by a venue/promoter/soundman/door man/band/crowd etc etc.

Cirrus

I think making it an unbending rule is a bit pointless. People need to be receptive to the music if they're going to enjoy it, and nobody is going to enjoy a band they're being coerced into seeing against their will.

When we play I personally don't care whether the other bands on the bill watch me or not. Those people are all there to do a job; play their set and promote their b(r)and, and that's fine. I don't care if they're outside talking to their fans in the smoking area while we play. If they need to be up at 6am the next day to get to work I won't begrudge them for leaving early. If they're on after us I don't care if they're backstage working on a setlist, warming up, doing an interview or have left to go and find some dinner in the only spare time they'll have all evening.

Who cares what they chose to do? Life's too short and at any rate the inter-band scene building/ friendship making usually happens backstage, in soundchecks, before and after the show and in messages on Facebook.

Obviously if I can watch other bands on the bill I do, but sometimes I'm busy. I also suffer sometimes from a bit of anxiety before I play - not every time, and I'm not totally sure what triggers it - but I find getting out the venue for a bit helps a lot.

Even then I at least try to catch a bit of each bands' set. I suppose the main thing I'm guilty of is not stay to the end of a night at say 1am if I played at 8:00pm on a 5 band bill and it's a two hour drive home. But really, worrying that the other bands aren't staying to watch you is in my mind more a symptom of the general decline in gig attendance than a real problem that needs to be addressed in its own right.

That's how I see it anyway.

As for the venue, I enjoyed the gig we did there a couple of years ago. We were due to play last March but on the drive up I suffered an illness that left me excreting my vital organs and crawling around a motorway services car park throwing up, so we had to cancel. My hope is that there will be a third time and it'll be better than that.

Phil_aka_Pip

I used to get p1ssed off playing gigs where a band that's on earlier disappears as soon as their set is done, taking all their WAGs with them. I was there to listen to everyone and learn from it (whether I liked their music or not), as well as play our set, and if we weren't on last I'd stay to the end of the gig to hear them that were deemed more worthy of the headline slot than us, and hopefully learn something. I thought them that left early were rude, self-centred, and not into live music for its own sake, just for what they were going to get out of it.

HollowAxis

Drew_fx said:

Played a gig last night.

Some kid in one of the bands - borrowed my amp, my cab, and MY PLECTRUM...

And then they all left straight after their set.

Sweet jesus.
That's terrible.

I've learned to just say no a whole lot.
Can I ........
No, no you can't use all my stuff.

The worst I've ever had is someone asking to borrow stuff when WE travelled to that city to play and they were from that actual city.
We could bring our stuff from far away, they couldn't be bothered to bring theirs from close. What.

HollowAxis

Drew_fx said:

Honestly, after 8 years of gigging in the rock+metal+post-rock scene...

The UK is fucked. There is very little camaraderie, and very little mutual respect. No-one believes in "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" - I've lost count the number of bands I've personally done favours for (getting gigs, loaning gear, promoting their releases, etc..) had next to nothing in return. No-one seems to want to raise up everyone as a community, it's every man for himself. It's one big fucking king of the kill "crab bucket" wrestle fest. It's depressing. As Vonnegut would say... and so it goes.

Contrast the UK to the US, where it seems like bands are friends with bands, and they put shows on together as one big team, or community. From the outside it looks very different to me anyway.

+1 On this.
I've never been to the US, but that's the impression I have too from knowing lots of people out there in bands.

It was the same for me in South Africa.
I literally never did a show with a promoter that I can recall.
I naturally met people who were in bands, we liked the same stuff. We fitted on a bill together.
We made our own shows, we 'promoted them' ourselves.
If people liked the songs we had recorded they came to the shows.

Only one band I've ever been in has been good enough to be promoted by someone else, it started out with playing shows of our own with other bands.
Someone saw, we spoke and they organized shows for us after that.

It felt natural and it just happened.

My friends in the US report much the same (Tampa, Austin and New York).
It's a community and it works itself out.

I've just not had that experience here.
I haven't played nearly as many shows here, I've played very few, but they've all had a promoter or a company involved.
They've felt like work to me. They've felt disconnected and strange.

Gigs for me used to be the ONLY time I ever went out. Because they were damn fun and all my friends were there and I had a reason to stay and watch everyone else play every single time.
Does that happen here? I haven't found it.
Maybe not being from here means I don't have those deeper long standing connections with tons of people (From school or university etc). I don't know.

Nikko

Looking at this from a punters point of view (so may or may not be relevant), I ALWAYS watch all the bands on a bill. That includes the big gigs I go to, as well as local/ small venue/unsigned type of gigs. If im going to a 'big' gig and ive never really heard  anything from the support band, ill always get there early enough to watch them...always have done, and its meant that ive 'discovered' some fucking great bands over the years that friends of mine couldnt be arsed to watch (the type that spend all night in the pub down the road, and leg it over to the venue just in time for the main act).

Similarly, at the very small, local gigs, ive seen some amazing bands in the 25 odd years ive been going to gigs. I appreciate this is different to what you guys are talking about...community/cameraderie etc within musical circles, but I do always suppot the lesser known guys, as id hate to see the local scenes disappear.