Everyone loves live music, or at least those that come to see shows loves live music, but how often do we think/care about what goes into getting those people to stand on a stage and play and to make sure that people show up?
This year has seen my first few forays into actually setting up and promoting shows and seeing this side of the coin, rather than the "turn up, plug in, make noise, fuck off" story I was previously used to. So I asked a bunch of other DIY promoters with varying levels of experience about how they find things and from that have extracted some fun advice for those who may consider it.
N.B. - this is for fun people, by all means spark up a conversation about how you promote yourselves or what you expect from promoters but any abuse or naughtiness will invoke the wrath of Zeus.
1. Bands can be arseholes
Now don't get me wrong the majority of bands are lovable likable rogues and great great people but as with everything in life there are some that will sour and experience for you and they key to success when promoting is to be able to pick these out and weed them out of the groups you do business with so you can keep those greying hairs at bay. You will find some bands are all about the money, they will demand to know all about the payment in their first sentence of communication and put demands and ask for guarantees before everything else. Now I'm not saying that as a band you shouldn't worry about your travel money and what-not but as a promoter know that these things have been considered and will be discussed in due time. Bands will also lay a lot of demands at a promoters feet and if you are dealing with the headlining act, fine maybe come to some agreement as long as demands aren't too outlandish but there should be sharp diminishing returns for your support acts. At the end of the day if someone wants the trimmings on their show to be extravagant then maybe they should have looked at something outside of DIY punk shows.
- As a subset of bands an honorable mention needs to go to booking artists too. I know from personal experience that a bad booking agent can not only lose a great band several high profile shows but also having to deal with an arsehole booking agent can often make the band look like a bunch of dicks too.
2. Venues can be arseholes
There are some really really great places to play shows where people want Live music in their bar because the people who drink there love live music and so do they, these people are few and far between though and recognizing the turds is always gonna be a priority for promoters, especially in the niche corner of punk rock that we exist in. Does the venue want to charge you for the night? Do you have to use their own backline/pa/sound engineer all for a price? Are there crazy noise restrictions? Doe the curfew mean everyone will have to play shortened sets? if you find a majority of these things are true then maybe it's time to start looking elsewhere. As a small DIY promoter you already have a group of bands that you would like to give some money too plus you need to make just a little yourself so having to throw good money at extras that other venues will provide for free is crazy unless you're charging enough to cover everything, and the motto with DIY punk should be "as close to free for attendees as possible". Of course even free shows can't save the day sometimes since....
3. Attendees can be arseholes
Back in the day a promoter would have to stand in streets for days handing out thousands of flyers to every one within sight just so those people could throw them in the nearest bin, it was pain staking and didn't yield great results and cost a lot. Now we live in the digital age we have Facebook, an immensely powerful tool that is connected with just about everyone on earth (at least those you would be targeting to come out for an evening of punk rock). Whilst we still do flyering at targeted shows and put posters up if we have a buddy that works for a printers we do the majority of pushing via FB and that's fine because most of us check it several times a day and it is on the whole free to promote within groups and from pages. The problem is though that a persons insistence that they are coming to a show becomes as quick as a click of a button and for shows of this nature advanced tickets are a rare and seldom used thing. Sometimes you can see triple figures from a shows attendance in a facebook event and still not have more than a handfull turn up. a "going" click on facebook means very little when the effort required to agree is so small. Even if you are putting on a free show people will find excuses not to make it out like, the travel costs or the weather or whatever. In truth though people just plain old forget most of the time, just like we only know it's a persons birthday because facebook told us we forget to check what events are happening and they sail by without a second thought. Almost all of the people that actually do make it down have a great time at punk shows and that word of mouth is really the best form of advertising but getting momentum for your night going and making it worthwhile is a difficult thing when people aren't that interested in turning up in the first place.
4. The night can be an arsehole
Why do we put shows on? Because we love live music right? We probably have bands too right? Chances are if you're reading this you are in, or have friends in a band. It seems like the obvious thing to have your band play your own night but trust me from experience that it's a stress kettle of the highest magnitude doing both band and promotion duties in a night. Time keeping is often the first thing that will generally go out the window. I don't think I've ever known a headlining band to turn up in time for a soundcheck at the allocated time, and if you tell people a show starts at 7pm they will invariably get to the venue at 8.30 and your first act will play to no one. You will worry constantly that not enough people are going to show up and will only stop fretting at the point you break even, which could be two songs before the main act finishes. The bands may have had a crucial piece of equipment break which you have no way of replacing, the traffic/weather on the night can leave someone stranded an hour away when they're due on in ten minutes. The third support act will deliberately play too long meaning the last two bands will have to shorten their sets. You will invariably face a thousand little things that haven't gone according to you schedule of events and people will look to you to solve everything and your head will feel like exploding. Right up until the point where it's all over and everyone is shaking your hand and telling you what an amazing time they've had. then you can relax for five minutes before setting up the next show.
5. You're an arsehole
There is only so much one person can control, and in the midst of a choatic punk show those things dwindle down to around zero. This doesn't mean that you can't be blamed for everything and anything that comes your way. No one showed up? your fault. Bands played too long? your fault. Stuff broke? your fault. An act had a bad show and sounded crud? your fault. I've heard the promoter blamed for just around everything that could possibly go wrong with a night and people can always offer up a way you could have resolved it, so what can you do when you're the arsehole who ruined the evening? Get annoyed with people? no freaking way bud, then you really are an arsehole, you just have to shrug it all off, and remind people that it's all gonna work out anyway, then bounce right back from your troubles and get on to making sure that you avoid that next time round, because learning by having something go super wrong and then making sure you've done all you can to make sure that doesn't happen in future is all we can do. You'll do it again for the chance to put your friends bands on and see them play, wherever in the world they've come from, and you'll know that they'll do the same for you if you travel, you'll hit even and be able to give the bands who have played money and it'll feel like the greatest triumph of your life. You'll meet great people and start lifelong friendships, the people who play your shows will be thankful that they got to play and most importantly you wont love live music any less and this is as close to the heart of it as you can get.
No comments:
Post a Comment