I apologize ahead of time for not having any of the actual messages used in these conversations. I’m at work and thus have no access to either my facebook or myspace accounts.
I recently replied to a post on Myspace by a certain booking agency about playing a show this Sunday at the Dave and Buster’s in Farmingdale with my band, The Red Season. Approximately a day after, the woman replied to me saying she’d like to have us play, as long as we sold 30 tickets at 12 dollars a piece by Sunday. I messaged her back explaining to her that she and how she runs these shows are why the Long Island music scene is in such bad shape these days. Everyone, from the venue to the promoters to bands are far too focused on the bottom line and making some cash and they forget the basic fact that 99.9% of these bands aren’t, in the long run, going to be at all profitable. They forget that most of these bands are making music in order to have fun with their friends, and using them (generally naive kids between the ages of 15 and 20) to make yourself a quick buck is pretty despicable.
Now, I’ve been through this type of situation before. My old ska band, Grandma’s Little Boys, had the opportunity to play a show at The Crazy Donkey in Farmingdale, the shithole that replaced The Downtown as the place that Long Island bands got respect for playing at. Rumor has it The Downtown was shutdown because the owner went on a coke binge and misspent all his business’ money into, um, coke. We were required to sell30 tickets at 10 dollars a piece in order to play, or we had to pay the money for the extra tickets. It came with some bullshit incentive that if you sold all 30 tickets you’d get (OMFG!) 50 DOLLARS or something like that. We sold a decent amount but not all of them, then the snow came. The show was cancelled. It was rescheduled to a date that Kiki my cousin and bassist couldn’t play, I had strep throat and no one we sold tickets to besides Andy, Bryan and I think Pita could come. Of course, I had to give the promoter all the money we made from selling CD’s and that was essentially the end of the band.
Granted, this wasn’t entirely the promoters fault, but if there were no mandatory ticket pre-sales my band wouldn’t have been put back into the financial hole we were working so hard to get out of after paying for recording and CD’s and the usual stuff bands pay a lot of money for.
I, along with my band-mates, have a couple of problems with the way that shows are generally run these days. For one, 10 dollars is far too much. The general person attending the show (again, probably around 15 to 20 years old) may be a bit iffy about paying 10 bucks to see their friend’s shitty band and a couple other bands they’ve never heard of and probably won’t like. They’re more likely to just spend it on half-price appetizers at Applebee’s or something. And on the other side, when these bands don’t sell the tickets, where are they going to come up with the $150 or so to give the promoter? Teenagers rarely have that kind of money just lying around.
If more shows cost $5 or EVEN LESS more kids would be inclined to go to these shows as a place to hang out and have a decent time on a Friday or Saturday night. And guess what, if more kids are showing up, there’s STILL a decent amount of money being paid at the door, so everyone is happy. Maybe you won’t make as much, but stop being so fucking greedy, shit. Hell, if someone with a sizable basement and pretty cool parents can get a hold of a PA, then they can have a basement show and money won’t even have to get involved in the situation unless bands want to sell an EP or stickers or something.
What’s the point of booking these huge venues that overcharge for everything, anyway? Kids are FINE with cramming into a basement or small Knights of Columbus, they’re not afraid of brushing up against others like stupid adults. It just creates a gap between the bands from the fans, which is ridiculous considering the only difference between the bands and the fans is that the bands can strum a couple chords.
Of course, people generally don’t get famous for playing shows in a basement, but at least it’ll help develop an actual SCENE, a real grass-roots community of bands and fans that continues to grow and grow. From there, bands can make some money off of CD and t-shirt sales and go on tour, where they can play cheap shows in surrounding areas and create scenes there, as well.
From my experience, kids are going to less and less shows, and from my estimation its because they’re less connected to bands and other fans. Paying so much money to see a local band creates this aura of superiority around these bands that doesn’t actually exist. If bands and promoters just swallowed their fucking ego instead of acting like God’s gift to shitty Indie-pop they’d get a hell of a lot more done.
Sure, I can preach it till I’m blue in the face. At least I’m trying to better the situation. The Halloween show is a step in the right direction. From there I’ve got plenty of big plans.
All I know is that capitalizing on punk is ENTIRELY against everything punk stands for. It’s also pretty fucked up to capitalize on kids who just want to be creative.
Stay punk,
tim
P.S. I’m exhausted and in a bit of a daze, I’ll fix any typos after I get some sleep.
Tags: Grandma's Little Boys, Halloween, Long Island, money, music scene, punk, ska, The Crazy Donkey, The Downtown, The Red Season
October 10, 2008 at 10:29 am |
Well, you know I agree with you on this one, Timmy Schlitz.
I think that if you charge anything for a show, it should be only $5 and never any more. One of the things I, and I think I can safely say we, appreciate so much about the folk-punk aesthetics of Ghost Mice is that they play 100% acoustic all the time, so they can just tell kids to go to the park one day and just sing their hearts out.
The only reason we need a place to play inside of anyway is just because bands need electricity. Now, our band does require that, so we can’t go as grassroots as them all the time.
But the bands that made a big difference: The Ramones, Minor Threat, Descendents, TSOL, and the many, MANY formative punk bands all played super cheap shows to the same kids. Hell, lots of the bands were the same people with maybe one different guy stepping in.
It all boils down to what music is about to you. To me (and, I’m pretty sure I can say you as well), it’s about community. Music’s been around as long as humans have been, and up until recently in our existence as a species, it has never, EVER been about making money. If you drop the idea of making money or a career out of music, and keep it as something that burns inside of you that you love to ignite with your friends and show the fire to anyone who’ll listen, you don’t need to sell tickets or charge tons of money. All you need is an honest desire to play and scream your heart out.
Also, I did notice an angrier tone in this post. Get some sleep, t-bones, haha. Either that or put your anger in a song and SING SING SING!
October 10, 2008 at 10:55 am |
loved the post tim, you articulated what sucks about the scene, identified what you’d want it to be, and then you’re going out to fulfill it with the halloween show!
also the whole notion of grassrootedness and mike’s allusion for music being about a community is some pretty profound stuff; thats why i liked your little jab at adults who are afraid to brush up against each other.
hahaha remember that exercise sosa did in class, she like stood awkwardly close to us and most of us kinda flinched? what is up with our culture? weeeird!
okay i’m done being some essay evaluator, holla at me at some point this weekend!
October 10, 2008 at 12:29 pm |
in the same vein of bringing people together check this guy’s project out
http://www.wherethehellismatt.com
I’m a little late on the hippest viral videos so forgive me if you’ve seen it already
October 10, 2008 at 2:03 pm |
Thanks for the kind words!
Also, that’s interesting you bring that up, I blogged about that not too long ago:
http://asmallx.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/dance-with-me/
I AM PROMOTING MYSELF ON MY FRIEND’S BLOG! haha.
October 10, 2008 at 4:23 pm |
what else are (http://freshouttatime.blogspot.com) friends for?
October 17, 2008 at 12:03 am |
Well Tim, sorry but I don’t agree with you.
Kids aren’t going to shows because shows suck, not because they’re too expensive.
It starts with the bands, not the promoters. Bands don’t give one flying iota fuck about playing the shows they play. There’s no scene around here because there is no one to play with. You can’t develop a following if you’re just playing to your friends over and over again.
Basically it’s a trickle down affect from the top. The less good bands that people actually like that play around here, the more the scene dies and moves to Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Since the closing of the Vanderbilt and The Downtown, and the focus of Westbury Music Fair, Brookhaven Ampitheater, and Patchogue/Bay Shore theater focusing on acts that skew towards the older in terms of appeal, there is nowhere for acts that appeal to a younger audience to play except the Crazy Donkey which is really just a glorified towny bar/dance club that any self respecting act would never play.
If you’re Ted Leo, where do you play?
If you’re Cold War Kids, where do you play?
If you’re Streetlight Manifesto, where do you play?
I don’t like all of those acts, but I tell you what, I’d damn sure love to OPEN for them. And thats the problem. Edna’s Goldfish got a name opening in front the Bosstones. Glassjaw opened in front of Alien Ant Farm. Taking Back Sunday played along side the Starting Line and Coheed.
Who do we play with? each other. No offense, but Fortune and Spirits isn’t going to make a name playing with the Red Season, or vice versa.
DO you realize, we live like 50 miles away from the homebases of Ratatat, the New Pornographers, TV on the Radio, the Strokes, Sufjan Stevens, the Hold Steady and formerly Rainer Maria, etc.
And they NEVER come here. Why?
1- No good venues.
2- As a result, No real scene.
3- We don’t draw.
4- On the whole, we’re not very good.
Honestly, whats the last GREAT band Long Island exported?
Edison Glass? Patent Pending? honestly?
I don’t know man. I say it’s our fault. We’re in a shitty situation with no built in support system to make names for ourselves, but instead of buckling down, getting our friends to shows or doing whatever we need to do to get people out to shows… (i.e. street performing, free shows, making setup times REALLY short, playing shorter sets, playing quieter sets, respecting the spaces we DO have) we just all act like a bunch of diva rockstar wannabe bitches who demand to use there own backline instead of the houses, don’t even draw 10 people a show, don’t talk each other up, don’t buy or frequent or local music zines and don’t go to shows that our friends don’t play at.
In short, it’s our fault and we have no right to complain.
Sure, we’re in a bad situation, but we’re sure as fuck not making the best of it.
If I book a show, I can’t count on any of my friends bands to draw. You know how much that sucks? If I book a show at the WAVE next week, I could book devs band and expect maybe 10 people, the Red Season and MAYBE get another 10, VTS and maybe get another 5 and I would be on the hook to make up the difference.
If I rent the hall at 300 dollars, I haven’t even broke even if I DO charge 10 bucks. and 300 bucks is really cheap.
If we helped each other and counted on each other, then we could build a scene. If we took our responsibilities seriously, we could build a scene. If we didn’t expect good shows full of new fans to be handed top us, there could be a scene. If promoters weren’t forced to book 9 bands a night just to break even there could be a scene.
You know why there have been 10 different owners at the VP South in the past 10 years? Because it loses money. And thats partly their fault.
But it’s mostly ours.
We suck.