Yes, it appears they have pre-emptively renamed the town after me in anticipation of us rocking the #$% out of Massachusetts this evening. This will be our 8th show, I believe, and though we'll miss our bassist AJ, we'd like to wish his girlfriend a happy birthday.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to vent.
We recently played a loft party in Brooklyn. Now, the beauty of playing a loft show should be that it is laid back and fun, and the major benefit is that you're not dealing with some asshole promoter who does nothing to promote, takes 100% of the door, and complains when you don't bring enough people. We've heard about even worse situations where they treat the artists like shit and - get this - if you bring people to see you, they actually push you back OR don't even let you play! The logic of this is that your friends & fans stick around and drink, waiting for you to play. Pure exploitation.
So, after about 4 years of playing around the city, learning to avoid this situation, can you imagine the disappointment of finding that a homegrown, DIY loft space was using this same tactic? I'm not going to name names here - if you're an artist playing around NYC and you want to know who to avoid, you can email me - but we were ready to pack our equipment and bag the gig when the guy running the venue tried to push us back from 9pm to 10pm to 11pm to probably midnight since we were given excuse after excuse about why another band would be playing before us.
How can you avoid this situation? I wish I had some advice. Music + commerce are a dangerous mix.
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Love Somerville. Great nabe. I hear ya bout those "promoter" a**holes! Will tell my peeps to steer clear of 169Bar...Keep rockin'!
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ReplyDeleteI know this is an old post but I think it depends on the situation. If it's a weekend, an 11PM or midnight time slot is prime time. If they do this to you on a Monday or Tuesday though, it can really suck. As far as friends and fans are concerned, they are there to see you. Most will understand. You can let them know that the promoter pushed your time back. Use this time to mingle, promote, talk music with them etc. And I don't care what anyone says, any band sounds a little better after a few drinks. The fans, I mean, not the band. Well, sometimes.
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