Give & take

Great quote, very applicable to music:

"We're either going to try to do the best we can by our performer, or we're going to try to get the most we can out of our performer."

This is a quip from Seanna Sharpe, a bad-ass, beautiful aerialist who recently performed on the Williamsburg Bridge (and was consequently arrested). Check out a fantastic and really intelligent interview here:



and her Williamsburg Bridge performance here:



I think knowing exactly where you stand is essential - knowing the philosophy of anyone with whom you decide to work. It's all too easy for promoters and bullshitters and agents and bookers to siphon off the energy of artists, especially in NYC. There are just so many people striving to be heard, we'll compromise anything just to have a stage or a chance to get noticed. A comedian friend once said to me he'd do anything to perform - "I'll defile myself, I'll suck dick, I'll slap my own mother, just give me that chance... I'll do anything to get that mic in my hand, because that's the only place I feel good, and I need that chance to perform."

So are they helping you get on that stage, so you can do your thing - or are they profiting off your desperate need to get noticed? Sometimes it's both. My experience with promoters has been pretty alarmingly negative, watching them take massive percentages of the door charge for a show, refusing to pay artists unless they bring 20, 30, 40 heads, thereby making themselves hundreds of dollars per set while the band has to settle for a couple of drink tickets. And for what? Why do these greedy little shits get that money? Because they have become the key holders: they control certain nights at a venue. They're certainly not earning that money by any actual means of "promotion" - sometimes they don't even update the venue calendar or send out a single email with a band link or name. No, they've constructed a very unfair, artist-unfriendly method of maximizing numbers.

And it's hardly ever worth playing these shows. At best you might meet another band in your genre (though my experience has been a mish mash of styles and quality - metal next to rap next to acoustic), maybe earn a fan or two, at worst you spend time, money and energy moving your gear to a venue, playing in front of your own 10 friends, making the promoter $100, and waking up disappointed and hungover.