Monto Water Rats, Kings Cross

[PURPOLARIS]

They have approached us asking if we want to gig there. Having never gigged in London before, does anyone have any info on the venue. I seem to remember some not so good comments about the place.

Any info appreciated.

[Tee]

Have they told you to buy x amount of tickets upfront from them by any chance?

It's right by Kings Cross. The venue is actually decent, and you can have a good night if you get a good size crowd along. The stage is a good size and the sound guy is pretty much directly ahead of you at the back. The house backline is pretty bad last time i checked. Workable drum kit, rubbish peashooter amps. I brought my own amp though. If there's a sound engineer with baseball cap and goatee (& an american accent), he's a bit of a knob in my opinion.

[PURPOLARIS]

[quote name='Tee' post='589212' date='Sep 3 2009, 10:46 PM']Have they told you to buy x amount of tickets upfront from them by any chance?

It's right by Kings Cross. The venue is actually decent, and you can have a good night if you get a good size crowd along. The stage is a good size and the sound guy is pretty much directly ahead of you at the back. The house backline is pretty bad last time i checked. Workable drum kit, rubbish peashooter amps. I brought my own amp though. If there's a sound engineer with baseball cap and goatee (& an american accent), he's a bit of a knob in my opinion.[/quote]

I'm not sure, it was our singer that he contacted. The problem we have is that we don't have a following in London so anyone there won't be to watch us. I'll enquire a bit more but I managed to find the other thread on the venue and it doesn't look too good. The thing that threw me a bit was the fact that it's called Monto. Has it always been called this or has someone else taken over and therefore it might be worth giving the place a try.

[Musky]

Monto has been running Water Rats for a few years now. As you've probably read, people have had mixed experiences there.

I've seen posts on other forums from people that have taken 'work trails' with them as promotions assistants, including one from from a guy who described it as a sales operation. It apparently involved messaging as many Music myspace profiles as possible. I've had an invite myself - I turned it down.

[Tee]

Monto have nights at a few different venues in London: The Water Rats, The Electrowerkz, Zigfrid von Underbelly, that i know of. We've been invited back to the WR before, but the promoter has tried to make us by bulk tickets off them for us to sell in advance.

[tjkennelly]

[quote name='Tee' post='589410' date='Sep 4 2009, 09:31 AM']Monto have nights at a few different venues in London: The Water Rats, The Electrowerkz, Zigfrid von Underbelly, that i know of. We've been invited back to the WR before, but the promoter has tried to make us by bulk tickets off them for us to sell in advance.[/quote]

My old band played the Underbelly, we were told it was a 4 band night but 8 or 9 played. We were asked to play the Water Rats and they wanted us to do the same thing with the tickets. Judging from the other thread on here about them we said no.

Edited September 4, 2009 by tjkennelly

[PURPOLARIS]

Thanks for all the reply's, I think we'll give it a wide berth. Because we play original music we'd love to be heard in London and obviously as many places as posiible but this does just sound like a spam mail and if he's having to do that then the venue must be sh*te to play at. Any decent place will have no shortage of bands wanting to play there.

[The Funk]

I've asked them to stop contacting us. We've gigged there twice. Once to see how it was, and the second time to see if the first was a one-off bad experience.