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In a London-based orginals band? Where do you play?


BigBeefChief
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Prompted by the recent Water Rats thread and my experiences of gigging in London, I was wondering where you guys play?

Currently, we seem to be very good at booking "pay-to-play" venues, ie we have to shift 40+ tickets (often at 8 f***ing quid a pop!) or we're out of pocket. Venues such as:

Monto Water Rats
Brixton Jamm
Dirty South


Other venues that we play that require less of a financial committment include:

Tommy Flynns
New Cross Inn
The Bridghouse 2
12 bar club
The Bull and Gate


It seems currently though that the vast majority of gig's we're "offered" (read "sold") require us to spend the 2 weeks proceeding it trying to sell expensive tickets for the 30 minute set that they allow us! To be honest, I object on principle to doing these gigs, and I've been close to jacking it all in on a few occassions.

So what do you guys do? Do you not play these gigs? Do you play them but have such big followings that selling tickets is not an issue? Are we looking in the wrong places?

Got a gig tonight for example. We need to flog 40 tickets at £8 a go. We've got 30 mins. We're on stage at 11:20 (how does anyone get home?). Oh, and they want us there for 5:45 for soundcheck. f***ing madness.

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Heh, we were talking about this last night, it is a sh*t state of affairs.

We played the Fiddler's Elbow in Camden a couple of times. It seems to attract quite a few locals. The deal there seems to be: your first gig is a try-out, sell 20 tickets and you get another gig, after that just do your best until they can tell you're sh*t.

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You're always on a loser for this sort of thing in London. There's so much free music available, and so much of it is of a decent quality, that no one is going to pay money to see an unknown originals band.

Sibob told me his (covers) band were playing O'Neills in Richmond a couple of weeks ago. I went down there, spent two hours listening to some VERY high quality musicianship, it cost me a couple of slightly over-priced pints.

I live in Chiswick. There are three music venues (that I know of) within a 10-minute walk of my front door. Only one of them ever charges, and usually all three are free entry.

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[quote name='Happy Jack' post='589526' date='Sep 4 2009, 11:43 AM']You're always on a loser for this sort of thing in London. There's so much free music available, and so much of it is of a decent quality, that no one is going to pay money to see an unknown originals band.

Sibob told me his (covers) band were playing O'Neills in Richmond a couple of weeks ago. I went down there, spent two hours listening to some VERY high quality musicianship, it cost me a couple of slightly over-priced pints.

I live in Chiswick. There are three music venues (that I know of) within a 10-minute walk of my front door. Only one of them ever charges, and usually all three are free entry.[/quote]


Sorry, maybe I'm not explaining myself properly - I have absolutely no interest making money from playing a gig. I don't do it for that. What I don't want to do is pay to play.

My ideal gig is to be booked, obviously encouraged to bring as many people as possible, but not pay for the priviledge of playing 30 minutes in some south London dive.

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You have to be exceptional to fill a London gig with paying punters. Many originals bands are not very good (and are desperate for a gig) which is why they regularly get screwed by promoters.

In my opinion, London gigs are overrated. I live in London and I prefer to play anywhere else!

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What do you sound like?

Good London gigs are put on by bands, and are in specific genres - they're not pay to play and some people you don't know who are into your kind of thing will be there. That's the kind of gig I try and play.

Edited by dangerboy
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The Half Moon in Putney will pay you on an escalating scale depending how many tickets you sell that works well. We rammed 130 in there for Halloween last year and it was a lovely earner and last band is off by 11. Last month we only managed 60 but it was still a good night.

I'm up for arranging 'club nights' for us and another one or two bands that factor in finishing at a reasonable time so the punters can get home and not getting dicked around by venues.

I have a few venues up my sleeve if anyone's interested.

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We play much the same venues and have much the same issue. We have to shift a load of tickets for next Monday's gig when we are on for 30 minutes at 10.15pm (most working people don't want to get home at midnight on late tubes on teh first working day of the week so its proving difficult)

Others we play include the Purple Turtle, the Underworld, Dublin Castle and the Bullet bar

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[quote name='BigBeefChief' post='589535' date='Sep 4 2009, 11:48 AM']Sorry, maybe I'm not explaining myself properly - I have absolutely no interest making money from playing a gig. I don't do it for that. What I don't want to do is pay to play.

My ideal gig is to be booked, obviously encouraged to bring as many people as possible, but not pay for the priviledge of playing 30 minutes in some south London dive.[/quote]

No, I think I understood you Beefy.

My point is that ANY gig in London where you are expected to sell tickets is going to be seriously hard work.

I've happily played a few gigs for nothing because they were free admission and I LOVE playing to a crowd, and even more to a full dance floor.

Everyone's a winner. The crowd gets a free gig. I get to play in front of an audience. The landlord gets to sell more drinks.

Then you get £250-a-night pub bands complaining that you're "making things difficult" for everyone, and yes, I can see their point too.

Try arranging a couple of "Family & Friends" gigs at local pubs with music licences but little activity. You never know ...

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We got fed up with promoters a long while ago. Its not just the financial aspect, it was also the fact that we thought we could organise things better and run a more enjoyable night for punters and bands involved.

So, this is the fruit of that labour....

[url="http://www.theo2.co.uk/indigo2/view-event.html?eventId=973"]http://www.theo2.co.uk/indigo2/view-event.html?eventId=973[/url]

We don't do it often, but when we do put one on its generally a great laugh and commercial success. Mixing originals with covers bands helps makes things less 'serious' too.

[attachment=32173:finapost...houttext.jpg]

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Travel south rather than north mate, Canterbury needs some livening up. We usually play to a decent crowd and take home enough money from each gig to make it the icing on the cake of a good evening with good mates. We play originals with a few covers thrown in for the Friday nighters, although we try to do them our own way. We paly quite low dbs and our 'fans' drink a lot so we're usually welcome at most venues :)

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[quote name='waynepunkdude' post='589635' date='Sep 4 2009, 01:26 PM']Oh and stear clear of Feedme Music they are a bunch of utter c**ts.[/quote]
Hell yeah, though for some reason the singer in my originals band seems to think they're worthwhile gigs. Us paying £240 to play to no-one on a Thursday night, worthwhile? F**k off! It's much easier doing smaller gigs where it's free to get in (or very cheap) and where there is no obligation to sell x number of tickets. Avoid London, head further out....

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[quote name='BigBeefChief' post='589556' date='Sep 4 2009, 12:02 PM']The last thing I need is people who can [i]actually [/i]play bass watching me.[/quote]

I think wherever you play ,you'll always get ''the beards'' who watch everything.
''They missed a note there..''etc. :) Don't worry about it.

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We've been playing venues like Monkey Chews, Hope & Anchor and Red Room with a few different promoters (none involving us buying tickets, wouldn't touch anything like that). I agree with the earlier comment about finding like-minded bands or people to work with: our best recent gig was with these people [url="http://www.myspace.com/beatrootrendezvous"]http://www.myspace.com/beatrootrendezvous[/url] who provided a great venue (Queen's Head, Islington) and a ready-made packed room of interested listeners. We also put our own night on with friends (in two other bands) at the Miller, London Bridge - £60 total for sound man, PA and venue room hire = bargain. We're now sending a three-song EP (it's on our myspace page) around to bigger promoters and some labels, trying to take things to a higher level.

Edited by Weird War
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