- bands who purposely stall past their 10:00pm set time because the bar is empty. Hey, i dropped your name everywhere i could, it’s not my fault people think you’re shit, and you can’t even bring your own girlfriends to the show.

- bands who throw an extremely obscure cover into their set, and think they’re the hottest shit on the planet. No one has ever heard of radio city soundtrack.

- Singers who insist on drinking lots of water with “no ice, and lots of lemon”, and make sure everyone around them notices it….only to proceed to get on stage and sound like a dying fucking llama

- band managers who talk through their asses, because even THEY know their band is shit. “I’ve talked to every record label in the states…these guys are on all their radars” BULLSHIT. chances are, you emailed one, and they told you to fuck off.

I could go on, but the list would be endless. I just wanted to say thank you for the laughs!! this was priceless and dead on the money! Props to you for saying it how it is, and giving the good bands a place to do their thing.

cheers
13

Thank You :-)

“I used to be a profesional drug addict, now I’m a professional musician.”~Steven Tyler.

Im from Arlington, Tx
my band never has problems with getting people.. of course we don’t play every weekend but every show we play has 20 people.. sometimes more.. depending on the night..
It is quite hard to fill even the smallest of venues on a worknight..

lol mr manager.. i’m sorry but 100$ for some no name band is a bit granderous…

sorry guys

http://www.myspace.com/acandlelitcity

And to the hotshot band manager:

1. This is my job. If a band can’t bring in two people (fortunately there is usually a band on the bill that can bring in a decent crowd) I will be less than thrilled about it. I don’t work at creepy crawl because I want to support the lackluster music scene in St. Louis. I work to get paid so I can put food on my table.

2. Like I said before.. this list is about 7 years old. In fact it’s probably older than that. Gas wasn’t always 17.50 a gallon. Maybe next time I’ll just sell some of my kids toys so I can personally make sure that some band that I don’t know (that we did the favor of letting them jump on the local bill 3 days earlier) can get extra cheese on their whoppers. I play in three different bands and we rarely tour. It’s not financially viable and we don’t have rockstar delusions. We play at creepy crawl, and other (shit holes) venues around the region and don’t freak the fuck out when we don’t get paid 100 bucks.

3. It’s hard to follow the scheduled slot times when bands show up at all hours of the night. Often 5 minutes before they are supposed to go on.

—

Most of the time creepy crawl is a pretty easy and fun job. It’s just the handful of annoying dumbfuck bands that frustrate us.

Kenny

PS: Good luck getting the conchords signed, Murray. You’re doing a great service to the bands you manage.

1. Dont try to set up a music venue when you are riding the welfare line. Then you can afford to pay a band for “WORKING”. I dont believe if you had a job you went to and performed, you would accept not being paid for it.

2. $4.00 a gallon x 7 gallons. $28 (Approx your starting point for gas money.) That wont get a band down the street, much less to thier next show.

3. When you set a show up, make sure that you confirm time slots with the bands and dont change it. That sounds simple enough, but imagine how many promoters, venue owners etc cannot grasp this concept.

I am not going to complain about everything on here because some of it is valid issues with the bands like arriving late, trying to get them pizza and asking for more, etc.

Each side needs to live up to thier end of the bargain here. If a band promotes, hands out flyers, sends out bulletins on myspace, etc and then comes and plays the show. They did WORK and deserve to get paid REAL gas money at the very least. Approx $100 on avg. & more if they drew decent.

BANDS: if you find an owner or manager of a venue that is stiffing you for your pay, you need to locate a new place to play.

we show up on time (sometimes early) and promptly check in with management.

we are prepared to perform

we are willing to accomodate later time slots

we state our meager technical requirements ahead of gig day

we set up quickly and efficiently (sometimes pre-tuning and hooking up everything before actually hauling it on stage

we bring a selection of balanced/unbalanced/1/4″/XLR cables for connection to your usually sub-standard equipment

We bring out own microphones and mic stands, along with the cables for them.

We bring extension cords of our own, up to 200′ if necessary.

we do not lip off to the soundman (although I did tonight. jerk had it coming)

we tip the soundman when he/she actually performs the job they are paid for (no, he didn’t get tipped)

we have an actual understanding of how the equipment ‘works’ (funny thing, that…)

we have an actual understanding of how sound ‘works’

we actually give a crap whether or not the band on stage sounds good

we are aware that there are these nifty little inventions called “stage lights”. And that using them is preferable to not using them, and they usually have other settings besides ‘on’ and ‘off’.

we are aware that ‘louder’ does not always mean ‘better’.

So yeah, basically, we should run sound ourselves. House soundmen, in general, are crap. Junkies who couldn’t think their way out of an equalizer if it bit them on the ass. They are a walking ball of bullshit excuses (I can’t change the house EQ at all, No, I can’t turn off one stage monitor but for some reason I can fade different instruments in and out of the mix).

Nice article. It’s good to know my dislike is mutual.