R.I.P. Piggy

Piggy is dead. I am sad. I will get very drunk tonight.

Sad Music Month

I was going to write a new post today, then found out Voivod guitarist Piggy has accelerated colon cancer and not very long to live.

Piggy is one of my favorite all time guitarists.

Right after hearing about Bob Moog last week I am very sad and don't want to think about music at the moment.

Fighting fish in the shark pond

I have much sympathy for local promoters. Moreso in New York. The cost of running a club and keeping it open night after night is very high. You have rent, you need a staff of bartenders, sound people, doormen, bookers, all supporting bands that more often than not will not draw. That's not fair. Supporting bands that no matter how good a relationship they have with bookers and promoters will instinctively and emphatically lie about their draw.

I personally always give a range, one that if you stopped to think about it is quite laughable. We have never brought over 100 people to a show. I'll always say our draw can be as high as 100 DEPENDING ON THE DAY OF WEEK AND TIME, but usually averages around 40-50, and can go as low as 20 or 30. Someone better at math than I can figure out the standard deviation on that and laugh.

One way that bookers compensate for this is to ask bands to "pre-sell tickets." This has been on my mind because we were about to do this to get on a bill to support a well known national touring act. When you see your friends are playing on a bill with someone "crazy" there is a decent chance they are participating in a buy.

It works like this. You negotiate the amount of tickets you need to pre-sell before you walk into the club the night of the show, and the ticket price. The price you are often told is negotiable, you can "sell the tickets at any price" but there is, as always, a catch. In order to play or get paid, you need to bring in a certain bottom line dollar value.

As I have mentioned I sympathize with the booker and understand the motivation behind forcing a band to actively work on getting a draw. But the system is not perfect. Let's look at some of the issues.

#1 - "You can't just eat one" Usually on bills where bands are pre-selling tickets you won't see 1, 2, or even 3 support acts. Often there can be as many as 6 or 7 local bands on the bill before the headliner goes on. One club notorious for this will only guarantee an actual set time based on tickets sold, and will make bands compete to have their set closer to the national act. This hurts everyone, mostly the concert goer. This practice came into being because there is enough trouble getting an audience into the venue as it is. With the pre-sell you are subjecting someone to 6 or 7 support acts before the headliner. Often this means with the 15 or 20 dollar ticket price you are not putting the national act on until upwards of 1 or 2 AM on a Tuesday night. There have been many shows I have wanted to go see that I have passed on because it was obvious that the main band would not be on until an ungodly hour. This doesn't help the club's reputation, the national band's reputation or consumer confidence. Lets move on.........

#2 - "THE NATIONAL ACT HATES YOU" You and your friends are the reason the headliner is going on at 2 in the morning, and everyone has left by the time they are going on. Don't even dream of using any of these shows as a networking opportunity. The other local bands feel in competition with you and the headliner resents you.

#3 - "What does this say about the headliner?" If you have 6 or 7 bands all bringing in anywhere from 30 to 40 people a piece, what is the responsiblity of the headlining act? You have produced most of the draw, probably made up of your personal friends, and not fans of the main band. The main band are the ones receiving the guarantee and the lion's share of the money. YOU are not even receiving a fair share of the money you have brought in. Most clubs give you anywhere from 30-50% of your share of the door. On non ticket-buy shows it is often customary to receive 70-80% of your share.

why the hell does anyone participate in this? Sometimes you have to in order to swim in the big pond. Often when you see a band on myspace that you have never heard of who live in Bumblefuck, Wisconsin (pop. 15,000, 7,500 of which play in a local nu-metal band) boasting the really impressive list of established artists they have supported, they participated in a ticket pre-sell to get those slots.

This is why one of the golden rules of rock is: NOONE CARES WHO YOU OPENED FOR.

More fun with bookers coming later.............

Piercing the Veil

One thing I should mention. Comments are disabled. I will also for the most part not be mentioning the actual names of my bands, related venues, etc.

People who know me will not have a very hard time figuring out who I am and I surely am not hiding behind anything. I just think it is best, especially since I want to be honest about venues, promoters, studios, and the many realities of being in local bands to not name names.

Part of that will be to not allow people to respond. I am probably going to set up a gmail account for readers of this blog to write me at. I don't want to be completely closed off, but for this to really serve its purpose I don't want who I am to be completely obvious.

Treehouse of Horrors

Halloween.

It is a no brainer for a metal band, especially one with costumes like mine to want to play shows on Halloween. However this is starting to create more stress than anything else.

So we've been offered a few shows so far. One is all the way on the Upper East Side where noone goes to shows, the other is above a strip club in the Financial District where noone goes to shows.

We are actually debating in the band, what is more rock and roll, the UES or 2 blocks below Ground Zero. We have also pro-actively approached a couple of the Metal friendly clubs in that nice downtown east side sweet spot to see if we can get in on some hot Halloween action.

So easy enough, right? We try to get the best show possible, with some less than ideal gigs as backup so that we know we have some sort of halloween gig as a backup.
If only things could be that simple. Our singer wants to try to play as many Halloween gigs as we can. He thinks we are too perfect for this time of year, almost being the Metal X-mas, that we should take any and all Halloween gigs. This however will probably hurt draw for all the shows. But does that matter? Financial district club will build statues of us in our honor if we draw 15 people. We don't know if we even NEED to draw the UES club. The worst that could happen there is we don't get paid.

The band is currently divided as to whether we continue trying to limit the time between gigs so as not to oversaturate ourselves or if the idea of oversaturation is even relevant at our stage in the game.

Do we take anything we get offered, or really try hard to only play shows that "count"?

Stated Purpose

I am an unsigned musician who lives and works in New York City. I have a corporate day job and two bands. One is a theatrical 80's Metal band while the other is Indie Rock. I love playing in both bands and wouldn't give up either.

I have found while playing in two bands that are in many ways very different, a lot of the issues, dramas and aspirations are the same. We are playing in the same field, although for slightly different teams.

I have found this experience pretty interesting and decided to document, mostly for myself and anyone who may stumble upon this, the experiences of the unsigned musician and the balance between trying to "make it" and to just survive in a very unforgiving city.