Gigs

At present, gigging is the only way a band can make money. Album sales and merchandise are not enough to sustain a band. I’m reliably informed that it is not enough to play a gig and hopefully sell a few CDs. You need people to come to the gigs so that you can take a cut of the door. To do so, you need press to tell the town about your arrival.

There needs to be more of an emphasis on the venue that will hold gigs, rather than the bands themselves. There are more bands than ever before and more gigs every night, meaning promoting oneself is important to be able to draw a crowd. If you do not draw a crowd it is frowned upon by promoters and venue managers, which leaves you high and dry when trying to get your next gig. So promoting yourself is important, time consuming and costly.

But what is happening to those bands that don’t have enough friends who will come and take the 20 fans required to get a gig? Or those who don’t have enough money to print flyers? Do they just not get any gigs? I understand why venues are like this and I understand why ticket prices need to be as high as they are. Bands, staff, bookers, lights, sound desk, alcohol license and many more things need to be paid and accounted for. Yet it still seems much higher than it should be. Many venues go under at least once or twice a year it seems. Business is never healthy or booming and maybe that is down to the way the whole thing is set up.

A venue needs to be at the very front of a music scene, highlighting music as its number one aim. All is needed is a space to be able to play music. It doesn’t need a liquor license or a restaurant attached, it needs to be an affordable art space where people will come to see live music. Why would they come? Because of the price, $5, £3 or €3 would make sure that it is open to everyone, of all ages. Gigs early evening, finishing before 11pm would be needed to make that work however, as those who wanted to go and enjoy a cafe or a pub would still have the opportunity to. An art space which was cheap enough to let people regularly go, would take the emphasis off having to promote your gigs. Those who want to watch live music will go regardless of who is playing because of the price.

If you have a crowd you have a reason for bands to play. There is no point in a band playing to no one in a prestigious club or a bar of half listening drinkers, picking up $30 for their troubles. Gigs need to be better attended to make the most out of all this freedom to express that the media revolution has given us. Bands have more opportunities to form because of it and therefore demand for gigs is high, which makes it even worse when there are only 5 people in a room staring back at you.

Bands will say that they don’t care if they play to 100’s of people or to 10, so long as someone gets something out of it, so long as there was a connection on any level. Therefore playing to 10 listening people would be better than playing to 100 people not paying much attention. A lot of band’s mentality is that if a person has a connection with the music, they will tell their friends and whoever else will listen. With the freedom of sharing music a lot of people can find out about your band very easily. The first contact, seeing them live, is still the most intense and the more people available for that the better. The reason why there would only be 10 listening people there in the first place, would be because the other 2, 3, 10, 20 or 100 people who didn’t show up couldn’t afford the door cover, or didn’t think it was worth the risk.    

I also believe that getting paid for the gig is not as important as playing to people. It is obviously more important for a touring band, as they would probably need that money to sustain themselves on the road. Putting the prices low would mean a strain on paying bands or for paying for equipment initially (would have to be donated or collaborated together through fundraising maybe), but it would mean more people would come, equalling or increasing the income. Playing local bands with touring bands would probably mean only the touring band would get any sort of money. In setting up numerous cheap art spaces all over the world, where the emphasis is entirely on live music, then they would need to be connected to make it easier for local bands to become touring bands once they were ready to venture out.

There needs to be an output for film that doesn’t require large amounts of money. At the moment, putting a film through the film festival mill is expensive. There are many online broadcasting sites which you can use for free (vimeo, youtube, currenttv etc), but without big promotion your video will sit amongst millions of others, in much the same way as music and myspace.

With a local art space one can promote film also, showcasing local films made normal people. If there was a place where films and shorts could be shown and seen by people, with immediate feedback, I think it would greatly strengthen an industry dictated by those with money. If an artist knows his or her art could be seen once a month, they can make something to coincide with that, pushing them to actually finish projects. It is the same with music. In these art spaces, feature films could work in the same way as touring bands, linking up to towns and cities to show off a mix of local and national talent.

These cheap, simple art spaces would eradicate the need for advertising and marketing of music and film. They will draw in people and give a centre for an art community which doesn’t have to be able to make much money on drink sales. Those who are the most interested will no doubt become the organisers. The picking of the bands and films to tour would be difficult to do, but those running the art space will have online resources to be able to see or hear what they has been playing at the other venues. A simple camera can capture snippets of films and music which can be easily uploaded to a website, to allow sharing between the communities.      

Philip Heron

Paris, France

Feb 2009

Rough draft

(C) Chestnut Productions 2009

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