Tuesday, May 7, 2013

You Are Not A Music Promoter

Today I want to solve a mystery. If you are in a small-time band, you are no doubt familiar with this type of person: someone who will spam your inbox with exciting opportunities to play venues all over the place, call themselves a "promoter" or a "booking agent", and possibly have some sort of fancy company name. I'd been getting bombarded with these for a while, so for a laugh I replied to one and asked what the payment structure was for the bands at one of these venues. Here is the reply that I got in return, broken down piece by piece so that we may examine exactly what each section is saying:


A FACEBOOK INVITE IS REQUIRED FOR THIS SHOW: PLEASE CREATE A FACEBOOK INVITE FOR THIS AND ALL SHOWS WE BOOK WITH YOU -- THIS IS IS VITALLY IMPORTANT FOR YOUR BAND TO PROMOTE THIS SHOW! PLEASE ALSO LIST THE SHOW ON ALL YOUR ONLINE SITES AND INQUIRE WITH US IF YOU WISH TO OFFER ADVANCED DISCOUNT TICKETS!
Ok, the first thing we notice here is that this paragraph is completely in troll caps. Note that the author felt the need to yell at me right from the start like I'm some kind of moron who needs to get it though my thick skull that this shit is serious. For Christ's sake, its not like I dissed Ronald Reagan in the comments section of the Fox News website, so how about we take it down a notch? That said, the request isn't really unfair at all. Sure, bands should make a facebook event to promote their shows. After all, why wouldn't you? Its free. There's nothing particularly obnoxious about that . However, stringing together a bunch of poorly worded demands in all caps lock is disrespectful and annoying. Plus, I'm pretty sure bold type is an option in most modern email sites. Moving on.

Load in: Please load in at least 1 hour before you play. There is no sound check - just a line check before your first song. Load in thru the main entrance.
Great. This means your band is guaranteed to sound like shit and nobody at the venue will care or, more likely, be able to do anything about it.  But at least you get to bring all of your shit in through the same door that all the bar regulars are simultaneously leaving through, because lets face it: they're not there to see your band. Or any band. So why does this place even have bands? But that's a question that we'll address later. On to the good stuff.

Payment: Admission is $10 at the door; $8 in advance. Bands are paid $5 a head starting with the 16th person (or $3 a head for anyone who has pre-paid for an $8 ticket), but you must draw at least 25 people to be paid. The door person will ask every attendee the name of the band they are there to see. To offer advance discount tickets to your fans, I need to set up an account for you -- contact me at xxxxxxxx@gmail.com to do so (at least 2 weeks before the show). I am not paid by the club, nor do I receive a cut of the bar, so it’s imperative that you take promotion seriously and bring people, so that I may cover all costs to the club including sound, security, door person, etc.
The mysteries here abound. Ok, let's try to unravel this payment structure math. So we get $5 per person after the 16th person, but nobody gets paid til the 25th person. So essentially, persons 17-24 are meaningless for our purposes unless persons 25+ show up. So if person 25 happens to break down on the freeway, we essentially forfeit $40 that we are supposedly owed from person 16 onward, making this a largely symbolic offer. But really, that's just the tip of the iceberg of stupidity that is this payment structure. For example, we have the option to set up some sort of account and offer discounted tickets. Great news for the fans! Except for the fact that the discount comes directly out of our share, dropping our cut from $5 to $3. So this begs the question; Why would we bother to set up an account to fuck ourselves in the ass? Why would we ever do a bunch of paperwork so that we can make less money while you make the same amount, whoever you are? In what world would someone agree to a deal like that? That has to be the stupidest...
    
Which reminds me, who the fuck are you again? What exactly is the job description of the person with whom I'm corresponding? They've just said that they are not paid by the club in any fashion, but are in fact indebted to them to cover a sound person (who does not perform sound checks), and a door person. It is imperative that I promote and bring people, so this person is not a promoter. So, they don't work for the club, and they're not a promoter, and in reality all they've done to this point has been to spam my inbox with bullshit and offer to set up an account whereby I can get cheated out of money. So what does that make them? I'm not sure exactly, but the phrase "con-artist" comes to mind...

Guestlist/Reduced Admission: We are unable to offer this due to our costs so yes your girlfriends/husbands/mothers must all pay the full cover.
God, really? My girlfriend/husband/mother can't get on a guest list because of your costs?  I've played a looot of hole-in-the-wall dives, and all of them that even remotely take themselves seriously as a music venue offer a guest list, even if it just comes out of the band's cut at the end of the night. I'm not asking for miracles here. My band is going to spend everything we make at the bar and then some, so just let my god damn girlfriend slide on the $10 because she fucking carried half of the equipment. Oh, but wait, you don't get paid by the venue, so the fact that a bunch of wild rockers are neck-deep in $3 PBRs means absolutely nothing to you. In fact, so far there's been so much pressure for me to cover your costs that I'm starting to wonder exactly is my motivation for playing this club instead of throwing a kegger in my basement, where I'll make my own guest list and put my mother on it, thanks.
Where's the beer pong, pussies??

PROMOTING THE SHOW: The audience at these shows is based solely on the draw of each band so please post this gig on your myspace page, facebook, etc. Neither the club nor I can bring a crowd to you - you must be able to draw people on your own. If you cannot, please don't play the show. The better you draw, the better the night/venue/time slot I can offer you in the future.

Finally, we end with a paragraph full of lies. "Neither the club nor I can bring a crowd to you." Well that's a bunch of bullshit. The club could, in fact, bring a crowd if they had hired a promoter instead of letting you work pro-bono to do whatever the fuck it is that you're doing, and you could maybe bring a crowd if you were, in fact, a promoter, or, to a lesser extent, put half as much effort into promoting as you did into sternly reiterating the fact that YOU ARE NOT A PROMOTER. I mean, you could at least have put up a facebook event page in that span of time. And furthermore, "The better you draw, the better the night/venue/time slot I can offer you in the future." Well, since you've so forcefully stated that you will absolutely not in any way advertise the show you're attempting to book, what the fuck does it matter what night or venue you put us in, since there is 0.0000% chance of anyone being there besides maybe a bartender and the people I personally brought? Is this supposed to be some kind of motivator? "Hey, if you can bring out 25 people to this empty shithole on a Tuesday at midnight, I'll let you bring the same 25 people to a different shithole on a Thursday at 11:30." Wow, what a deal! Am I fucking rich yet?

So what I want to know is, who exactly benefits from this business model? Obviously the bands lose out because they're getting such a bad shake. You're potentially facing a situation where you could bring out, on a weeknight, 24 of your favorite girlfriend/husband/mothers to a dive bar that they (or anyone else) would never otherwise go to, have them all pay a ridiculous $10 cover charge with NO EXCEPTIONS while they overpay for drinks all night at the bar, and you walk away with literally nothing except the equipment you had to haul and a parking ticket from the PPA. There is absolutely no scenario in which doing this is in any way more advantageous than playing in your own backyard.

But furthermore, how is this a win for the "promoter"? They have obviously agreed to work for these clubs at a risk to themselves, because they are responsible for paying the sound and door people (if their emails are to be believed). Therefore, they send these pseudo-abusive emails in which they feel they need to badger and pressure bands into selling the show before they even know if they've booked a local rock legend or a sadomasichist scat-hip-hop DJ with a Casio keyboard who cuts himself on stage. How is this a formula for success? They shove down your throat that you are responsible for covering all of their costs, and yet they are offering you nothing but an empty room far away from your house that you will lose money getting to. That is, unless you can bring 25+ people on any given weeknight in the middle of the night at the drop of a hat. And let's face it, if that's the case, you can find a better deal pretty much anywhere. So what band that is even marginally successful at drawing a crowd would ever be motivated to work with you? Probably none, so these promoters will be forever scraping the bottom of the barrel, yelling at inexperienced bands with no following to make facebook pages for their shows and bitching about all their costs.

Well you know what? Fuck your costs. When I agree to promote a show for you and draw a certain number of people, do I demand that you cover my costs? Guess what, my bass rig cost $750. That was a personal expense that I needed in order for my band to exist and bring people to the shitty bar that you don't actually work for. That was a financial risk that I took in order to be able to do my job, which, by the way, is not to be a promoter, but to rock. See how ridiculous it sounds when you spin it around like that? And we're all supposed to sit here and sweat the fact that you might take a loss when you a) neither have nor will have done any real work in putting the show together besides the arduous task of spamming pre-scripted emails, b) are offering nothing of any real value except the vague promise of a "better night/venue/timeslot" which, if it actually exists, will undoubtedly enforce the same set of draconian rules you're imposing on the shitty night/venue/timeslots, and c) knowingly took on the risk when you chose to do this. Just because you're able to shaft most bands out of their entire fanbase's admission costs doesn't mean that none of us understand how money works and that, if given the choice, you'd rather not lose it. We fuckin get it. Things are tough all over.

But finally, how is this situation a win for the club? Sure, on the one hand, instead of hiring someone to book and promote talent, they have a person whom they don't have to pay (or even really speak to) to try to get people into the door on those pesky weeknights when most people aren't trying to get sloshed. But as with everything else, you get what you pay for. Wouldn't it be better for business to take a little bit of a hit and hire someone who knows what they're doing? Wouldn't it be better to have one great show every week that can be properly advertised than five shitty shows where six people show up to each wishing that their car had caught fire on the way there because the sound sucks and everyone is pissed off and miserable?

Additionally, if you can't offer a sound check, a guest list, or even a back door through which to move equipment, maybe having live music isn't really your thing. It's ok! Not everyone should do it. Maybe you could stick to DJs, or pool tables, or having hot bartenders, or a really cool jukebox. Or, fuck, maybe have good food and drink specials, or whatever the hell bars used to do to get business before all of these con-artist fake promoters showed up trying to turn every last hole in the wall into CBGB's. If you're going to do something, do it right. And remember, its OK to say no.

Or, I don't know, have some other kind of gimmick...

Now, allow me to address some of your predictable retorts.

Hey asshole! I'm one of these promoter type people you're talking about! Bands are all like 'pay me money' and shit, but they usually suck and can't even bring out 5 people to a show! How is it my fault these people don't get paid? If they suck and can't bring anyone out, there's no money to pay! Why don't they understand that? Why do they even want to play a show to nobody?

Well, you're right. Most local bands do suck and can't bring 5 people to a show. Why do they want to play a show? The same reason you want to be a promoter. Everyone wants to be in the scene and nobody can ever come to terms with the fact that they just might not be good at certain things. So, what do you, as the sham promoter, do to filter out bands like this? You ask them what their draw is via email, to which they can tell you literally anything you want to hear in order to get the show. "You need us to bring 40 people on a Wednesday? If I say no we can't play, but if I say yes we get the show? No problem!" One could argue that a better method might be to actually fucking listen to some of the bands you book in order to gain firsthand knowledge of whether or not they suck. Or for that matter, whether or not they've bothered to record a demo. If they can't even dropbox you some rough MP3's, they probably can't self-promote a show very well.

Additionally, at least half of the time, you have the first band to sign on to the show find other bands to fill out the bill! This is absurd on so many levels. Firstly, now, beyond just not being a promoter, you're not even doing the booking! You are literally trying to get money for nothing. "You want a show? Well BOOK IT YOURSELF! I'll be there to take the money." You're one step above spray painting a water-gun and robbing people in the subway station. Have me book the show? Fuck you! Who are you, my life coach? To whom I have to pay an exorbitant fee to get "pointed in the right direction"? I don't think so, pal. You emailed me about a show, not the other way around.

Secondly, even a sham promoter should know at least three to four bands of a similar genre that would make sense on a show together. If all you do is sit around sending emails all day on your breaks from managing a PacSun, maybe you could, I don't know, email some bands yourself. Its good to know bands, since, you know, you're trying to book live music.

And because finally, if you pawn off the last remaining duty of the job you claim to be doing onto your clients, who do you think they're going to fill the show with? Their friends, dipshit. Most likely, a band with limited connections isn't going to be able to reach too far outside of their social circle to find acts that want to play with them. That's where, ideally, you would come in to use your experience to put together an event. But, since every band now on the show probably knows each other from high school, you're looking at a very limited pool of potential fans. That decreases the odds of you covering the costs that you somehow managed to accrue while doing nothing, and makes it even less likely that anyone else will get paid.

At this point you're probably thinking "But I can't afford to be picky! I have to book 30 bands a week just to make any money at all!" Well, that's that whole problem of you not actually being a promoter again. Even if you had had those urges to begin with, its obviously impossible to properly promote a show when you have one 6 out of 7 nights a week. Since doing so would be an unrealistic workload for what is doubtlessly a 2nd (at best) job for you, you leave it up to the bands, most of whom are shitty, to do themselves. You're getting exactly what you paid for, just like the bar that hired you.

Wow, for a guy who's supposed to be passionate about music, sure seems like you're obsessed with getting paid. If you're doing something you love, do we really have to hear about how you can't make all this money because of evil promoters?

Well, first of all, I can assure you that any musician around 30 years old who works full time, has commitments, bills, possibly a mortgage or a family, etc, isn't in this for the money, myself included. But there's a big difference between not being greedy and not wanting to be ripped off. The worst thing about these kind of promoters is that they appear legitimate. Now, there are actually dishonest-to-goodness hornswagglers out there who take money from bands for services and then disappear, never to be heard from again. (One day I will burn you alive, "Michael" "from" "Oceanus Tours"). I almost prefer their type though, because at least after they get you they're gone, and they don't have the audacity to pretend they are a legitimate service. These other guys are just some unnecessary middlemen who, for some reason (greed), think they are doing something worthy of payment. I'm all about fairness. If we can produce money for the venue, we deserve a fair cut, not $15 for gas money after our crowd spent $500 binge drinking at the bar after paying a cover charge. Conversely, if you did your job in putting a decent show together, you are also entitled to a fair cut. However, if you emailed me about a show, but I found the bands, I made a Facebook event, I spent money to make fliers and posters,  I made phone calls to get people in the door, and then I played the fucking show, how the fuck are you entitled to any of the profits? You didn't fucking do anything, asshole!

In conclusion, I actually think that the dive bars are still the winners. Look at it from their perspective: get someone to tell five bands they can play a show on a Tuesday night, and bam, 25 people in your bar on a Tuesday night. Who cares if nobody wants to hear their music? People who are serious about their bands, we all need to wise up. You don't need these people. For one, learn which promoters are the real deal. A good indicator is if you can actually talk to them like a person, not just a mystery address on the other end of a pre-scripted email chain. The real ones are busy, and may not respond to you right away. That's not a deal killer. But are they reasonable? Asking that you be able to draw 20 people to a given show or sell tickets is not bad business. Drafting an overly complex payment scheme that makes no sense probably is.

Another option is to not deal with promoters at all. Find a bar or a hall and book it yourself. If you're going to find bands and promote everything anyway, you might as well deal directly with the venue and work out whatever cut sounds good to you. Cut out the fucking middlemen.

And finally, spread this rant around. If you've gotten this far into the post, either you think my prose styling is the stuff of legend, or this hits close to home for you. I'm sick of these flakes, and I'm sick of their bum deals. Send this to the next fake promoter who screws you over. Send it to all your friends in bands.

Let them know that they have no place in the "doing this purely for love of the game" music circuit.





Thursday, March 21, 2013

"Revenge" of the "Nerds"

Good news everyone! Rejoice, for a time of redemption is at hand. Yes, all of you brethren who were unfortunate enough to develop a leaning toward subculture-oriented media in your days of public schooling, otherwise dubbed by your seemingly indefatigable physical superiors as nerds, geeks, dorks, freaks, queers, mouth-breathers, losers, pantywaists, wusses, pussies, pansys, faggots, quags, maynards, fergusons, Van Houtens, dinkleys, spanglers, and bitches, our time is at hand. Finally, in our post racial society, we have also fostered a culture of acceptance that has made such leaps and bounds since the time that having a copy of the novelization of Return of the Jedi was something to keep hidden from the public at all costs. No longer is there a gaping social chasm between Joe Mainstreet Football-Fan and Quincey "New-In-Box" First Edition Action Figure Collector/Elvira Enthusiast.

Proof, you say? Well, if the mainstream blockbuster success of such phenomena as The Big Bang Theory and Comic Book Men left any doubt in your mind that the sun has risen on a new age of enlightenment, look no further than this (which I came across in my Facebook feed):

not because I Googled "Hottest Nerd Girl". I swear. 



Finally... finally, people are beginning to respect those with differing opinions about what's "cool" or "attractive". How else could a contest like this come about? At long last, a cultural mecca like Philadelphia is willing to fly in the face of conventions and sponsor a beauty contest in which the individuality and uniqueness of the contestants challenges our preconcieved notions of the status quo. I mean, take "Angel" here: 





Instantly you'll note the trappings of a once-trampled underclass: the bulky, sadly broken, thick lensed glasses (doubtlessly a hold-over from parents who either couldn't afford or refused to acknowledge the need for a more stylish model), the suspenders (probably a result of the same), and the Catholic school uniform, whose solemn conformity was probably one of few similarities she shared with fellow private school students who surely looked down upon her because of her choice of books, movies, and music. 

But if you look beyond these things, you'll see subtler, more painful hints in the eyes of these nerd girls. Beyond those horned-rims, there's a sad look that says, "Yes, I understand, for I too had my Millennium Falcon broken by bullies outside of the hobby shop ten minutes after I bought it. I too was the only middle-schooler who still wore a ridiculous bicycle helmet, and I too spent the bulk of my weekends watching Star Trek with my parents while my peers were at the mall learning how to french kiss and smoke cigarettes."

Yes, the wurm has turned, as it always does. The word "nerd", once used as a derisive expletive by those who hated and wanted to kill you, can now be used as a badge of pride and honor by those who truly underwent a social trial-by-fire. But what is the prime mover for this long overdue phenomenon? What could possibly have evened the social scales and given these nerd girls the chance to flaunt their uniqueness, free of the undue criticisms of the past? The answer is so simple, we should have realized it long ago:

All they had to do was already be stripper-hot and take all of their clothes off for radio DJ's.











Thursday, January 17, 2013

Shit Like This Is Why I Don't Have The Patience To Be A Real Writer

So, this one time I submitted an idea for a piece on the new writer's section of the Cracked.com message boards. It was basically me bitching about zombie fanboys again, with the idea that I would do a list of apocalypse scenarios made famous by movies that would be scientifically way more likely to happen than a stupid zombie outbreak, backed up by whatever facts I could find with a ten minute Google search. One of the editors responded, and told me that my idea just looked like a list of apocalypse movies, and that here at Cracked.com they don't do articles that read like "here's 10 great cowboy movies, etc, etc".

 So today's top articles on cracked are:

  • 6 Deleted Backstories That Totally Change Classic Movies
  • 10 Brilliant Comedy Gems Hiding on YouTube
  • 3 Past Box Office Hits That Prove January Movies Suck
  • An Urgent Message to Guys Who Comment on Internet Videos
  • If 'Django' Was 10 Times Shorter and 100 Times More Honest, and
  • The 5 Most Badass Things Ever Done in the Name of Research
Now, I'm no mathematician, but out of today's top articles, 50% are just lists of movies/internet videos that fulfill certain criteria and 33% are commentaries on said movies/internet videos (one of which is a tounge-in-cheek synopsis of an already tounge-in-cheek Tarantino script), leaving only 17% (1) of today's top articles to tackle any subject that isn't about movies or internet videos.

So maybe I was aiming too high. Maybe instead of doing a list of apocalypse movies, I should have proposed a list of apocalypse movie YouTube mashups that would sync well with the Nyan Cat song. Because, you know, the only thing more interesting than watching YouTube mashups is reading serious critical commentary on YouTube mashups.

More Than Just Lists Of Movies... Sometimes.


     

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Movie Review

Its gotten too serious up in here lately, so please enjoy this lighthearted movie review.

I saw The Hobbit. Before I give my opinion, let me put my level of Tolkien fandom in perspective for the casual reader. I loved the Lord of the Rings movies, and I have only recently begun reading the actual books. I've finished Fellowship and Two Towers. So just so we're all on the same page, I don't have maps of Middle Earth on my wall and I don't speak Elvish. I also haven't actually read The Hobbit, Return of the King, or The Simillarion yet.

That said, I thought the movie was great! It was a little long in getting started, and there were some obligatory franchise shout-outs (for example, the scene where Elijah Wood suits back up as Frodo just to get the mail and eat an apple), but overall, I thought it was fantastic.

However, liking stuff is boring, so there are two small things about The Hobbit that I hated and am fully prepared to go on a rant about. These in no way impact my overall liking of the movie, but they are very stupid and must be addressed.

First Stupid Thing:

So in one part of the movie, Bilbo and the dwarves are crossing this rainy mountain pass (in a scene that looks identical to one in Fellowship except that the rain was snow). Some rocks start falling down on them, and one of them shouts "The legends are true! Rock Giants!"

And then, holy fucking shit, 75 foot tall monsters made of solid rock are beating the tar out of each other. And I don't mean just crashing into each other like you might expect senseless stone people to do. These guys are throwing jabs and hooks and executing sick bare-knuckle boxing combinations like they just graduated a 12 week fight camp with Manny Paquiano. So needless to say the Dwarves are scared shitless, but manage to barely escape this brutal fracas and get inside the mountain. 

And nobody ever mentions it again.  

In fact, they all just fucking go to sleep. Now, since I haven't read the original book, I don't know if this is explained somewhere, so maybe somebody can help me out. As far as movie making goes, its pretty random. There's no set up whatsoever. One minute, Dwarves are walking across a mountain, and the next minute, what could not possibly be any less than the most fucking powerful creatures in Tolkien's universe are having a title bout across an entire mountain range. Then, thanks to the comfort of a cave within a dwarf's walk of this catastrophic scenario, the danger is suddenly over without so much as anyone saying "Wow. So, how about that rock monster battle? Crazy, am I right?"  

Let's think about this. These things are as tall as mountains, throw boulders the size of Isengard, have the combat dexterity of a young Joe Frasier, and Gandalf and co. are worried about a dragon? Are you kidding me? Forget about this dragon nonsense! We need to deal with these living mountains who are God-like in power and clearly aggressive. Radagast saw a "necromancer" in the old tower? Fuck that shit! What if the rock-man royal rumble spills over into the streets of Minas Tirith? Smashed. In fact, what the hell couldn't three rock monsters who had a bad morning utterly destroy? White city of Gondor? Smash. Rivendell? Smash. Eye of Sauron? Throw a mesa at it. Fangorn forest? Lay down and roll. Sure, the Ents seemed pretty powerful before we learned they are completely outclassed on the next range over. 

Call me crazy, but I feel this situation needs to either be dealt with, or at the very least, explained. Like maybe two fuckin seconds of screen time when Gandalf comes back to save them from the goblins. 

"Yo Gandalf, that goblin shit was scary, but you should have seen this other shit we saw right before that. You would not believe it."



"Oh, you must be referring to the rock monster mash. They always do that, but for a million centuries of man they always stop by six o'clock and never leave the mountain range."


"Oh, ok. Good."

See? Problem solved. But failing that, I feel that it should make parties of both good and evil in Middle Earth somewhat uncomfortable that this kind of thing is going on. Yes, the one ring can corrupt the minds of men, but, you know... smashed. 

Second Stupid Thing:

All subterranean creatures are racially incapable of building railings.   

I would seriously like for someone to do a body count of how many deaths there are in these movies due to lack of railings. I don't remember anything in the books about the dwarves specifically leaving railings off of clearly precipitous bridges and walkways despite the fact that a strong sneeze could send someone tumbling down 4,000 feet into a river of magma, so I'm forced to assume this was an executive decision on the part of Peter Jackson. 

There's a scene in The Hobbit where they're fighting off a million goblins in Goblin Town, and the lack of railings, handholds, and crossbars is so apparent that they simply use the strategy of "just knock them off", to which the goblins were clearly unprepared despite the fact that they fucking live like this. The dwarves are no better. The glory of Erebor? No Railings. The Mines of Moria? Built with no railings. Conquered by orcs, who continue this tradition to their own peril, as we see in Fellowship. Its safe to assume that Orcs, Goblins, and Dwarves never achieved dominance on Middle Earth not because of lack of fighting capability, but because their populations were surely decimated by the gruesome results of dizzy spells, banana peel accidents, and drunken stumbling off of precarious walkways with no railings! 

And you know what? That's why the king is a human. Helm's deep? You have to fucking try to fall out of that thing. There's like a parapet every two feet. The elves are a little better than the dwarves as well, but there still some places where one wrong step means your ass is down a waterfall, like in front of Elrond's magical moon-rune E-reader. Overall, given the glory and/or complexity of these underground dwellings, it would seem like a wise investment in public works to even string some rope handholds across the most dangerous parts of your lair. The Goblin King clearly had time and resources to build a wacky cage trap and some kind of torture machine, so it follows that it wouldn't be too much to ask for a safety net here or there. Just sayin. 

Anyway, the movie was good.