Places Not To Play

[Chovie D]

I expect to get paid yes. I doesnt need to be alot, but $20 split 4 ways is not acceptable.
I expect to not have to drink goat piss with my measly 2 drink tickets, you will serve me the beer of my choice and honor my drink ticket or I will drink two of your shitty beers wiht those drink tickets , pack up my crap and walk out before the shows starts. (ive done that twice now..it cost me being a band once, no big loss tho they can stay and drink goatpiss if they want, not me).
I expect to arrive at the bar when it is time for work, not four hours before hand for a supposed "soundcheck" only to find your dumbass  soundguy didnt show or that you "dont do soundchecks"..wtf? why tell me to come early for one then?
I expect to be able to park near the bar or at least be able to load in from near the bar, not from 5 blocks away cause you have NO parking, fuck you then you shouldnt have bands.

thats about it. i dont think its asking too much. I play a few less gigs than I otherwise would, but those gigs wouldve been completely shitty anyway. Id rather stay at home with my bong, good beers and bigscreen tv then go out, find parking, put wear and tear on my gear and end up paying money to play a shitty gig while having to drink piss for my pay.

shit when I was 21 i would play anywhere for any amount under any circumstances. now, not so much.

Not sure that's worth burning your bandmates over...

I asked them to leave with me. i told em if a place was gonna treat us ike crap when we were working for them it wasnt worth playing there and we should cut our losses and leave now. One band told me the next day i was right and said they wished they had left too. the other one fired me. It worked out well for me because I ended up playing gigs I wanted to play rather than being frustrated playing shitty gigs and being treated like shit. Im not trying to be a hardass, I just reached a point where it wasnt worth taking peoples shit anymore. Like I said when i was younger I wouldve just played the show, but IM old and cranky and tired now. One club told us to show up at 7 in an email. we get there and they say come back at 9, theres a private party goin on till then. That time the whole band went home and didnt come back..there are limits to what you tolerate and this can be a good thing Ive found. By elavating yourself above that level of shit you are assuring yourself either better gigs or no gigs. either way, less frustrating than shitty gigs.

[Chovie D]

lemme ask you all something. when you play a shitty gig and are treated like crap and have NO funn and dont get paid...does it not just make you look at your $1000's of dollars of equipment and think of all the time, money and energy you put into your music and then ask yourself..."what the fuck am I doing this for?"

Id rather not feel that way about something I love so much, so I try not to put myself in that situation if possible anymore.

sorry to hear about the phantasy in clevo, that was the place with the boat in the middle of the bar. i liked to party in that little cubby hole cabin thing in the boat. The Euclid Tavern was always our favorite in Cleveland..i heard they tore it down?

[Hemisaurus]

lemme ask you all something. when you play a shitty gig and are treated like crap and have NO funn and dont get paid...does it not just make you look at your $1000's of dollars of equipment and think of all the time, money and energy you put into your music and then ask yourself..."what the fuck am I doing this for?"

Precisely the reason I try not to spend thousands of dollars on equipment, I can either think I'm a struggling musician who spends more than he gets paid, or that I play music for fun, and don't expect to get back financially what I put in, so maybe I don't make enough to justify that $800 guitar and that $1000 amplifier and then $300 on a $15 distortion box that's been built by hand.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, though as regards the no more shitty gigs, but I don't judge it by we get paid, or how many drink tickets we get. I judge it more by how we're treated. Like Aretha said R-E-S-P-E-C-T 

[Chovie D]

Im with you, the $1000's is over the course of twenty years. These days I am hauling about $2K worth to a gig, $1100 of that would be pedal steel $400 amp, $300 guitar and easily $200 in effects, steel seat, bar etc.
and yes, for me too it really boils down to RESPECT, but not paying me when I was promised pay is a form of disrespect to me, so in that sense, money matters to me. The respect part certainly matters more than the $25 itself...i am gonna spend that tipping your bartenders anyway.

since we are talking shitty gigs let me flip it for a second:
One of the best gigs out there is the college gig. You are paid via the mandatory student activity fees they pay with their tuition and so it pays very very well. The gig is usually during daylight hours and packed with young women, and since the students are your booker and promoter, and since the money they are spening is not 'theirs', they treat you like a king, tons of food, no dicking you around, etc. Its harder to get the big UNiversity gigs, but there are a TON of smaller colleges, community colleges and stuff. The students are enthusiastic and energetic (and horny). Play three or four over the course of a spring and youve got enough money for your band to record a full length album   

[doomhawk]

MAN i can picture so many but can't remember names that well. 

one is in tallahassee, think is either big daddy's or spanky's - im pretty sure.  the promoter/or bar manager saw us at the liquor store prior one of our shows there, then when we were apparently "late" for load in (we were the second band there) he wouldn't give us space for merch or gear, no drink tickets and were only allowed a couple waters. he did however give us tons of shit about seeing us earlier.  i mean he must not have understood that the liquor store would have been totally closed by the time the show was over, so we had to stock up prior, DUUUUHHHH - totally ridiculous.

i'll think of some more...

[black_out]

We had a pretty shitty experience at The Note in West Chester,PA. Seems like people are 50/50 on this place. I have a few friends who's bands play there every few months or so, and they seem to be pretty cool with it. I've also talked to a few other people that shared our experience. The people that work there were pretty dick-ish to us. There was a pretty decent turn out, though. Bam owns the place so I think a lot of poeple go there just to say the did. It had opened fairly recently at that time, though. So, things might have changed. 

[Chovie D]

thats really the bottom line. If the people working the place are dickish to you, it is not a good place to play. If the staff/owners/bookers treat you like gold..it doesnt matter if the place is a dump or has a shitty PA, its a good place to play.

It doesnt seem too hard or too expensive to train your staff to be nice to,and respectful of, the bands(who are actually for that night, their fellow employees , not some enemy that needs to be denied respect,pay and beer). Its not going to break the bars profit margin to serve the band Redhook rather than Hamms. It doesnt take muhc to call or email a band and let them no the show is canceled BEFORE they haul their gear down, etc. Its easy...therefor the only conclusion I can draw is some people are just fucking assdholes. i remember who they are...and i dont go back for more.

[RAGER]

yeah man that shit about only giving you the shit beer with your drink tickets screams lack of respect.  I'm not showing up with my Peavey Backstage and a Hondo.  I'm showing up with my badass gear and I want a fucking Lagunitas.  It aint gonna kill ya.

I heard this analogy a while back.  It might have been on the old site but think about it.

The club has a plumbing problem, they call out a plumber.  They pay him for driving there (Service call charge), they pay him his hourly rate (probably about 70 bucks an hour).  He doesn't have to show up 3 hours before he works on the shit, he's not expected to bring 25 friends to cheer him on and drink at the bar and they pay him without question or hassle.  If my band showed up without anybody and didn't do anything but drink at the bar for free, it still wouldn't amount to what they paid that guy to fix the shitter.  It's about respect.  We're working too.

I too am old and tired.  Been doing this for 25 years.  I try to be a little choosey nowadays.  there's plenty of 20somethings out there that will play a Sunday or Tuesday night for shit.  Not me.

[Lumpy]