Following on from my previous post:

Worth looking forward to: SNOW

We got snow sooner than expected, on Thursday. The light that morning was eerie, amazingly clear and so beautiful. I even noticed entire buildings I never noticed in six months of walking up Queen Margaret Drive daily. As I stared around in wonder, clouds of doom crept in, the sky went dark and the snow started falling. When I got off the bus ten minutes later the snow was thick and swirling all around me and I was so happy I thought my heart would burst. I’ve never been so wide-eyed and over-excitably talkative at 9am on a work morning. I love Glasgow so much.

Not worth looking forward to: playing with Data Panik

Excuse me if I go off on a rant here but I am so disappointed, angry and upset about this. As a huge bis fan, and having seen DP play about 5 times now, I was so excited to get asked to support them. But we ended up pulling out of the gig in the afternoon because of what we consider to be unbelievable and ridiculous promotion. The gig was promoted by a well-known, experienced local promotion company and was part of a local council sponsored and heavily advertised festival. But by the time we pulled out these were the conditions we had apparently agreed to by accepting the invitation to play (maybe we should have asked more beforehand but maybe they should have told us sooner than the day before the gig and without us having to ask):

Running order of support bands, number of guest list places and all payment for the night to be entirely decided by amount of advance tickets sold personally by each band by 4pm on the day of the gig.

So if we sold zero tickets we wouldn’t even get our expenses covered even if 50 of our friends turned up on the night and paid on the door. Am I being mental here or is this just wrong?

We’ve played a lot of gigs in the last 18 months, including some high profile ones, and never been treated like this. Every gig we’ve done has been promoted by enthusiastic, friendly, helpful people who have given us all the information we needed and either paid us very generously or at least given us our petrol money and some beer.

I’d heard about these ticket deal gigs before and always vowed never to play any of them. Maybe my principles are too strong here but after 15 years of doing things DIY I won’t be a part of something that plays bands against each other and doesn’t treat them as people (and people with jobs. Our presence at soundcheck was also demanded for 4pm) with basic requirements. It just seems so corporate.

I’d be interested in what the rest of you who are in bands/promote gigs think about this.

(The Girls Aloud album better be great now)

UPDATE: Our official band response to the promoter is now on our website which explains things in more detail.

Posted: 11|26|05 at 2:15 pm. Filed under: events, rants and stuff.
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