Read the Fanzine Second Live Night:
Saturday 3rd June 2006
@ Progress Bar, Tufnell Park
Lineup:
Rod Thomas Band,
Velvet Condom,
Vespucci and Jones,
Sarah Jane (aka Bobbing for Apples),
Mike Anstey
Velvet Condom Myspace Page
Vespucci and Jones Myspace Page
Sarah Jane (aka Bobbing for Apples) Myspace Page
Mike Anstey Myspace Page
Also check Mike's new band: Soulsmith
The Parke Davis/Kaputt night was a great night that I will always remember, but it was also an expensive night. We had a "free" night at The Progress Bar to use up because of the problems with the amp, but it's not free if you've got to spend £500 on hiring a PA system and Sound Engineer.
| "I didn't realise they still needed microphones" |
When checking out bands on Myspace I came across a lot of folk/acoustic bands that I liked the sound of and it seemed like a good idea to use the free night to do a folk/acoustic night where the PA system (or rather lack of one) wouldn't be such an issue (though I didn't realise they still needed microphones).
But guitar bands is what I really wanted to be putting on so I got in touch with legendary Dublin Castle in Camden - a venue that a long list of big names have played on their way up. Their bookings were handled by a company called Bugbear bookings and they were prepared to let me hire the venue on a Saturday night for £500.
£500 sounded like a lot of money, but then I spent that much on a sound engineer and PA System at The Progress Bar, and the Dublin Castle had a top of the range PA system and resident sound engineer who knew how to get the best out of it.
| "It still meant that I had to find 100 paying customers" |
In some ways it sounded like a really good deal, but it still meant that I had to find 100 paying customers at the Dublin Castle standard rate of £5 to pay for the venue, before I even thought about the bands, promotional costs etc, but then The Dublin Castle has a lot of passing trade - it has such a good reputation that people will turn up on spec. People can hear the bands at the main bar, but have to pay to go and watch them, so good lesser known bands can pull a good crowd.
Bugbear book 3 months ahead, so I booked it for August. Meanwhile I had a few acts who were up for playing the progress bar despite the lack of a PA system, so I went down to talk dates. But when I got there I found a new manager who hadn't been told about our free night, but he did have a proposal for us: he offered us a monthly residency - first Saturday of the month until the end of the year, and if we paid for the first two nights as a token of good faith they would let us have the venue free from then on assuming the numbers were respectable.
| "a regular night meant that we could build up regulars who knew when the next night would be and our promotion could promote future gigs as well as the next one" |
Whilst JG just wanted the free night we'd been promised, it sounded like a good offer to me. Having a regular night meant that we could build up regulars who knew when the next night would be and our promotion could promote future gigs as well as the next one plus I'd found a lot of bands on myspace that I wanted to book, so if they were unable to play the next gig we could give them a choice of future dates.
It also fitted in rather nicely with an idea I'd had whilst listening to Parke Davis. They were so good that I felt sure that if the XFM/6 Music audience got a chance to hear them they would be huge. I thought that if I could produce a CD (with the bands permission of course) of bands playing then I could give them out instead of flyers.
| "before newspapers started giving albums away a CD felt like it had a little bit of value" |
In an ideal world when people receive a flyer with a list of bands they've never heard of, they'd go to the bands myspace pages and check them out, but in reality it will more likely end up in the nearest bin. On the other hand, before newspapers started giving albums away a CD felt like it had a little bit of value so you'd hope people would at least pop it in their CD player before putting it in the nearest bin.
Whilst the cost of about 20p per CD was prohibitive for promoting one night, by booking 6 months ahead and getting the bands permission as I went, the cost could be spread across the nights. It was potentially a good promotional tool for both the bands as well as the night.
Think about it, someone who doesn't usually go and see bands until they are getting regular airplay on the radio has a listen to the CD out of curiosity. They like most of the songs on the CD and end up listening to it regularly, there's a good chance they are going to make it down to one of the nights and pass copies of the CD on to their mates, well that was the theory anyway.
| "it seemed worth buying some stuff that could always be resold on Ebay once we stopped doing the nights" |
Likewise buying my own microphones and cables etc was too expensive for one gig, but when we had at least 6 gigs to the end of the year it seemed worth buying some stuff that could always be resold on Ebay once we stopped doing the nights.
I decided to go for it: ordered some equipment from Thomann, found a sound engineer who also worked at Nambucca and proceeded to book 5 bands, including Velvet Condom - a French synth band that sing in English and German and are heavily influenced by bands like Kraftwerk, New Order and Depeche Mode. They were friends with Kaputt one of whom had given me a demo CD.
Since the lineup was already complete for the next couple of gigs I ordered 5,000 full colour double-sided flyers to promote both gigs, in the hope that if people couldn't make June they might still hold on to the flyer and come to July, additionally I built a CD duplicator and produced and distributed several hundred copies of the promo CD.
I even bought a gobo projector and had a monochrome gobo etched with the Read the Fanzine logo, so it could spin around behind the bands - promoting the night if people took pictures.
| "I was spending a lot of my own money so I couldn't afford to have a lot of people barging past" |
I was spending a lot of my own money so I couldn't afford to have a lot of people barging past and not paying this time, so I put an advert in Gumtree and found a trainee bouncer called Sherri to take money on the door.
Things were going pretty smoothly until the morning of the gig when I got a phone call from the venue. The manager I'd booked with had done a runner with my deposit and not written the booking into the book. A band had turned up asking if they could store their equipment, and he'd rung to say that the gig could go ahead as there were no other bookings, but we couldn't have access to the venue until 6pm.
Clips of all 5 bands at the June Read the Fanzine - filmed by Dom Bundy
With so many bands on the bill, there was no way we could get everything setup and the bands sound checked before doors opened so I pleaded with the manager, who just ended up getting annoyed and threatened to pull the whole night.
I rang JG to see if he had any suggestions, but we ended up just arguing with each other along the lines of "Of course I told him we need to sound check the bands". Fortunately Glyn lived in Kentish Town and upon hearing of the problem he went to the venue to appeal to the managers common sense.
Fortunately we'd got a mention in Time Out magazine, so Glyn went armed with that and showed how much effort we were putting into promoting the night and bringing people along to his (normally very quiet) bar.
Eventually he backed down and let us in at 2pm, all systems were go!
Mike Anstey
The night itself went pretty well musically. A few people had questioned my booking of Mike Anstey, as perhaps his myspace didn't do him justice, but he won everyone over, and was perhaps my favourite act of the night.
Sarah Jane
Sarah Jane put in a pretty inspired performance. I have to admit that besides liking her music, part of the motivation for booking her was that she worked for the company who booked for the Water Rats in Kings Cross, and I had hoped that she might be able to give me some tips on doing a night successfully. But in the end, I was so stressed with all the goings on that I never really got a chance to talk to her.
Gary had been good solo at the previous night, but Vespucci & Jones were marvelous as a duo.
Promo for Velvet Condom's single 'Kalter Lippenstift'
Velvet Condom were a complete change in direction from the more mellow, acoustic material of the night and though some viewed their energetic performance with disbelief, most really seemed to be into it.
The night finished with The Rod Thomas Band, his last gig before going solo. He's an incredibly talented musician and chart success is long overdue. You should definitely check out his current incarnation Bright Light Bright Light.
Whilst musically it was a good night, it was overshadowed by a relatively dismal turnout of about 60 people, well down on the previous night.
There were a number of factors contributing to the low turnout, Tris didn't come as the bands weren't to his taste, JG and Me had used up a lot of our favours in getting people along to the first two nights, the bands were perhaps too different to the Parke Davis/Kaputt night to get anyone back from that night, and it was a beautiful summers evening, not ideal for getting people to go to an indoor gig.
Sherri did an impressive job of going around and making sure everyone paid, but the ticket money on the door paid for little more than the venue hire, whilst I'd spent over £200 on the bands, £80 for the Sound Engineer plus all the money I'd spent on equipment.
It also ended on a bit of a sour note as JG and Glyn had a bit of a tiff. Glyn had once again brought a lot of people to the gig and got a poor DJ slot (to be fair, there were no good DJ slots that night as it was pretty tight squeezing in 5 acts) so he put quite a few people on the guest list. JG had made sure everyone he brought along had paid their way, whilst Glyn felt that a few guest list places were the least he should get after bringing so many people and getting the short straw where DJ slots were concerned.
It was my fault, I should have paid more attention to the shoddy deal that Glyn was getting, and have had a zero guest list policy as I was spending a lot of money on the night and needed every penny to minimalise the losses. Anyway they sorted out their differences so that was something.
So all in all, a disappointment compared to the previous night, but on balance still a good night despite some work clearly needing to be done.