Gigging thing - opinions, please!

[mrph]

(With apologies to diffrentcolours for poaching the title...)

There's been a fair bit of debate about gigs and promoters elsewhere on LJ today - mostly about a specific incident, but with some discussion of what should be expected/provided, good practice and all that sort of thing.

And thinking about it, there are a few musical and promotery types reading this journal. So...

What advice should be in a FAQ/guide for first time gig promoters?

Or, from the other point of view, for new bands who are about to start playing gigs?
Edit: actually, there seems to be a very decent take on the band's checklist here. Which the gigging thing lyrics indirectly reminded me of... :)

Comments

[markeris.livejournal.com]

If you described the remit of Dark Entries as a wide area to an American gig goer, they`d look at you blankly. Playing a gig 100 miles away from gig the previous night over there would be considered as being stupid enough to more or less play 2 gigs in the same town on conseuctive nights more or les. We`re very lazy indeed about supporting our music over here if it actually requires personal effort (the net has killed most reasons for making an effort, you can now feel part of a scene without ever once supporting it in the real world)

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Cars, booze and weekday events. That's half the problem here. From what I remember of my days on the corpgoth list, an awful lot of US goths are happy to drive to an event and get hotels or crashspace. But then more of the events seem to be on Friday or Saturday, so...

An awful lot of UK goths either don't drive or don't own cars. And out of the ones that do, a fair few don't like driving to gigs because then they can't drink. Combine that with the wretched state of our trains, and you have a problem. The main thing that stopped my London gig-going is the difficulty of getting home again afterwards.

But it's still easier to get back from London without a car than it is from Leicester - which is just over 20 miles from my house.

Looking back, an awful lot of the travels of yesteryear happened because of a small number of people who were happy to ferry carloads of goths to and from events. Aside from things like Whitby, that mindset has faded a bit these days - and, as ever, the people who used to do that, back in ninety wotsit, now have other commitments. There just don't seem to be newcomers with the same attitude.

[mrph.livejournal.com]

...actually, that's not strictly true. I know several people who'll drive many miles to their "local" club. It's the trips further afield that seem to suffer. Hmm.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

True in absolute distance terms, but I can travel 100 miles one hell of a lot faster in Canada than I can here in the Land of Permanent Traffic Jams.