peteb

I'm afraid that all the bands I'm currently playing with are a touch heavier than SOR (some in a keyboardy AOR way)!

Oh Jamie & crew (the guy who sold you the Lakland)!

I'm afraid it won't be me playing locally until the end of the year at the earliest!

That is a perfectly good point. The counter to that is infections are rising exponentially and no one knows how that will play out in terms of the death rate in a few weeks time and whether this will help to create a variant that is resistant to the vaccines. I suppose that my point is why are we lifting all restrictions in one go and that (for example) surely allowing more than 67,000 people to attend a football match was criminally reckless.

Which Lidl?? I live near you and obviously went to the wrong Lidl today!!

Abso-f**king-lutely

It is indeed. Perhaps we should consider that we have been very lucky that we haven't had a pandemic for a hundred years. We also have to consider that this is the first time that we have had a worldwide pandemic with a so many people alive at the same time. I do know that a pandemic on this scale has been expected by the authorities for thirty plus years.

British exceptionalism at its finest… We're all in the same boat mate, it's not a great time...

I imagine that it will be longer than two weeks before we go back into lockdown if it all goes tits up! The thing is that at some point we have to lift restrictions, but is now the time and is completely lifting all restrictions at the same time the right thing to do? The thing is no one knows because we have never been in anything like this situation before. My worry is that this is being led by internal party politics rather than science. There is no way that I would go to a football match or a festival where there are tens of thousands of people, but perhaps meeting friends or allowing pubs / smaller venues to open up with a two hundred or so people might be the way forward.

To be fair, SRV wore his influences on his sleeve and there are plenty of other guitar players you could say that about him as well as Hendrix (Albert King, Lonnie Mack. Lightnin’ Hopkins, etc). Doesn't stop him being my all-time favourite guitar player (along with EVH), nor does it make me appreciate Hendrix or Albert King, etc any the less.

I was in a band that used to do that 25 years ago (not every time, just the occasional line to see if any punters noticed)!

Hi Albert, glad to see you on the forum. I had a quick look at your website and was interested to see that you have a red Ken Smith Burner 4 string (the original Burner series). I used to own an identical bass, which was one of only a few that I've ever come across. Yours is the only other red one that I've ever seen. I just wondered where you got yours? I had to move it on when I needed a P bass for a particular gig, which was a shame because it was a lovely bass.

I don't think that they have at all. Hopefully there might even be a bit of a bounce with punters having missed seeing bands throughout the pandemic. Let's hope that it lasts...

The pub covers band isn't ready and has to rehearse up a set / learn enough songs to play live. Most of the decent local venues are pretty booked up now, so the earliest we are realistically going to be ready is the back end of the year for any cancellations and start booking gigs for next year. The originals band will only play supports for better known bands of a similar genre, so we have to wait for those types of bands to start doing club tours again and hope that we can pick up some supports. Not sure what is happening with the Magnum tribute - we've been offered a couple of gigs but there has been a lineup change, which means quite a lot of work to rehearse it back up to the standard it was. The idea is that we are putting it on ice until next year to see if it is still viable to carry on.

That reminds me of a big rock club I played in Barrow-in-Furness in the 80s. Big room with a massive stage and plenty of punters there, but the most hostile audience I have ever played to (only rivalled by a pub gig in Egremont, just up the coast, many years later). There was a bit of heckling, minimal applause, threats to the guys doing sound and lights out front, someone unplugged the PA from the wall, etc. We played pretty well actually and even did an encore to spite them! After the show, we had to lock the singer in the dressing room for his own safety for a bit, as a few guys were making threats after he had taken the p155 out of them onstage. Once we had packed down at the end of the night, the management bought us a drink and were saying how good they thought we were. I said it was a shame that audience didn’t agree, to which they replied we were the first none local band not to get bottled off since they started putting bands on again a couple of years before. They then went to talk about all the bands who had played there (it had been a bit of a circuit gig in the 60s) and how many had been bottled off, including a few well-known bands! Sorry for the thread derail, as you were…

Well the Cliffs Pavilion is a theatre and while the Half Moon is technically a pub, it is / was one of the longest running live music venues in London. Anyway, enough already. I've got work to do (that I also get paid for) and haven't got time to be arguing about half forgotten RnB bands from 20 years ago!

Yes, I believe that the Hamsters did pretty much emerge fully formed as pro musicians, paid from the offset and working with promoters. I am sure that they built up an audience from playing paid gigs, but I have no idea what they did as teenagers. Wasn’t the bandleader / guitarist (Barry something or other??) a former journalist with a load of contacts? I didn’t get paid for my first few gigs at youth clubs and specially promoted events. Then I played the originals circuit, mainly playing clubs where we usually got paid (even though we often lost money travelling to gigs). Remember, this was a while ago and very different times for live music. I was always paid whenever we played a pub. That is certainly true for making money from touring or selling records, but not playing down the Dog & Duck on a Saturday night!

No, the Hamsters were a touring band of pros who worked with promoters. This is a completely different market to a local pub live music circuit. How many times do you need this explaining to you? In an ideal world, perhaps pubs would have someone on the door and make punters pay a couple of quid to see the band. But that is not the way the market works these days and is not going to happen. However, punters still go to see bands playing covers in pubs, which helps landlords to sell beer. Therefore these bands should be paid. If you are an unknown originals band then you should be playing events promoted to your potential audience. These days you are always going to struggle to find an audience playing pubs (although I daresay that there is the odd exception). There is a reason why pubs generally book cover bands.

Anyway, forget about playing a gig (that isn't going to happen until the end of the year at the earliest), but at least I've got a rehearsal with one band next week, with rehearsals for the covers band due to resume in the next couple of weeks or so! I've been charting out a few songs for next week today - just need to change strings that have been on for 18 months or so and change batteries in a couple of active basses, etc...

I saw the Hamsters a few times. They were professional musicians who toured around the country playing dedicated music venues, rather than local pubs putting live music on a weekend. They had a policy of insisting that punters had to pay to see them and refused to play places that didn't charge for admission. I agree with them that people should ideally at least pay a nominal fee to see live music, but unfortunately that is not necessarily how the general local pub gig market works.

Thankfully no. Please be aware that we are (or at least I am) talking about a rather specific market activity, i.e. playing covers at pub gigs. If you are doing something completely different, then it what I am saying does not necessarily apply. I will on occasion play for free; be it for a genuine charity, as a favour to a friend or to promote an original band. However, I will always expect to be paid if the primary reason for a gig is to assist a pub landlord to sell beer!

That is exactly how it works for pub gigs! However, when the tribute or the original band that I'm in play gigs, then people have to pay to see us. How much we make or, in the case of the originals band, whether they are paying to see the main band rather than us is another matter. Completely different types of markets.

So do I - but not playing classic rock covers in a pub!

I am sure that you can appreciate the difference between playing covers in a pub to sell beer for a landlord and the opportunity to promote your act by playing a massive high-profile gig. As I have said above, this is something that my originals band would be happy to do, albeit on a massively smaller scale. Do try and keep up old boy...

To be fair, you get paid what other people think that you are worth, but the starting point for the negotiation is what you ask for. Of course, if you don't ask for any payment you are telling people that what you do is without value.