tegs07

On 02/07/2021 at 07:01, Dov65 said:

Look this seller up on ebay, I've had umpteen guards made including several one - off's. Shed load cheaper than WD & excellent workmanship. He's based in Glasgow 

This chap has made a couple for me as well. He does good work and is a decent bloke as well.
I had one guard that was bespoke and didn’t fit due to some miscommunication and he was very accommodating. 

14 hours ago, grandad said:

think a wide variety of venues is heathy. Music at every level from beginner to professional has to exist and allow progress to happen. It has to be fluid. 

I went on a trip down memory lane to my old home town and one of the pubs that used to serve the local music scene.

Back in the day it was a bit of a dump and an underage drinkers haven. Mid week unpaid, amateur acts could play. The good ones may even get invited to play the coverted Saturday night slot and get a small amount of pay but to a surprisingly large crowd. 

It’s now a tasteful gastro-pub. I had hand caught trout and a nice Chablis and put more in the till that afternoon than pretty much my entire teenage years drinking in the place. My middle aged, middle class self liked the place. My teenage self would have loathed it.

In short I doubt any Stranglers or Jams will be emerging from that genteel corner of leafy Surrey in the near future.

Tales Of Brave Ulysses - Cream 

Stinkfist - Tool

Did someone here get this?

Creep - Radiohead 

5 minutes ago, tauzero said:

You're TimR's alter ego, aren't you?

https://www.google.com/search?q=professional&oq=prof&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0i131i433j69i60l2.2462j1j7&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8

Nope I am an IT professional though and have a professional electricians qualification so can charge for electrical work if I wanted so in your definition I have to choose?

I still don’t understand how any of your personal insults relate to my simple points about amateur musicians not being a threat to professional ones nor the issue that if they are unproven why they should automatically get paid but am tired of this now.. Some people are simply rude.

10 minutes ago, tauzero said:

So you haven't looked up the definition,  or you don't understand it. What a waste of space you are. Clue: it's when it's your main occupation and you get paid for it. Do you understand "main"?

Good lord your certainly not an amateur angry pants are you? 
 

I see no mention of proportion of time spent to make something a profession.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/professional?q=Professional+

4 minutes ago, tauzero said:

I suggest that you look up the definitions of "professional",  "main", and "occupation" because you're hoist by your own petard. 

If your doing something for money rather than fun and getting paid to do it your not an amateur. You can be part time it makes no difference.

6 minutes ago, tauzero said:

Perhaps you should work out what you're trying to say as it gets less clear by the minute. You said that amateur musicians start out not getting paid. I am and was an amateur musician who started out getting paid. Have you ever played with a band in public?

Yes for free at a pub that took a punt on amateur bands hence didn’t pay. If you are getting paid repeatedly and doing it for the money well done you are a professional not an amateur. It’s not complicated.It’s also pretty rare particularly if your building up a National let alone international fan base.

PS punk band. Teenagers and crap. No one in their right mind would have paid us.

6 minutes ago, tauzero said:

I got paid for the first gig I played as a bassist (mix of covers and originals), not for the second (different band, originals), and from the third gig on (another band, covers) it's been mainly paid. You know not of what you speak.

OK I am clueless as you were everyone. I would suggest you look up the dictionary definition of Amateur and Professional though before making comments that make no sense. 
If people constantly pay me to plaster their walls I am not an amateur plasterer. I may be a crap plasterer but that’s a different matter.

10 minutes ago, Ricky 4000 said:

Half forgotten UK pub rock bands from 20 years ago is like any other natural hierarchy:

99% of the wealth goes to the 1% at the top of the pyramid.

The vast majority of bands are scratching around the lower levels. Many are looking for a leg up to the next level. Some are naturally just better than others, some try much harder than others, some both / some neither...

 

Some get lucky, some don’t, some realise that they are not that great and quit, some are crap but hit the jackpot anyway. It’s not a fair or just career path!

Without being pedantic I am struggling with two bits of logic:

1. Amateur musicians are affecting the careers of professional musicians even though all professional musicians started their careers as amateurs.

2. Amateur musicians should always be paid. Even if they are at the work experience stage of their career and are not very good. I love watching pub bands and bands at community events, particularly if I know people involved but have to be honest there are very few I would pay to watch.

Biscuits for breakfast - Fink

58 minutes ago, neepheid said:

I'm tired of this; you think you're right and I think you're wrong so I fear this is going to go round in circles until one of us hurls.

I don’t care if I am right or wrong.
If there are venues out there that will give an amateur musician a break I am happy.

If an amateur can turn pro and start to earn money even better.

If an amateur plays for fun and gets pleasure from doing so again this is fine.

12 minutes ago, peteb said:

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

From Wikipedia:

They performed their first live show at the Cliffs Pavilion, Southend-on-Sea, on 1 April 1987, and their last at The Half Moon, Putney on 1 April 2012, exactly 25 years later. They initially played in local pubs with no ambitions to take themselves seriously or to turn professional.

Note: professional simply means paid or paid enough to give up your day job. Getting to the point of being paid or paid enough will start somewhere. Usually this is as an amateur and for fun not cash.

Just now, neepheid said:

So you're going to completely skip over the part where the "beginners/amateurs" in your analogy still get paid then?  Why should "amateur network engineers" get paid but amateur musicians not?

Amateur network engineers don’t get paid. They have to do something else to get paid until they get the experience. The same with amateur musicians and amateur carpenters and amateur actors and amateur photographers and ….

14 minutes ago, neepheid said:

Yes, but even help desk workers get paid (and yes, I have sometimes wondered why/what for).  This analogy doesn't work.

The anology is CCNA not a ticket to network engineer.

Amateur musician is not a ticket to paid gigs. Simply having some skills doesn’t mean you get paid for them. It takes time and some luck.

I have a bass and a guitar next to me. In my garage I have woodworking tools. I’m not going to get paid straight off for using either as I am an amateur.

8 minutes ago, peteb said:

 

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. 

So The Hamsters emerged fully formed as pro musicians paid from the offset with promoters and an audience waiting for them. They were never teenagers with their mum dropping them down the local to play bad AC/DC covers with their college mates? I know some musicians with agents playing original music and some playing covers. They all started playing for free and were thankful of the venues that let them play.

How many times do you need this explained to you if your going to be rude?

19 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

By contrast, we had the Oyster Band the next night who were paid considerably more; it did sell out but the bar take was 1/3 of the night before, the band were aloof and the audience moany and miserable. Not only that, but the floor was disgusting, covered in beer and who knows what. I had to polish it at 2am!

The Oyster Band were another of the pub circuit bands I saw progress to art centres, small events etc alongside The Men they couldn’t hang (who I always preferred) and the ones that got to the next level (pun intended) The Levellers. Glad the Hamsters were decent blokes- they always made the effort. Never saw them do a bad gig even when playing to less than 50 people in a pub beer garden BBQ thing in the rain.

11 hours ago, peteb said:

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. 

Insert: So your saying that they were a band that got good enough to attract a following and charge for entry.
 

 

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. 

Insert: See above

Personally I believe making punters pay to watch unknown bands in pubs will be a barrier to entry for most artists starting their career in music, particularly artists that don’t do covers. 

 Pick up the pieces- AWB

10 hours ago, Daz39 said:

Nobody needs music? Why does it exist then? That’s along the lines of letting all creatives suffer as most seem to be doing in these constrained times: after all what have they done for us? (Goes the refrain)

Nobody needs average music. I wouldn’t pay an amateur plaster to get better honing their craft on my walls. A decent plasterer will always have work but needs some way of getting the skills required.

Free pub gigs and community festivals IMO are a good thing and a rite of passage for most musicians. My teenage years were spent watching various mates bands play pubs. If people had to pay to get in then they would never have got the gigs to start with. Most of them were crap, but it was always fun.

At least one of the guys I went to see got good enough to make a living from playing their own music. Everyone has to start somewhere. 

Edit: As I have said this exists in every industry. In my own career I have seen endless paper CCNA and MCSE guys shocked that no company will let them loose on their network. They start on a help desk and work their way up. The hours spent and cash spent on the exams is the start not the end of the journey.

12 minutes ago, peteb said:

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. 

Back in the day I would pay to see the hamsters frequently even though plenty of other middle aged  blokes were playing blues/ rock for free in pubs. I would even drive miles after work. The Hamsters had an audience and made a living playing pubs and bike shows etc as they were better than the amateurs. The vast amount of people playing pubs won’t make a living playing their music. I don’t feel this is down to the competition playing for free.

42 minutes ago, peteb said:

But people want to go and see a band playing cover tunes in a pub and to drink beer. No one is forcing them (at least not for my bands)!

If they really  want to see you they will be willing to pay. If they aren’t willing to pay then it’s not because another band is playing for free. It doesn’t work like that.