TimR

[quote name='Dave Vader' timestamp='1350246073' post='1836388'] I have found that rather than paying for tickets to watch premiership football, i can nip down the park and watch a bunch of kids playing the same game for free. I got a letter from Wayne Rooney telling me to stop supporting them as they were doing him out of a job, </fatuousjoke> [/quote] I think that analgy doesn't stand up at all. Try: I like football so much that I'm going to go into pubs and provide them with free satellite football so they don't have to keep paying Sky. All the equipment, programs and maintenance absolutely free, just so I can go down whenever I'm not doing anything else and watch with my mates.

[quote name='skidder652003' timestamp='1350240917' post='1836259'] ive yet to meet a "free" band thats sh*t hot, week in, week out and if they were trhat good, wouldn't realise it and start demanding a fee for thier services, thats just fantasy IMO [/quote] I think you're right. Unfortunately the converse is often true.

Packing down one night, with the iPod still running through the mixer, I unplug a mic to hear a huge pop out of the front of house speakers. WTF! Some drunk was playing with the faders on the mixer. I walk over to ask him what he thinks he is doing. "It's alright mate." says his friend, "He knows what he's doing, he plays in a band." ?!

[quote name='Skol303' timestamp='1350232594' post='1836064'] Crikey… this thread is still rumbling on!? Surely this debate is just about economics and market forces. .. [/quote] As I said a few pages ago. It isn't. It's not a free competitive market. There are some bands out there whose members earn enough doing other things that they have no intention of ever getting paid. You can't compete with that, no matter how you try. When a guy earning £30k+ in his office job 9-5 can afford to buy whatever PA, lighting, drum, guitar he wants. What can you do as a musician that's better? That the public will notice. Some of these guys are incredibly good.

I imagine that the track would have been compressed, EQ'd and had drop ins on the flakey bits and all sorts done to it. But the point is, all the fretbuzz and clacking gets masked by drums. So making your line as clean as possible is a good thing, but listening to it in isolation gives a false perspective of it's fit for purpose. How many of us, if we'd played like that, would have listened back and wanted to bin it. Queen had years of experience of multitrack recording, I guess they knew what was required and what would work.

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1350231280' post='1836044'] PLI is largely the venues issue but that isn't to say that bands should completely abstain. Festivals, in particular are very keen on PAT and PLI...so you can knock yourself off that bill if you don't have them, IME. If your light rigfalls over..?? who is liable, venue or band..?? grey area..?? maybe. I can see hearing loss being an issue somewhere down the line... does the user claim against venue..most probably as it will be a cummalative effect so not any one band...but factory bosses are having to contend with this issue now... so I expect to see it at some point in the future, possibly, regarding venues..but maybe you would have to proove you worked there for 20 years or something..?? [/quote] I've seen a person deafened in one ear due to careless use of a fader.

My house insurance covers me for non commercial legal stuff. But I suspect you've really got to show that no money changed hands and there was no intention of any money changing hands. Which in a band in a pub is going to be hard.

Yes, cause I can just see the brewery's insurance company saying, don't worry, someone just got electrocuted by your amp. We'll pay.

I can now do the load in for my gear in one trip. I guess the real thoughts behind my op was that it stops being fun when other band mates take the fun out of it. When you're carrying other gear, setting up lights and PA and they either haven't arrived or have gone straight to the bar. Then again at the end when they disappear leaving you to do it all again. In my latest band there is none of that so I was just wondering whether it was really time to pack it in or whether it was just time to change bands like it was for me. A change is as good as a rest.

As I say, there's nothing wrong with playing for fun or hardly any money. Particularly just pub gigs. Just bear in mind that you can very easily commit yourselves to something that ends up bring very expensive. How many of you playing for free are fully insured and PAT tested? Could become a very expensive hobby if someone gets injured (deafened?) or worse.

I was only referring to HMRC comment that it was an expensive hobby. Comparing it to motorsport is not exactly the same is it?

[quote name='redstriper' timestamp='1350222841' post='1835918'] No, we're all too stupid or rich to care [/quote] As I suspected.

[quote name='Count Bassy' timestamp='1350221127' post='1835883'] ... I have a friend who was was shopped (we think) to HMRC about his playing in a ceilidh band. After HMRC interviewed him and did some quick sums they told him that he had a very expensive hobby. ... [/quote] I do wonder if people playing for free realise how much they spend on gear, rehearsals, transport etc...

I read on another thread that someone had become tired of doing gigs because of the hassle of turning up early, setting up, disappearing for 5hours, then reappearing near midnight, playing to a half empty floor, packing down and getting home a 3am to unload. Ok so, the wedding & function band route is very lucrative and probably a young man's game. So at what price point/age do you sub out all the set up and pack down and save your back and fingers for playing and get home afterwards for some proper sleep. Or do you just keep going until one Saturday afternoon you look at your amp, feel your back and think I really don't want to put that in my car ever again!

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1350154193' post='1835305'] ... Wouldn't actually blame these bands for closing the place down, but maybe they aren't any good at getting to the whole point of the exercise..which is to entertain people. ... [/quote] This, I suspect is the main issue. Bands aren't necessarily there to entertain the people. I've seen bands who've been having a great time, playing tunes they like. The crowd, however, have not.

That probably highlights what has gone wrong with music recently. Obsession with getting the cleanest most note perfect recording then adding loads of effects to try to make is sound 'real'. When it sounded better left alone in the first place.

TBH that sounds about right. It's a birthday party. Look at their gig list for 2012, less than one gig a month. One wedding and a festival. They look like a start up band to me. Give them 2 or 3 years to work out how it works and they'll be a good band.

It certainly is NOT competition. In a competitive market the producers are able to reduce their price until they are making marginal profits. It's how the free market works. Any business that makes losses on it's products better have a very good strategy in place to recoup their losses. As I say, all musicians are offsetting their pub losses by other means, teaching, working in offices, dole money, sickness benefit. The difficulty here is that some musicians here can see that, and some can't. Long term the pub market, will (or has already?) collapsed. TBH it doesn't really matter, do people really go to pubs to see a high quality band? No. They pay for tickets and go to a venue. Anyone in a high quality band knows this, you soon get good positive feedback from the landlord and the punters. Comments like 'Can you do my wedding' and 'You're much better than the other bands they put on here', just go to prove that. Pub gigs are advertising space and proving grounds. So either we all pull together and form a cartel and price fix pubs or we, as Darwin says' Adapt and survive.

[quote name='martin8708' timestamp='1350059378' post='1834188'] Agreed 100% . There must be some fabulously talented players who feel they can do a whole two sets with a band they have never played with before after one one rehearsal. I would do the gig if local , sure as hell beats staying in and watching rubbish on telly or noodling with a guitar to YouTube vids . [/quote] It's not talent. It's years of playing in covers bands and playing absolutely anything you hear on the radio. Pretty soon you realise most songs are extremely basic and based on a very few permutations of chord changes. On many occasions I've played 3 one hour sets with bands where I've turned up on the night having never met the rest if the band. I've even played gigs where none of the band have met before the gig. My comment last night wasn't dismissive, I think I just said that they were probably inexperienced. I would do the gig, turn up on the night and take the money, but not 4 rehearsals.

I'm not resenting anyone, just aware of the practicalities, this from another thread... [quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1350031883' post='1833652'] Maybe the band just likes rehearsing... but why would anyone want to be a dep for the dep and play with the band for 5 nights for £50? I'd say a dep would need to be desperate to take up this offer, but then,as we found out in other threads, there are so many of us who would happily play for free that £50 would be like winning the Lottery. [/quote] I think it illustrates exatly why agreeing to play for free is a bad idea. As soon as one of your band drops out you have to find a dep. Their first call dep is not 'available'. So now they're struggling to find a pro dep because it's for only £50. When our band wanted to do free gigs I always pointed this out to the rest of the band. If one of us drops out we're no longer playing for free, we're going to have to put our hands in our pockets for £30 each to pay the extra member, who hasn't rehearsed, won't be helping set up or pack down. Will just turn up and play, take the money, and go home....

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1350031883' post='1833652'] Maybe the band just likes rehearsing... but why would anyone want to be a dep for the dep and play with the band for 5 nights for £50? I'd say a dep would need to be desperate to take up this offer, but then,as we found out in other threads, there are so many of us who would happily play for free that £50 would be like winning the Lottery. [/quote] I think it illustrates exatly why agreeing to play for free is a bad idea. As soon as one of your band drops out you have to find a dep. Their first call dep is not 'available'. So now they're struggling to find a pro dep because it's for only £50. When our band wanted to do free gigs I always pointed this out to the rest of the band. If one of us drops out we're no longer playing for free, we're going to have to put our hands in our pockets for £30 each to pay the extra member, who hasn't rehearsed, won't be helping set up or pack down. Will just turn up and play, take the money, and go home.... I'm going to cross post this.

The price and number of practices smacks of a group of inexperienced musicians who are unsure themselves of what they're playing. Especially if that's their actual setlist. Maybe they've spent months honing those tunes. Very odd otherwise. Would suit an inexperienced bass player who was looking to get some band and gig experience. Maybe their exsisting bass players have given them some reason to think bass players need extra time. Although when I auditioned for my current band they seemed to be pretty impressed how quickly I learned the tunes as they'd struggled with all their previous players.

4 rehearsals. Are they that bad? Is it just those songs? In every band's list of things to do should be to record a live gig so a dep has material to practice to if you're doing non standard arrangements.

[quote name='Doddy' timestamp='1349961442' post='1832743'] When I was regularly playing pub gigs,I knew of at least one band who happily admitted that they would offer to do the gigs for £100-150 when most were going out for around £200-250. [/quote] Is that the same as bidding for the same night at the same pub? I was thinking more along the lines of aggressive undercutting where a band may have a residency where everyone is happy until another band comes along and says they can do the same for less. If a pub is looking for bands to fill a slot and is open to offers, is that different? Just trying to see what sort of people these 'play for free type musicians' are.

I wonder how much of this 'undercutting' is real world experience, or whether it's just percieved. Whenever I've done pub gigs we have been offered a 'going rate'. The landlord usually just says we usually pay £250 or whatever. It's then down to you if you accept it or not. Rarely are we asked how much we want. I don't think I've ever been asked to play for free and have certainly never offered to play for free in a pub. Just seems completely alien and smacks of desperation. Sure you may be prepared to play for free, but whether you [b]should[/b] is the real thing being debated here. I once played a pub for an agreed fee of £250. The pub just got gradually more busy as we played. At the end of the gig the landlord came up to us and said forget the £250, here's £350, people have been phoning their mates and getting them down to see you. See you again next month for £350? - Only happened once though