Why we left the venues...

[RandomProddy]

Friend of mine wrote this - wondered what you guys thought.

"It is the promoters' general method to ask the bands to bring an audience. Oddly, there is little pretense anymore that the bands are there to entertain the audiences. The "audiences" dutifully show up at the request of the bands, to pose as an audience so that the bands may entertain their own vision of themselves as cultural deities (as rock gods, or pop idols, or bohemian poets or what have you) - a vision that we've swallowed whole from the ever present fourth party, mass culture."

Rest of article at [url="http://www.zangproductions.co.uk/blog/the-abh-why-we-left-the-venues-and-took-to-the-streets/"]http://www.zangproductions.co.uk/blog/the-abh-why-we-left-the-venues-and-took-to-the-streets/[/url]

[skidder652003]

If you play in bands looking to "make it" (whatever that means) and use promoters, I think the sentiments in that excellent full article ring very true. However, if you play in a dodgy pub covers band (like me!) and play not for vanity or advancement but for the sheer visceral pleasure of making loud music and a couple of quid with maybe an added benefit of giving people some pleasure then im not so sure.

[Jerry_B]

Do what steve Albini and others used to do: ignore promoters and middle-men. Do all of that yourself. And not give two hoots about what the commercial side of the music industry/scene/etc thing is the way to do things.