How you finding the music scene/gigs where you are?

[ellie]

hiya.
Not been around here for a while. I was wondering how you're all finding gigging where you are?
I think it's fair to say here in Essex it's becoming much harder to find good gigs. There are far too many bands and too few venues.
Having said that, I'm fairly busy this year, though playing with three bands.
I finished my own band officially this year after my best mate, and guitarist died from cancer.
Cheers ELLES

[Les]

Exactly the same for me up north in Wigan, Too many bands, too few venues, I'm ok but I too am playing in three bands.

Les

[Cameronj279]

Plenty of bands here but very few of which seem to be putting out any music that I would enjoy listening to/want to go see live. The acoustic singer/songwriter thing seems most common (and personally I can't think of anything more boring to watch).

[kev b]

Much the same in Lincolnshire though our new drummer is a demon at booking pub gigs and we are now booked every weekend this year for decent money.

More worrying is the lack of customers in pubs, maybe it's the time of year and things will pick up as the weather improves.

[CamdenRob]

Heaving scene here in Camden with 20+ venues putting on a variety of live original music Seven nights a week ranging from bands just starting out to established names + numerous open mics, jam nights etc.

No idea about the covers / function scene though.

[Mykesbass]

Sorry to hear about your best mate Elles. As for the covers/pubs scene in Sussex, I've just left a long established band as the gigs were getting thin on the ground and the ones we were doing, as KevB noted, the audience is dwindling.

Just started up a new band and we're doing a lot of legwork, including some freebies for a biker charity to get our name out there.

[ubit]

West of Scotland, the gigs are getting fewer and fewer. We used to play in our town in about 8 different venues plus loads of out of town gigs. Now there's only one or two still doing live music. We were getting annoyed about a band coming in and undercutting everyone else, but now I'm starting to think that we are gonna have to drop our price too.
I remember in the 90's playing sometimes 5 or 6 times a week. We played one place every second Saturday AND Sunday for about 2 years. The pub was rammed both nights all the time . That same place now is really quiet and doesn't even do live music anymore. I don't know if it's the recession, smoking ban or whatever, but people just don't go out in the numbers they used to!

[JTUK]

I'm of the opinion that there are too many bands and too many gigs around here.
That lowers the standard to a degree and thins out the type of people who will travel to go and see
bands.
20 years ago, people would pack two very popular and close pubs on a wednesday night and people
would come out for that. Now, music is centred around the weekends and a local town could have as many as
9 bands on a saturdy night. Other towns may well have 15-20 or so gigs within the towns limits over the weekend.

So, my theory is that relaxing the license laws has made 'live' music very easy for a LL to take up.. and that has
provided 'work' for bands that maybe wouldn't have gotten gigs a few years ago... and the sheer numbers keeps the
fees down as it isn't a special event anymore..
This is why a lot of the better bands are moving out of pubs and being a bit more exclusive.

There is a level of player who will entertain pubs in a very loose sense ( ie decent pick-up bands ) but puts all their effort
into a band with more earning or musical satisfaction potential.

And that arena is tough... as people aren't used or just will not pay to see a ticketed event..or rather it is very hard work.
One or two of the better organised pubs are putting on ex names as a special event and the bill for those bands is
likely to be in the region os £1000 in a pub so the ticket prices are around £10;00. I think there is a rise and demand
for the upto 350 capacity 'pro' gig and some pubs want a little piece of this.
I think agents are targetting decent music pubs with these 'special' events.

[urbanx]

It's pretty dire here in Cambridge.

7 Years ago we had:[list]
[*]The Barfly
[*]The Man on The Moon
[*]The Haymakers
[*]The Corner House
[*]The Boat Race
[*]The Portland Arms
[/list]
(This ignores the larger venues like CornEx (2,000 cap) and the Junction (1,000 Cap) That most bands cant afford to book)

Six venues all putting on 3/4 bands a night, EVERY night. Giving the city around 200 bands slots a week.
Four of those venues have now closed, leaving us with The Cornerhouse and The Portland.

While they both have pros and cons, I think it's pretty pathetic of our 'creative' city of 150,000 people to have just two pubs for bands.

So yeah, pretty dire out here for an originals band...

Edited February 24, 2015 by urbanx

[neepheid]

Aberdeen's pretty decent on the whole, 5 venues regularly put on original bands, not including the larger venues typically used by folk who have "made it" (Music Hall/AECC/Lemon Tree) and many pubs which regularly have covers bands in. I find it's everywhere else that sucks - so far I'm finding it really hard to find venues/promoters who are willing to at least meet our travelling/subsistence costs never mind the band actually making any money. That's when you get a reply at all. I'm not very good at all this and I feel like such a knob for even having the audacity to ask for expenses sometimes, but we're not running a charity here and when you can't even secure a gig at cost, it's pretty poop. But it's probably my fault - the language is wrong, the promotional material's wrong, no-one's taking a punt on out of town bands any more, I dunno.

I think we need a manager. Someone organised and savvy who's willing to get us gigs, in return they get a sixth share of f all.

Edited February 24, 2015 by neepheid

[crez5150]

Too many bands playing the same music in the same venues..... It's boring as hell in Essex. Oh look another Classic Rock/indie band..... I wonder if they'll be playing Zombie/SOF/Dakota/Highway to Hell......

I think there are too many bands not trying to be anything different any more.

Edited February 24, 2015 by crez5150

[BigRedX]

Getting gigs is easy provided that:

1. Your band is entertaining
2. Your band is prepared to put in the hard work required to get gigs in the first place and then to get re-bookings.
3. Your band is prepared to travel to where the gigs are.

Simply turning up and playing your instruments is never going to be sufficient.

If we wanted, The Terrortones could be out every Friday and Saturday night for pretty much the rest of this year playing songs we wrote to enthusiastic audiences up and down the country and getting paid for it. However we've decided to slightly scale back our gigging and concentrate on better gigs and quality support slots while we record our album.

The band has no problem getting gigs and repeat bookings because we put on a show and we put in the hard work making contacts sending out promo material and chasing up every lead we are given. IME for most bands this is just too much effort and unsurprisingly they struggle to get gigs.

[neepheid]

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1424773345' post='2700188']
Getting gigs is easy provided that:

1. Your band is entertaining
2. Your band is prepared to put in the hard work required to get gigs in the first place and then to get re-bookings.
3. Your band is prepared to travel to where the gigs are.

Simply turning up and playing your instruments is never going to be sufficient.

If we wanted, The Terrortones could be out every Friday and Saturday night for pretty much the rest of this year playing songs we wrote to enthusiastic audiences up and down the country and getting paid for it. However we've decided to slightly scale back our gigging and concentrate on better gigs and quality support slots while we record our album.

The band has no problem getting gigs and repeat bookings because we put on a show and we put in the hard work making contacts sending out promo material and chasing up every lead we are given. IME for most bands this is just too much effort and unsurprisingly they struggle to get gigs.
[/quote]



Was it easy at the start though?

[BigRedX]

[quote name='neepheid' timestamp='1424775035' post='2700217']
Was it easy at the start though?
[/quote]

Actually it was. We went from being an idea that Mr Venom had for a band, to playing our first gig in about 8 weeks including writing a short 25 minute set's worth of songs. We recorded our first demo about a week later. Mr Venom networked like mad to put the band name about and within another month we had landed a decent slot on a Psychobilly all-dayer headlined by The Meteors. Everything pretty much stemmed from that.

In a way it helps that the music we play fits into several identifiable niche genres, but knowing the amount of behind the scenes work that MrVenom and myself put in to promote the band and comparing that to what my previous less successful bands used to do, it's not really surprising that we are doing so much better.

[RockfordStone]

[quote name='urbanx' timestamp='1424770496' post='2700126']
It's pretty dire here in Cambridge.

7 Years ago we had:[list]
[*]The Barfly
[*]The Man on The Moon
[*]The Haymakers
[*]The Corner House
[*]The Boat Race
[*]The Portland Arms
[/list]
(This ignores the larger venues like CornEx (2,000 cap) and the Junction (1,000 Cap) That most bands cant afford to book)

Six venues all putting on 3/4 bands a night, EVERY night. Giving the city around 200 bands slots a week.
Four of those venues have now closed, leaving us with The Cornerhouse and The Portland.

While they both have pros and cons, I think it's pretty pathetic of our 'creative' city of 150,000 people to have just two pubs for bands.

So yeah, pretty dire out here for an originals band...
[/quote]

lets not forget that the portland is pretty much impossible to get a good gig at now as the local promoters block book it.

a lot of local pubs and bars have live music, but only for covers bands or acoustic acts

[Marvin]

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1424773345' post='2700188']

3. Your band is prepared to travel to where the gigs are.

[/quote]

That's a bit of an weakness, for some, in your argument to be honest. I notice you live in Nottingham, which is on the M1. You're in pretty easy reach of several good sized towns and cities, Manchester is only just over 2hrs away. London is only 1hr 45mins from Nottingham, it's 4+ from where I live.

Bristol is the nearest good sized city with a good music scene to me, that would take me and my band in excess of 2 1/2 hours to get to.

[BigRedX]

[quote name='Marvin' timestamp='1424804059' post='2700672']
That's a bit of an weakness, for some, in your argument to be honest. I notice you live in Nottingham, which is on the M1. You're in pretty easy reach of several good sized towns and cities, Manchester is only just over 2hrs away. London is only 1hr 45mins from Nottingham, it's 4+ from where I live.

Bristol is the nearest good sized city with a good music scene to me, that would take me and my band in excess of 2 1/2 hours to get to.
[/quote]

Maybe. But my overall point is that the bands who get the gigs are those who are prepared to put the extra effort in to get them, and if that means travelling a bit further than usual for a worthwhile gig then that's what you need to do.

I find it interesting that you single out Manchester and London. In our experience neither place is any more or less important than anywhere else in the UK other than a lot of their venues and promotors have an over-inflated sense of their own importance, which with the current state of the "music industry" is rather unwarranted.

Yes there are probably more large cities in easy reach of Nottingham compared with where you are, but we go where the worthwhile gigs are and if that means a 4+ hour journey each way so be it.

[Marvin]

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1424805999' post='2700693']


Maybe. But my overall point is that the bands who get the gigs are those who are prepared to put the extra effort in to get them, and if that means travelling a bit further than usual for a worthwhile gig then that's what you need to do.

I find it interesting that you single out Manchester and London. In our experience neither place is any more or less important than anywhere else in the UK other than a lot of their venues and promotors have an over-inflated sense of their own importance, which with the current state of the "music industry" is rather unwarranted.

Yes there are probably more large cities in easy reach of Nottingham compared with where you are, but we go where the worthwhile gigs are and if that means a 4+ hour journey each way so be it.
[/quote]

Manchester just looked, although fairly close, a bit more fiddly to get to as you seem to have to go up then across, that's the only reason why I picked it.

[Woodinblack]

I do note the irony of the first two posts, saying too many bands, too few venues, while playing in 3 bands!

[neepheid]

If the local Aberdeen scene wasn't so buoyant (and I'm surprised we get any gigs at all, given the obsession most promoters seem to have with rockier/guitar oriented music than we make) I don't think I'd bother being in a band at all. I think we've got good songs and we're good musicians, but we're really poor at promoting ourselves - I'm the only one really doing anything about it, and I'm dreadfully out of my comfort zone, considering I sometimes struggle to justify to myself the amount of space I take up, never mind bigging up what I'm doing with the band. I really am in the wrong business - thankfully I have a day job.

We're prepared to travel (the geography mandates it in our case) but I'm not prepared to do it for f-all - why the hell should we when we're likely to get peanuts for the actual performance?

Edited February 24, 2015 by neepheid

[Number6]

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1424777816' post='2700263']


Actually it was. We went from being an idea that Mr Venom had for a band, to playing our first gig in about 8 weeks including writing a short 25 minute set's worth of songs. We recorded our first demo about a week later. Mr Venom networked like mad to put the band name about and within another month we had landed a decent slot on a Psychobilly all-dayer headlined by The Meteors. Everything pretty much stemmed from that.

In a way it helps that the music we play fits into several identifiable niche genres, but knowing the amount of behind the scenes work that MrVenom and myself put in to promote the band and comparing that to what my previous less successful bands used to do, it's not really surprising that we are doing so much better.
[/quote]

Absolutely agree that you get out what you put in.....there are opportunities in all Towns and Cities if you wear out the shoe leather or nowadays email the correct people.

P.S. With Mr Venom it's not shoe leather he wears out lol

Edited February 24, 2015 by Number6

[TheRev]

I'm with Mr X on this one. A band that is entertaining and willing to do a bit of promotion and go where the crowd is will never be short of gigs. We're almost fully booked til June (5 or 6 gigs per month), the festival slots are rolling in for the summer and we even have a couple of 2016 gigs in the diary.

[quote name='Marvin' timestamp='1424804059' post='2700672']

Bristol is the nearest good sized city with a good music scene to me, that would take me and my band in excess of 2 1/2 hours to get to.
[/quote]

3/4 of my band live in Bristol and we'll be driving to gigs in Bournemouth and Tavistock, both about 2 1/2 hour drives. Our guitarist lives in Weymouth and will be driving to Cardiff and Stroud, both about 2 1/2 hour drives. Some of these gigs will be 'big name' support slots for which we'll get £100 and hope we can sell enough CDs to make it all worthwhile. So far, it has all been worthwhile.

I'm not saying it's easy, it's a lot of hard work, but the gigs are there if you want them.

[scoobystig]

As I am now doing most of the booking I find the trouble is that most pubs round here are already booked out for the year with the same bands pretty much on a revolving 2 month cycle

No one seems willing to give a new band a go, they all want you to have a following, which you can't get as no one books you ?

So we have expanded out of town to Witney, Carterton, Andover, chippenham, melksham, Tisbury and winchester, so for a Swindon band, of the twenty five or so gigs we have booked there is only about 5 in Swindon pubs

A few of the pubs are tied up with a promotions agency who we simply won't deal with as they do nothing for their fee more than what we can do ourselves, Ie sharing a picture in facebook groups and pay a pittance anyway as there are far too many bands willing to do it for hardly anything

[Les]

[quote name='Woodinblack' timestamp='1424807010' post='2700710'] I do note the irony of the first two posts, saying too many bands, too few venues, while playing in 3 bands! [/quote]

Brilliant I didn't when I was posting it.

[Wooks79]

Up here in sunny Teesside we seem to have experienced some kind of Indie-geddon, and the local scene is awash with (in my opinion) beige indie dross. Everything jangles :/

I don't dislike indie, but you know, when you see another acoustic singer that's never gigged outside of Teesside, and they almost have a Manc accent coming out of that oversided Parka they are wearing, you end up wanting to hit your head on the table when they do actually do an inevitable badly played Oasis cover

It winds me up that our BBC Introducing for BBC Tees show is wasted as well, again it's all indie, (we last had a rock show in 2012) there's no real chance of hearing anyone (again, my opinion) that's actually going anywhere played on that show, which to me defeats the point, and also wastes the link that they have that could put smaller bands on festival slots, handed off to larger BBC shows etc.

No word of a lie, the BBC Tees Introducing shows regularly feature things like haikus, conker games, football talk and... yes this is true, a tune that was an improvisation on a recorder. Is that really what BBC Introducing is for? Are they going to put an artist playing improvised recorder on the BBC Intro stage at Reading/Leeds?

I have honestly felt like complaining, as I want to hear new artists that I might like, or even if they are totally not my thing, at least a little bit of a variation of styles!

Rant over

(...and just so it doesn't seem like a rant out of bitterness or anything, they have played my band, I just want to be INTRODUCED to some new bands that I might like)