Venues?

[BrunoBass]

Is there a Venues thread on Basschat? I'm aware of the Gigs thread, but I'm thinking more of somewhere musicians can rate venues, bands can share information on accessibility, parking etc?
I had a quick search but nothing came up. I think it's quite a good idea... 😉

[Phil Starr]

There used to be a forum on Lemonrock where this sort of thing was discussed. I found it immensely useful not least because venues sometimes close suddenly or landlords are removed overnight by the pubco's who own them. Often in this case the bookings for bands are all lost and bands turn up to find another band booked by the new manager setting up or that the pub is no longer doing music at all. Word got around very quickly saving a wasted journey at least. Lot's of other practical things as well.

Unfortunately Mac withdrew the whole forum, it wasn't his primary purpose and there were a lot of adverse comments about poor payers, unhelpful pubs and so on. Basschat isn't trying to sell membership to the venues so it would be less embarrassed about anything like that so long as it was fair comment.

I'd love to see a whole sub forum dedicated to the practical stuff about gigging, everything from the PA to booking gigs. It often seems to fall to the bassist to sort out these things. The gig thread just seems to be 'we had a gig last night, we were wonderful'

[BrunoBass]

Perhaps the mods would consider it if there was sufficient interest?

[BigRedX]

Unless someone is going to be permanently collating the information into the first post of the thread, pretty soon it's going to be very difficult finding the info that you want from several hundred posts. Forum software isn't the best way of displaying this information IMO. Just have a look at the recommended luthiers and amp tech threads.

[MoonBassAlpha]

[quote name='Phil Starr' timestamp='1486540707' post='3232523']
The gig thread just seems to be 'we had a gig last night, we were wonderful'
[/quote]
Oh, you've seen us then!

[Phil Starr]

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1486558604' post='3232736']
Unless someone is going to be permanently collating the information into the first post of the thread, pretty soon it's going to be very difficult finding the info that you want from several hundred posts. Forum software isn't the best way of displaying this information IMO. Just have a look at the recommended luthiers and amp tech threads.
[/quote]

It's a problem of course but a fairly minor one. The nature of sudden changes at venues was that word got around in a few weeks anyway. It's in the first week or so that getting the news out makes a difference. In practice I found it only took one person to notice something was up and we'd all pretty much know who was there that week so someone would tip them the wink. I personally wouldn't want anything like a blacklisting of venues permanently up, it would be an impossible thing to police in practice. Just something where if a band were cancelled at short notice they could post it up to warn the next people there.

Beyond that it'd just be nice to have all the threads about the ups and downs of playing live in one spot, to kind of make a community of gigging bassists chatting about the non bass playing parts of live performance. Much in the same way that bassists playing other instruments have their own little corner.

Maybe it's just me though

[RockfordStone]

i think a sub forum about actual gigging practically would be useful. we talk about getting gigs often, but need a coherent way of communicating good venues/promoters and those to avoid. normally these just get lost in the "general discussion" or "off topic".

could you not have a forum split into sub sections "ie london, east anglia, midlands etc" and people can post their venue recommendations with contacts etc (not as a gig advertising space of course). its easy enough to use the search bar to type in a venue name to see if people have posted about it before.

yes it would need moderating, but i think it could be a really good resource, rather than the current "we're gigging come see us" in the gig sub.

[BrunoBass]

[quote name='RockfordStone' timestamp='1486568529' post='3232868']

could you not have a forum split into sub sections "ie london, east anglia, midlands etc" and people can post their venue recommendations with contacts etc.
[/quote]

+1

[jonnythenotes]

How about setting up 26 individual chat threads...' Venues in A '..... 'Venues in B ' and right through the alphabet too 'Venues in Z.' Using this method you could add venues alphabetically, having first checked they have not been already listed, and also find venues by city, town etc pretty quickly. It would mean 26 pages, with only address and post code and phone number entered by anyone listing a venue, as any comments on the venues would soon clog the whole thing up.... Just an idea..

[NancyJohnson]

I doubt this will even get a nod, but years ago, me and my old drummer explored and rolled out a very basic Wiki venue database type thing.

The idea behind it was that it had a drilldown menu system (it was UK-centric, then by county/town) and subscribers could add venues (and details thereof), update venue contact details, add photos, promote gigs, advise on local music stores etc. but ultimately it was too much work for two people to build and maintain; we spent weeks and weeks on it finally admitting defeat when Facebook reached the masses.

Shame really. Genuinely thought it could have been something good.

Moving forward, there should be a way of achieving something similar based on the Basschat model; this forum is based around a fairly standardised program format (the interweb is peppered with similar forums)...I personally wouldn't see any great problem in adapting the available parameters to achieve what we were trying to years ago. There's already a couple of sub-forums here that conform to the way we were trying to work.

Edited February 11, 2017 by NancyJohnson