In it for the money?

[warwickhunt]

14 minutes ago, BigAlonBass said:

I stopped having fun, and it all became about the money for me. I felt I wasn't being paid enough to deal with the antics of ar*ehole "musicians", ar*ehole Punters, and ar*ehole Venue owners, so I retired. 

Happy now. 😎

I haven't quite reached Big Al's crunch point and I very much follow L Sklar's philosophy (I'd happily play to a large, appreciative audience for free if someone was setting up/stripping down all of my gear... and I wasn't hanging about for hours twiddling thumbs). 

However, I believe our view on this matter does change over time.  In my youth I'd play anything, anywhere for any/no remuneration.  Now though, I will be paid appropriately for my efforts and I hope that audiences will be appreciative but I'm prepared to put up with some rubbish because I'm being paid. 

Do I sometimes wish I hadn't bothered?  Yes but when that becomes the norm, I'm out of it!    

[peted]

Social clubs are generally a funny game. They'll staunchly refuse to dance for the first set and you'll need to play quiet enough for the members to have whisper conversations with each other. Then they'll all be up for the second set and asking for more at the end.

[skidder652003]

5 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

Social Club shudder....

Did they tell you to turn down and then stop you for the meat draw?

surprisingly no, but I don't think there were enough there to justify a meat draw, raffle or bingo.

[chris_b]

If I'm playing with a good drummer (and I 'm lucky enough to have only played with good drummers for the last 20 years) I'm having fun. I don't care where or what I'm playing. If the band is good that's good enough for me.

[TimR]

I got paid £70 for a dep gig last week. 

Maybe 2 hours to run through set at home. 2 hours travelling, 3 hours at the gig. 

That’s about £10 an hour for a gig. 

My regular band seem to want to practice 2 hours every week, I’m not sure why. We don’t get £70 a gig and don’t play more than once a month and we don’t play music I’d ever listen to. I’m pretty sure I’m playing to play in that band even with a free rehearsal space. Rehearsal is starting to be a waste of my time, gigging though I see as the end game and we usually have a decent and appreciative crowd.  

[TimR]

 

9 minutes ago, chris_b said:

If I'm playing with a good drummer (and I 'm lucky enough to have only played with good drummers for the last 20 years) I'm having fun. I don't care where or what I'm playing. If the band is good that's good enough for me.

Life is too short to play with bad drummers. Dep gigs or auditioning, if the drummer can’t keep time and/or doesn’t have feel, I’m out. 

Edited September 29, 2019 by TimR

[TimR]

@warwickhunt the problem is often audiences don’t show their appreciation until the end. Not everyone wants to dance. 

I’ve had gigs where nothing we play seems to get anyone moving. But at the end there’s a queue of people waiting to shake our hands and thank us for an entertaining night. Go figure. 

[dave_bass5]

On 28/09/2019 at 14:41, skidder652003 said:

After a particularly awful gig last night (hardly anyone there, long drive, rubbish acoustics) and the prospect of another tonight (been there before, awful, foolishly booked again and obliged to honour it) but with fairly decent financial compensation, does anyone else feel sometimes they've become a bit of a money slut on certain nights when actually you'd far prefer a night in with a movie and a bottle of wine?

I dont gig as much now, but when we were gigging most weekends I just looked on it like work. Some good days, some bad days. Had I refused to do the bad ones I felt I was letting the band (team) down, as some of those needed the money live, so just got,on,with it. I chose to be in that situation so never complained. 
Life isn’t perfect, and sometimes you just need to get on with it.  

Saying all that, there were many time so wished I wasn’t there, but then I’d think how lucky I was to be gigging and making money from it, so again, I just got on with it. Had we not had half the band needing the money as their only main income I guess we would have been more selective. 

[leroydiamond]

22 hours ago, chris_b said:

In it for the money? Absolutely!

I'm playing in an environment where someone is making money, ie promoter/landlord, from my efforts. It's cost me money to do the gig, so, yes, I want paying.

Totally agree. There is a very decent gigging scene around my neck of the woods, yet it is not unusual for landlords to cry poor mouth, even if there is a full house. I would never fall for that one, but there are plenty that do IME. There are bands playing venues for peanuts as a result, which makes things difficult for bands that want to get an honest nights pay for a decent performance.

 

[peteb]

11 hours ago, BigAlonBass said:

I stopped having fun, and it all became about the money for me. I felt I wasn't being paid enough to deal with the antics of ar*ehole "musicians", ar*ehole Punters, and ar*ehole Venue owners, so I retired. 

Happy now. 😎

The thing is that the vast majority of musicians I've played with are great (there are exceptions), most punters are very friendly and while venue owners / promoters are a bit more of a mixed bag, most them are also OK. 

Sometimes you have to look at yourself and ask why you are having such difficulties dealing with people...! 

Edited September 29, 2019 by peteb

[Bluewine]

We have done some Legion Hall gigs. It was like they moved a bar into a Nursing Home. A lot of folks in wheel chairs.

We do a lot classic British Blues stuff from the 60s & 70s. Thing is at this point in time these folks are the generation that was listening to the stuff when they were young.

I think it's really cool. Bringing back that spirit of youth for a few hours to these folks. God Bless Them.

Blue

[peteb]

10 hours ago, Bluewine said:

We have done some Legion Hall gigs. It was like they moved a bar into a Nursing Home. A lot of folks in wheel chairs.

We do a lot classic British Blues stuff from the 60s & 70s. Thing is at this point in time these folks are the generation that was listening to the stuff when they were young.

I think it's really cool. Bringing back that spirit of youth for a few hours to these folks. God Bless Them.

Blue

That's cool. 

The rock and roll generation are now getting old. Doesn't mean that they are going to turn into a M&S wearing Darby and Joan types. We are all going to be in that situation sooner or later...

[Stylon Pilson]

With my current band, the responsiveness of the crowd can vary - most nights they're great, but occasionally we get a duff gig where they just don't get into it. The amount I get paid is generally the same from gig to gig.

On the occasions where we have a bad night, I consider:

• I got paid
• Last week's gig was great, and I got paid for that one too
• I like the music we play
• I like my bandmates
• I only had to travel half an hour each way (we stay fairly local)

If I didn't have all of these factors in play, then I can imagine that I'd take the bad gigs fairly hard. But with all of them combined, it's not too hard to take the rough with the smooth.

S.P.

[cheddatom]

One of my bands does pretty well, great gigs, enthusiastic audiences, and the money is OK too. It's a great night 99% of the time, which is worth it for the 1%. Some of the music I'm not very keen on playing, and most of it I'd never listen to at home, but I still think the gigs are so much fun that I'd do it without the pay

I'm in another couple of bands that are so much fun to play in, and I love the music so much, I really don't care about money. In fact I'd happily just play that stuff in the studio and listen to it at home, although the desire to have other people hear it is pretty strong, just because I'm so proud of it

[Jus Lukin]

-

Edited March 4, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[Monkey Steve]

I'm fortunate that I've never had to depend on getting paid, so I'm only interested in it being for the music and or the hang/craic. 

As long as it has those, there's not much better for me than playing a gig, certainly not a night in front of the TV not playing a gig 

I can put up with the odd duff gig.  ever the optimist - next time it'll be better, right?

[FinnDave]

I keep a record of all of music related expenses (not just gear, but strings, straps, leads, set-ups, driving to gigs & rehearsals, etc) and income (gigs and selling off gear I no longer use). I've just about  broken even the last couple of years, and have had a lot of fun. I have no interest at all in playing 'pub classics', and only play music that I listen to by choice. For the most of the last two years, that means I have played only the music of the Grateful Dead, and only to people who enjoy that music (and our way of playing it) enough to travel and buy tickets to see us. It's a close-knit and very friendly scene, and if I could no longer play that music, I'd stop playing altogether.

[Bluewine]

1 hour ago, Monkey Steve said:

I'm fortunate that I've never had to depend on getting paid, so I'm only interested in it being for the music and or the hang/craic. 

 

 

I'm fortunate that I have to depend  on getting%ing paid from playing .

Blue

[Bluewine]

4 hours ago, peteb said:

That's cool. 

The rock and roll generation are now getting old. Doesn't mean that they are going to turn into a M&S wearing Darby and Joan types. We are all going to be in that situation sooner or later...

Hi Pete

For some of us it's only sooner . 😀

Daryl

[casapete]

4 hours ago, peteb said:

That's cool. 

The rock and roll generation are now getting old. Doesn't mean that they are going to turn into a M&S wearing Darby and Joan types. We are all going to be in that situation sooner or later...

Few years ago I was playing at a club in a small seaside town in East Yorkshire. Easy gig with me, a pianist and drummer, doing usual old time stuff to quite an old audience. About half way through an old lady tottered up to the stage and said although they were enjoying the old time singalongs / waltzes etc, could we do any Rolling Stones tunes?!! Made me realise then that people in their seventies and eighties now were the teenagers of the sixties revolution and wanted pop and rock stuff!

[wateroftyne]

I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I've genuinely thought 'I wish I was at home with a takeaway watching the telly'.

I don't rely on the cash. It's handy, but I'd genuinely do it just for the crack.

[chris_b]

1 hour ago, casapete said:

 Made me realise then that people in their seventies and eighties now were the teenagers of the sixties revolution and wanted pop and rock stuff!

Yes. It's been a long time since function gigs meant Fly Me To The Moon, Begin The Beguine  and Spanish Eyes. Thank God!!

[Stylon Pilson]

51 minutes ago, wateroftyne said:

I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I've genuinely thought 'I wish I was at home with a takeaway watching the telly'.

I don't rely on the cash. It's handy, but I'd genuinely do it just for the crack.

Yeah, I once read someone say that when they were being paid for a gig, they adopted the mentality that the actual performance was free, and the cash covered everything up to the start of the first song and after the end of the last one (ie the transport, lugging gear, setting up and tearing down). Can't remember the exact source, but it's stuck with me, and it's an ethos that I've tried to hold to.

S.P.

[FinnDave]

Just now, Stylon Pilson said:

Yeah, I once read someone say that when they were being paid for a gig, they adopted the mentality that the actual performance was free, and the cash covered everything up to the start of the first song and after the end of the last one (ie the transport, lugging gear, setting up and tearing down). Can't remember the exact source, but it's stuck with me, and it's an ethos that I've tried to hold to.

S.P.

A worthy thought, but would they play for free if the gear was transported and set up for them? I like getting paid not because I'm greedy, but because it means that other people value what I do. 

[leroydiamond]

2 hours ago, FinnDave said:

A worthy thought, but would they play for free if the gear was transported and set up for them? I like getting paid not because I'm greedy, but because it means that other people value what I do. 

Agreed. Particularly when there is an establishment financially benefiting from my effort. I want my slice of the pie.