The Joys of Promoting...

One thing I forgot whilst taking my sabbatical from organising gigs is the stress they can bring, bands pulling out of shows is a pretty stressful thing (although at least it happened a few days before I printed flyers which makes a change)!  Now I have time to rearrange line-up and adjust the angle of the promotional splurge.  Already got a few bands on standby with a really funky one from Newport potentially confirming tonight if they can play…watch this space ;-)

On a plus side another thing this highlighted is the true joy of putting on a show, and that is how all the people who attend the gigs or have any interest in the night pull together when things like this happen, offering support, sending links galore to alternative bands, as well as messages of support.  It actually makes me wonder if some of the best gigs I’ve promoted are the ones that always seem like they are about to descend into chaos. 

It wasn’t that long ago we had the PA pullout no less than 3hours before a show; I was actually playing football in Rhosgoch at the time and found out at halftime.  Lucky Eduardo was with me and we happened to be fairly close to Hereford, which seemed the most plausible location to find alternative PA arrangements (after exhausting all local possibilities of course).  So off we shot and managed to find a charming fellow willing to do the PA, he only asked a fee of £500!  That’s right, half a grand!  Obviously that was way over our budget, but after some haggling, and informing him of the details of the gig etc (this was the Monty! I think he assumed we were talking about a Wembley’esque venue here!) we managed to get him down to £300 for lighting and PA!  We lugged the majority of his gear in Eduardo’s Vauxhall Astra, and he arrives about 20mins before show is due to start with the rest….

…now at this point I was panicking galore, it was Oneyeopen’s album launch party, and I was dreading things were going to go terrible!  We had Graham grumbling about people smoking, and he actually made me go on mic and “appeal” that people stop.  Not to mention his grumbling should we go on beyond 11pm, people breaking the odd glass etc.  That’s right, we get 150/200ish people to his pub that’d normally have 2people in it, he’d charge us for using the venue, grumble all night and not so much as say thank you, ever….man the joys of hosting a show at the Monty!!

So yeah anyway, I’ll give the PA guy his due, it was an epic set-up, amazing lighting, lazers, sound was epic, smoke machines and he even brought a mate that done the stage-managing for me (I was free to drink cider galore, good times!).  People started arriving, and kept arriving…and kept arriving!  The first gig we done where we actually had to stop people coming in as the venue was full! (Although I should add, the next Acoustic Night we hosted the same thing happened if not even worse!  New PA guy Geoff Greaves’ inaugural gig I do believe).

So yeah, I suppose the moral is to keep faith, if you have people supporting you like the Mid Wales music lovers do, a show is never going to be anything other than epic and I’m sure Feb 25^th will be another gig just like that, regardless of who fills the recently vacated slot.

Xxx

Currently listening to: Jack’s Mannequin – Bruised (acoustic)