promoters

[Andy Le Blanc]

I got to see an interesting dance yesterday.

A gig had to be cancelled after the hurricane, but I had to be there to
make sure that if it could happen, the gig would happen., but it didn't...

A power substation blew in the town and there was no resolution to make the gig fly.

And I had to be there... one long day between two highly self invested promoters.

Both were personally devastated, and I got stuck as the go between, awful..

They both clung to every shred of hope until they both reached the bitter
conclusion that the gig was just impossible.

Instead of clinging they should have bit the bullet before the storm and
just plain rescheduled, but they didn't, they clung to it bad...

and put me in the middle, loaded in and half set up.... just in case...

It was like watching someone puke, or better, going to use the head in
some college dorm and finding someone puking with an attending audience...

oh dear, jeez... don't get it in your hair

Are all small promoters that bad? or does it go straight thru to the top?

[crbowman]

The guys on top are worse.
In a situation like this one, they are every bit as miserable but have the resources to start suing everyone and everything in sight.
" A man so horrible grown men gladly pull their own heads off rather than talk to him"

[Structo]

Years ago in my small town I worked for a small promoter and he was a sleaze ball.
He always tried to get away without paying me and he would try to short change the bands as well.

I have often wondered whatever happened to that guy.

[NickC]

Any discussion of "promoters", or anyone involved in the "music biz", should be prefaced with this quote, most often misattributed (more likely a bastardization) to Hunter S. Thompson:

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.

What he actually wrote was:

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

Which is more or less true. For the most part, they are dirty little animals with huge brains and no pulse. Every once in a while, they will toss up a token human like Ed Bradley or Edwin Newman or Hughes Rudd... and there are others, no doubt, like Studs Terkel in Chicago and the twisted Rev. Gene Scott, who works like a sleepless ferret in the maniac bowels of Southern California....

But these are only the exceptions that prove the hideous rule. Mainly we are dealing with a profoundly degenerate world, a living web of foulness, greed and treachery... which is also the biggest real business around and impossible to ignore. You can't get away from TV. It is everywhere. The hog is in the tunnel.

In any case, any criticism of the TV-biz would hold doubly-true for the music-biz.

But not all music promoters are sleaze. Case in point was Wolodia Grajonca .... better known as Bill Graham .... of Fillmore East/West fame.

[selloutrr]

The tops not so bad. They have enough floating capital, insurance, and experience to know when to fold, refund, or call in the big guns and rent generators.

It's the little guys who look at it as making a quick buck but don't have enough operating capital to handle the what if. Just living one gig at a time. Most likely they are now scrambling to pay back the investors the money they promised before the other loans get called in.

Until you get to the top it's really not a way to make money only connections, sex, and drugs. Unless you are promoting a festival at which point another $100K for generators wouldn't make a difference. Most of the money is made off of merchandise and alcohol the ticket sales cover artist fees, venue rental, and security.

[Buschman]

I sure don't like any of them I have dealt with_all small with big heads.

[Andy Le Blanc]

there's one fellow I've started to call "late-n-short", he'll do anything get the
misses wall to wall, short hair ball and chain, always pays less than agreed and pays late.

always has the excuses that keeps his nose clean, but he'll wine and dine
you to make amends, just wont really pay ya... his way of glad handing.

My main client is a good old fashioned honest SOB, a surprise really.

I think theres a personal investment before they learn to deal with it professionally.
Its the delusion, the love of the business, until you see how far out on a limb you really are.
Then its sink or float and "me first". Thats the problem, and then when
you deal with a professional, whos grown past it, its a shock

I'd much rather deal with a hard nosed SOB than a sweet talking skeez.