Pay To Play can eat ALL the dicks

[behndy]

they do this in y'all's yareas? it's dead in the East Bay, but in Sacramento all the mid to larger clubs roll like this, and some of the smaller booker/promoters are trying to sneak it in too.

we just had this bint that my drummer handed a full bill of bands to, at a place we could probably have booked into with a phone call, mostly out of good will to work with a local, and after agreeing on splitting the door between the bands we got a message along the lines of "hey guys! so i think we'll do 20 tix per band, sell them whatever price you want, you guys keep ALL of that! and i'll split the door with the club, keep some to cover flyering and promotion expenses."

uhhhhh no. not okay.

fuck Pay To Play.

fuck it hard. without warning. without lube. without any affection at ALL.

[Chankgeez]

ALL the dicks.

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

+100000000000000000 pay to play is lame. never have never will

[behndy]

did a few times as a kid. never again. FUCK being responsible for hustling tickets.

do your PROMOTION JOB ASSES.

of course i'm going to promote and invite friends and do media shizz to spark interest. but it takes every ounce of responsibilty away from the club.

as bad as Battle Of The Bands bullshit.

[lordgalvar]

I hate that shit. LA used to make out of town bands do that. They contact a band, say "Hey, play our venue, you guys rule", they'd agree, then the bomb of "oh, you have to sell 100 tickets for the Roxy show you are opening for a different touring band or else you owe us". They'll always do that in LA. Roxy, Whiskey, etc. How in the hell is a band from 200 miles away supposed to sell 100 tickets (sales pitch: "dude, you get to kick it with us and drive 3 hours to do it!")

They tried this a nu-metal club in Bakersfield that existed for a minute. I don't remember the band that was "headlining" but they were mildly big for a minute on the small venue circuit. We were getting a good draw at the time so they called us and booked us. They called us back and forced my bass player to take 40 tickets (1/5 of the venue capacity) at 10 each. Said if we didn't sell them, we owed them. I was pissed but my band talked me out of a fist fight with a bunch of tractor tire, truck drivin' goat ropers and we played it anyway. When we went to load in our gear, I tried to get my wife in as our guest and they said we wern't entitled to a guest because we didn't sell our tickets and asked for the money. I started rippin' the dude the new one and got fighting mad. I was ready to go and the owner came out and said it was "okay, this time". This time my ass. Played, left, told 'em to go fuck themselves. The venue closed shortly thereafter.

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

lol wtf! out of town bands? thats like another level of terrible

[lordgalvar]

lol wtf! out of town bands? thats like another level of terrible

Yea, actually, to get shows in LA we did the Korn thing and said we were from Santa Barbara or something. We didn't play nu-metal, but damn if that wasn't a brilliant idea side-stepping the Bakersfield hate in LA. There is a joke-hick band around LA that does this kinda funny country thing...claim they're from Bakersfield (they're from Van Nuys).

I remember every band that tried to play LA got shit when I was in highschool. This like metal and goth kids with bands that were tentatively signed with a label (read that Albini thing on the record industry to know how they were getting into debt via their "contracts" too) walking around school, the punk clubs, and stuff with a handful of tickets asking us to just buy them to help them out of they will be blacklisted. Like they had to play these shows to make their label or whatever happy and make connections but they didn't have a dime. A few of the kids around got into severe debt doing this stuff (when they broke up, the label sent them a bill for like 40 hours at 500 an hour for their recording engineer). These guys just usually flat out paid for the tickets and gave them out "to build a buzz" and usually added credit or a dude with a job to the band to cover it. I can't imagine going through that just to get big.

I know venues in like Fresno and the bigger ones in Bakersfield probably did this too, but the promoter usually footed the bill which was cool. If a band tried to set up the show, that was usually different. Good promoters can usually deal with this pay for play crap.

[StopReferencing]

Ugh fuck that noise, awful. Set up a house show and get arrested instead, seriously.

[AxAxSxS]

never. I am in a couple groups on fb who's sole purpose is to expose it, and educate how to do without.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/403653866123/ -Musicians against Pay to play.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/dontpaytoplay/ -Fuck pay to play.

The really crazy thing is that when you contact the bands involved and give a heads up, most get defensive about it and start parroting back the same line of bullshit they were fed to get them to do it in the first place. The whole cognitive dissonance thing goes into effect.

[Deltaphoenix]

Never have, never will

Definitely had promoters try it on me (I have always booked shows for my bands) and I just laugh and let them know how horrible of a promoter they are.

[lordgalvar]

I was always against it and got roped in that one time. Still pissed 10 years later haha. Nice to have something about it these days (even though it is kinda hard to find things on facebook sometimes). I think we only played house shows after that stupid venue pulled that shit on us. Didn't even play a bar or nothin'.

Last show was in an empty pool. Can't pay to play that kinda neat stuff.

[behndy]

f'shiggy. i've played two? maybe three? all were just a waste of time.

i have only had two clubs ask me for money when we didn't bring enough, according to them. one i just laughed in their face, the other almost came to blows when i pointed out it was a KNOWN THING that that shitty dive spot lied about the door count on a regular basis.

[Eivind August]

All of the dicks.

[waltdogg]

Not only can pay to play eat a dick, it can go get stabbed in the dick too.

[snipelfritz]

Pay to play is definitely lame. We had somebody trying to get us in on something like that a few months ago. And we said no thnx.