The five worst gigs I’ve ever promoted

So tomorrow night is the last ever OxfordBands.com monthly gig night. I’ve been promoting gigs under that banner for five years, and it was pretty sad for me to decide that I had to stop them, especially when the basic reason is not having the time to do it any more.

I think if there had been one or two other people promoting the gigs with me, then they’d definitely still be going, as it’d be easier to keep the enthusiasm up, all the leg work that goes into putting shows on would be halved, and on the odd occasion where I lost money, it would have cost me £50 instead of £100. Ouch.

But as it is, with two bands on the go, our music festival promotion in full swing, the oxfordbands.com website to keep putting time into, and trying to do lots more writing – plus having a job that keeps me more than occupied – it was time to assess the ol’ priority list and drop something. And while when the shows went well it was a fantastic buzz to see loads of people getting into a band they probably wouldn’t have heard if I hadn’t brought them to Oxford, when they went badly, they were by turns stressful, thankless, depressing and financially-painful. See these motley examples:

The five worst ever OxfordBands gigs

1. Trencher + Ivy’s Itch + Mespalex + Corvids

Great bands across the board. A Friday night. Three local bands, each of whom you’d expect to pull people in. Headliners who went down a storm at Audioscope and were building quite a reputation. And one of those nights where all the forces that can conspire to drive people away from gigs united – it was a lovely warm evening, prime holiday season, local bands didn’t promote it to their fans very well and so on. Despite doing everything I usually did for perfectly successful gigs for the previous four years, this time a grand total of TEN payers came in all night. Between four bands. At least I was spared the ignominy of single figure attendance, but there were more band members than audience.

So I paid off the headliners’ guarantee and what else I owed with £120 of my own money, couldn’t pay any of the local bands, and slunk off to lick my wounds. Trencher, to be fair, were lovely guys and put on an absolutely blinding set. So if you’re one of the 59 million people in Britain who weren’t at this show, man, you missed out. Next time, though, I’ll pay Trencher to perform in my living room for me – it’ll save me the bus fare into town at least.

Great poster as well, I recall. Nice one Simon.

2. EZ-T + Riding Shotgun By Starlight + The Half Rabbits + Sexy Breakfast

This gig was one we needed to put on for a booking agent in order to snare someone even bigger for the same month. Fair enough, I thought – EZ-T sounds pretty cool, we’ll do that and book some well-known Oxford supports to bring in the punters. You’ll notice that Riding Shotgun by Starlight are not on the poster. This is because they were added to the bill by the agent with two days’ notice. And the act was essentially one man, squatting on the floor, hitting a guitar with his fists, while shouting into a microphone ‘YOU ARE THE INNOCENT’ ad nauseam. I genuinely couldn’t tell if this was some sort of trick being played on me by the musician in question, the agent, or the fickle gods of music promotion. Plus Sexy Breakfast got mind-alteringly drunk, made a pyramid out of all the beer glasses in the room, then knocked it over, so I ended the evening on my hands and knees picking up bits of glass out of stale beer.

3. Bravecaptain + Blue States

I wanted to put on Bravecaptain. Blue States were tour support. Their promo gumph mentioned Tortoise and
Air. OK, I thought, that’ll be fine. What I wasn’t prepared for was that they actually sounded like an even more anaemic, dreadful Razorlight, and that they were a bunch of twats. One of them complained that the mineral
water on the rider was still, not fizzy as requested, and ACTUALLY MADE ME go to the shops to buy him fizzy mineral water. Fair enough if you’re Mariah Carey, but playing a crappy toilet venue gig in Oxford? Give me a break. To make things worse, on the night they told me this was a rotating-headline tour, so Blue States were headlining. I spent much of their set placating and refunding angry Bravecaptain fans who turned up late only to find they’d missed out. At least that meant I missed Blue States’ piss-poor performance.

Note – The Boos’ Martin Carr (for he is Bravecaptain) was a lovely fella, and played an excellent set too.

4. The Telescopes + Sennen

I’ve documented this experience well enough in this review, but in essence The Telescopes did not turn up, only the frontman, amid rumours of a band bust-up. He then proceeded to play a forty-minute white noise jet engine feedback set, which caused all but four people in the room to leave in this order: 1) More timid members of the audience; 2) The soundman; 3) The support band; 4) The rest of the audience; 5) The Telescopes’ driver/merch person; 6) The promoter. Spent his set talking to the support band about how they had another four dates together and this was the first show of the tour.

5. Foals

I bet this was brilliant. The only time I’ve promoted the now super-famous Foals (after putting on their previous incarnation, The Edmund Fitzgerald many times), and I had to go to a wedding. So this is in the list in a sort of kicking-myself kind of way.

To be fair, these aren’t really that bad. But on the night, when it was all down to me, they were pretty disspiriting. I’ve heard worse though – one friend of mine who promotes in town once disobeyed the golden rules of small-time promoters number 2 (NEVER PROMOTE ON A SUNDAY NIGHT), and got one payer in all night for his troubles. And at least I’ve never had a band just fail to turn up completely.

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