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by dontfeartheringo_Archive
I toured with a band as my full-time job from 1990 to 1998. We played around 200 shows a year.
The first thing needs to be mentioned is that there were MANY less bands then, so after two or three times through a club, we had built relationships with club owners and promoters.
So, yes, it was all done through telephone calls to set up the shows, then contracts would be sent in the mail, which would be signed and mailed or faxed back.
The remarkable thing was that this was also pre-cell phone, so if we were running late or lost (which was often the case), then the club didn't know if we were coming or not until we pulled up.
Let me hit your points in order, though:
- How did you organise tours on a DIY level pre-internet?
I think that the DIY network was smaller, but more iron clad. There was a book called "Book Your Own Fucking Life" that was the bible for touring bands. Word of mouth was also pretty strong.... it's all about desire and commitment. If we wanted to play in Chattanooga (and for some reason, apparently we did) we would keep asking bands with whom we played until someone came up with a name and phone number. Every member of the band was involved in booking inasmuch as we were all constantly gathering intelligence on it.
- Was it all phone calls? Yes.
How did you get in touch with venues or booking agents, or find their contact details?
Again, word of mouth. Someone on the Premier Rock Forums yesterday was asking of South By SouthWest had become obsolete. It gave me a little twinge of regret. You have no idea how important SXSW was for touring bands back when we were all doing it sans internet. We would meet up with bands with whom we'd played one or more shows, and it was like a giant family reunion. We would catch up, find out who had quit which band, who had joined which other bands, who had gotten sick or gotten married, or who had, in some cases, been killed in van accidents. But perhaps the most important thing that happened was that we would compare notes on clubs. "This fucker in Mobile will NOT PAY YOU unless you button hole him BEFORE he starts doing cocaine." or "There's some skater kid in Tampa who is putting on shows at the skate park and he's solid. Here's the phone number at the house next door to the squat where he lives."
One of my favorite nights at SXSW was seeing aMiniature and Silkworm at some massive club. We were playing somewhere else in town, but we ran over before our show to see the other show. (Back then, there were WAY more important things to do than schmooze label people... that wasn't what SXSW was about, believe it or not.) John Lee stopped the show when he saw us with our chins on the monitors and said "Hey, it's Patrick from five-eight. Fucker, I want my Slingerland t-shirt back. I can't believe you talked me out of that." (I still have it.)
I went back to SXSW a few years ago to play with Southern Bitch after their drummer overdosed, and to get to the load in where we were playing, I had to walk through the load in for where the band from some reality TV show was playing. FUCK, how it's changed!
- Was it all done through labels? Nope. There were still plenty of booking agents, and they worked their ASSES off. (Salut, Eric from Red Ryder booking, even though you wouldn't return my calls when I lived in Chicago, you fucker.)
Was it much harder for DIY bands to tour? Nope. There are SO MANY more bands now. Club owners and bands had a much closer relationship. Imagine this: my parents ACTIVELY DISCOURAGED ME from playing drums in a rock band. That's the big difference in generations. Parents now take their kids to Guitar Center on their 11th birthday to buy them their first Epiphone Les Paul Jr. My parents viewed joining a rock band as a one-way ticket to heroin addiction, venereal disease and a life living in bus stations and shelters. I managed to miss the homeless part.
It's a different culture for kids wanting to play music now. The end result is that there are a fucking MILLION bands, most of them horrible.
Was the DIY scene as well connected? Better connected. In 90% of cases, word was bond. An indie promoter who fucked up a show for you wasn't a promoter for long. We'd all meet in Austin in March and say "Fuck that guy, strike him off your list."
- How on earth did you organise tours outside of your home country without the internet? Labels from other countries would come to SXSW looking for bands to bring to their countries. They would plug you into their network of DIY promoters and use their friends who did booking.
- Do you think it was simply the case that fewer bands toured and fewer shows happened? This is ABSOLUTELY the case.
- Were there any advantages to doing things without the internet?
Yes. Less conspiracy theorists.
That's the chief advantage to ANYTHING that doesn't involve the internet.
Redline wrote:Not Crap. The sound of death? The sound of FUN! ScrrreeEEEEEEE
