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cesb wrote:

dontfeartheringo wrote:"This fucker in Mobile will NOT PAY YOU unless you button hole him BEFORE he starts doing cocaine."

Oh, you played Vincent Van Go Go?

DING DING DING!

Don't remember anything about the cocaine, but that fucker took some convincing, you got that right. It's always great when somebody gives you a sob story and when you get up in their face, they happen to have the exact amount in their shirt pocket. There's an awesome US Maple (or maybe Shorty) story about that dude, but I can't remember the details...

Well, the cocaine is assumed/implied. There was no way he was going to chop a line out in front of the band... he might have been forced to SHARE it.


he's dead now, by the way.

dontfeartheringo wrote:

cesb wrote:

dontfeartheringo wrote:"This fucker in Mobile will NOT PAY YOU unless you button hole him BEFORE he starts doing cocaine."

Oh, you played Vincent Van Go Go?

DING DING DING!

Don't remember anything about the cocaine, but that fucker took some convincing, you got that right. It's always great when somebody gives you a sob story and when you get up in their face, they happen to have the exact amount in their shirt pocket. There's an awesome US Maple (or maybe Shorty) story about that dude, but I can't remember the details...

Well, the cocaine is assumed/implied. There was no way he was going to chop a line out in front of the band... he might have been forced to SHARE it.


he's dead now, by the way.

Ooh, shit, then I take it all back. He was a good man, tight, but fair.

cesb wrote:

dontfeartheringo wrote:

cesb wrote:

dontfeartheringo wrote:"This fucker in Mobile will NOT PAY YOU unless you button hole him BEFORE he starts doing cocaine."

Oh, you played Vincent Van Go Go?

DING DING DING!

Don't remember anything about the cocaine, but that fucker took some convincing, you got that right. It's always great when somebody gives you a sob story and when you get up in their face, they happen to have the exact amount in their shirt pocket. There's an awesome US Maple (or maybe Shorty) story about that dude, but I can't remember the details...

Well, the cocaine is assumed/implied. There was no way he was going to chop a line out in front of the band... he might have been forced to SHARE it.


he's dead now, by the way.

Ooh, shit, then I take it all back. He was a piece of shit whose ignoble lifestyle eventually killed him.

FYP.

Fuck that guy, and every guy who ever ripped off a touring band so he'd have more money for drugs.

I'd piss on his grave if I knew where it was.

Oh, by the way, there's a woman in Detroit who is starting a touring bands' wiki called bandmama.com.

This database that will be user updated. I plan to contribute as much as I can, limited though my knowledge may be of what's going on out there NOW.

She's a publicist by trade, and she's got a bunch of stuff lined up for SXSW unrelated to bandmama.com, but once she's back from that, I think she's planning on giving it a huge push. I THINK that she might be amenable to having some early adopters have wiki accounts just to create a base of information for the wiki.

It could be a great tool. I'll send her a link to this thread and see what she says.

I started booking in the early 90's..almost everything was phone and mail. Nothing beat waking up and finding a 7" or 12" in the mail as a demo.
We actually activley solicited bands to come and play, because Bismarck ND is on a lot of tour routes, but not a lot of iteneraries. That was as often as not done by mail, just sending out letters to bands we liked, asking if they'd stop in a play if they were coming through.

BYOFL was important, simply as a place to start.

Actually taking time to talk to every band was a big deal. I played a show last night w/ my side project, 2 kids much younger than myself. They were getting irritated w/ me because i was introducing myself and having long conversations w/ each band. That is something that has really changed.

When I started touring, we always sat and talked with the other bands, the promoters, the sound people, locals-just getting the lay of the land and such. That how we found out about half of the venues we ever played. It wasn't odd to be booking shows while on the road...filling in gaps with shows in places you just heard about for other bands, getting added to bills with a couple days notice wasn't so difficult. Now it's like pulling teeth to get a lot of bands to even say hi. Bigger touring bands (even DIY ones) bring openers with them, and don't play w/ locals, which i think is a travesty.

And a great example of technology being totally useless: in december we had a few shows down in oregon/california. But I-5 was shut due to flooding just south of seattle. The internet maps defaulted to the recommended detour, 350 miles around the mountains, and back on another interstate. But anyone with a old paper map of WA state could clearly see the little mountain highway that was not flooded, and reconnected w/ I-5 just south of the flooding. It only added about 50 miles and an hour to our drive.

chris jury wrote:
When I started touring, we always sat and talked with the other bands, the promoters, the sound people, locals-just getting the lay of the land and such. That how we found out about half of the venues we ever played. It wasn't odd to be booking shows while on the road...filling in gaps with shows in places you just heard about for other bands, getting added to bills with a couple days notice wasn't so difficult. Now it's like pulling teeth to get a lot of bands to even say hi. Bigger touring bands (even DIY ones) bring openers with them, and don't play w/ locals, which i think is a travesty.

The exception to this in the old days, of course, were the bands from LA whose label had gotten them a brand new '96 Econoline (white) and $7000 worth of gear, $600 worth of haircuts, and sent them "out on the road to generate some EXCITEMENT!"

By the time these wankers got to Columbia, South Carolina (or Columbia, Missouri) they were PISSED AT THE WORLD. They had a RECORD DEAL. They were FROM LOS ANGELES. This touring the country for no fans was BULLSHIT! They were FUCKING ROCK STARS!!

eh, ugh.

We toured around a lot in the early to late nineties as well. We would play out Wednesday through Saturday and come home on Sunday. We all lived together and at the time had a really cool guy who helped us get shows by sending out tapes and press kits, (he ended up leaving our management company and we were left with some people who didn't get our style as all the other groups on their roster were old school rock bands, many of them in the metal scene.)

It was a LOT of work but incredibly fun. A few times we were support acts for major label asshole bands on their tours. We opened for a band called the Nixons for awhile, they were total idiots. We also toured with the metal band Jackyl. These shows were truly unbelievable, almost surreal, as their crowd absolutely hated us. The crowd would throw bottles and cups full of beer. They would chant Jackyl's name so loudly that it would drown us out and we are a LOUD band. A couple of times we got into fights on stage and we were nearly killed by big burly redneck biker types several times, blood flowed... We did learn a lot from Jackyl, they had a fierce work ethic and would just as soon stomp your face in as look at you, they were SERIOUS road dogs. We were little babies crying for our Mommies compared to them.

At first we had a Ford Econoline van; it broke down a lot. Later we moved up to the van/trailer combo which was annoying: ever try to back a trailer into a car-sized space while drunk? We played every shit hole on the east coast and through the southeast. Did a lot of drugs and drink, met a lot of wild women. Had a blast.

Not sure what has changed about the scene, as now we play locally and do one-off's in far-flung cities if there is a reason to go somewhere or for fun. We travel in rentals as we don't have a van anymore.

There is definitely more of a careerist vibe in the air nowadays with all these reality shows and what not, but it was like that in the nineties too. Once the Nirvana thing hit, it fucked everybody's heads up big time, as now everyone expected a major label deal, even really shitty bands (like us), they/we thought that they/we 'deserved' it. We bought in to it for awhile as these A&R tools were everywhere and they offered us a lot of money at different points and then they and our manager fucked us over big-time and we got dumped like a hot rock. I think we deserved it a bit and I had become a bit of an asshole briefly due to the attention, so I'm not bitter.

Listening to Steve's take on all that label stuff really turned my head around and I can't imagine thinking that way ever again. I really believe now that bands should NEVER sign deals with managers, labels, booking agents or any of those people, DIY is the only way to go.

If you can get a little circuit together of clubs that you can play at and manage to not spend too much money, you will have a blast. Sometimes (or always) you will go in the red but it's still worth it. It's invaluable really, to your skills and craft as well as the life experience.

Once you go around once or twice, club owners will get to know you and you will meet other like-minded acts to get shows with. The gigs will start to come to you if you treat people well.

Try to show up on time as much as possible. Don't duck out on gigs once you find out they are going to suck, play them anyway, it's a live practice. If the other bands are assholes, ignore them and move on. Never heckle, you can have a laugh, but don't fuck with other people. Your credibility with the club owners is on the line so try to behave. Don't fuck up their equipment or play longer during your slot. Try to avoid hotels, stay at friends or other bands houses. We got to the point that we would drive rather than stay if home was less than two hundred miles.

Have fun!

unsaved wrote:

simmo wrote:- How did you organise tours on a DIY level pre-internet?
- Was it all phone calls? How did you get in touch with venues or booking agents, or find their contact details?
- Was it all done through labels? Was it much harder for DIY bands to tour? Was the DIY scene as well connected?
- How on earth did you organise tours outside of your home country without the internet?
- Do you think it was simply the case that fewer bands toured and fewer shows happened?
- Were there any advantages to doing things without the internet?

An accurate account of what it was like can be read here.

So you're Rollins? Well now we know why you're such a dick

Pure L wrote:We had worked out a few ridiculous hand signals to pass various messages but even that didn't work all the time.

(Actually, I still use the one for "I have to take a shit".)

I have to know what this is.

cesb wrote:God, I miss the touring. I also DON'T miss it. What a bummer it was. It ruled, though.

I feel the same way.

I loved going out with the bands I was "managing" (read: being the fifth wheel, selling t-shirts, waking people up, anything but driving) but after a few days...jeez man, could you stop doing that thing? You know, that thing. THAT THING YOU DO ALL THE FUCKING TIME IT'S MAKING ME CRAZY. BREATHING. YEAH. THAT.

I made some of my favorite memories on tour, and also some of the worst. I'm glad I did it.

etch wrote:We also toured with the metal band Jackyl.

Please tell us more.

You know you want to.

I also forgot to say that once you have toured around a bit, Spinal Tap becomes unfunny for a period of 3 - 12 months. The funny comes back, though.