when it stops being fun and becomes work

good points everybody. cnev, your right, we dont play the type of songs the crowd there like, but it seems to me they are all into the "dance" scene by the music the juke box was playing before and after we went on - which is not something we could look at. also, we do not have a gregarious frontman, we are all a bit to shy for that i think.

roy, you are so right, it is all about the money for the landlord, which is why i am so perplexed he is paying us more, , when we didnt charge the atmosphere at all, not even a little.

TR - i get what your saying about engaging these young kids, but THESE young ones scared us, they are the kind of crowd that made me worry what was happening to my car while i was inside the place :lol:

Noteboat - i have to say the comment about a bad days fishing is superb! if i gigged for a job i would live by that quote, but for us, the gig is a weekend bit of fun after a hard weeks work, so i would definately get paid a lot less to play somewhere we really enjoyed.

moonrider, your right, the landlord obviously did like us to a certain extent, if he wants to give us a "payrise", but his reaction totally confuses me.

we will play the gigs, and i will definately let you know how it all goes, but also, i am going to go to that pub one night when another band is on, to sit in the crowd to see the reaction - it might be an education and help me understand that particular venue a bit more.

since i posted this thread however, we had another gig over bank holiday weekend, which gets very busy. we played a busy pub, and got a similar "quiet" reaction, which disappointed us, and didnt help our confidence, but at the end of the night 2 couples booked us for their wedding - so i guess what nick said early on is true, you never do know what is going through the heads of an audience.

I think Nick hit the nail on the head - you never know what's going on the audience's grey cells. I've played lunchtime gigs and birthday parties where I've wondered if maybe I should have brought along a good book to read, and all of a sudden someone's come up and said "Thanks very much, we really enjoyed that" or something similar.

A :-)

OK I'm not disagreeing with Nick or Alan and I realize you surely can't tell what everyone is thinking but you should be able to tell if the crowd is into you or not, just having one or two random people say it was good really doesn't mean much if there were 50 or more people there. So you've managed to impress 1-2% of the crowd woopee.

But this isn't anything about you as musicians you might have played the best gig as a band you've ever played but if the crowd doesn't like that music they ain't coming back.

Al I think you're smart enough to be able to read the crowd and from what you just mentioned it sounds like you were in a bar with a bit of a rowdyier maybe male testosterone infused crowd. Maybe you needed to crank up the volume and give them more hard driving rock n roll, like some AC/DC or some other heavier music.

spot on cnev, it really was that type of crowd. however, we play a wide variety of stuff, including only a few hard core rock songs. we do sweet child of mine, and a couple of rock songs by british bands that wont be well known over in the us, but we also do lots of 50's 60's and cheese as well.

i dont think we could put together a full set list for a whole gig to please this lot - maybe one day we will be able to, and that will be the aim.

personally, i would love to do ac/dc type stuff all night long, but i am in a minority of 1, and our varied set list does get us wedding work and we bill ourselves as a "party music band", not a rock band which is what they would prefer i think. i think it is just a case of the venue not being suited to what we do - but hell, if he is paying, we will go and just play for ourselves and have some fun!

thanks for all the responses, glad to know were not the only band to have experienced this :D

The whole reason to have a band in a bar is to make more money for the bar so if the owner could make the exact same money by not having to pay a band then he would be foolish to book bands they would serve no purpose.

Good point.

When playing anywhere, whether it is a concert or a local bar:

You are not an employee, you are a self-employed sub-contractor. The owner of the venue is in business to make money. There is no other reason to be in business. The owner or manager also has a lot of time consuming problems; problem customers, waiters/waitresses not showing up, paperwork, and so on. He/she will hire the act that makes the most money and causes the fewest problems.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

I don't know what happened to my other post from yesterday but it's not here.

Anyway, Notes brings up all valid points but again I don't think that's really the issue here.

It comes down to you went in and played to a crowd that was expecting/wanting different music than what you played.

It's like playing for a crowd that was expecting to hear Metallica music and you played Britney Spears songs. ( I know it wasn't quite like that but used it as an example)

You can be the best musicians in the world and very professional but you have to play to an audience that wants to hear the music. No one is going to a bar because they heard there were some good musicians playing they are going there because they want to hear the music they like.

There are many local bands that have some great musicians around where I live and most I would never want to see because they don't play music that I like.

So crank up some AC/DC, maybe a little Metallica and go back there and rock the house!!

And when it gets a bit rough, I think about what life might be like if I were a tax accountant.

I am trying to become that or atleast get qualified for it... :lol:

It's important not to mis-book yourself or let yourself be mis-booked by an agent.

I was in a progressive rock band and we got booked for a group of senior citizens who were desperate for a New Year's Eve band. They wanted big band standards. Needless to say, we didn't go over very well, but we did the best we could anyway.

I never worked with that agency again. If they don't respect the artists, they are not going to get a commission from me.

And to follow up on NoteBoat's excellent comment.

For a short time I quit music full time and worked as a telephone installer during the week, and gigging on the weekends. I was trying to be a fine, productive member of society I guess. Anyway, it didn't work out and I went back to playing music again.

One day I had to climb a pole to work on a terminal (about 18'). Under the pole were 4 chain link fences, something you don't want to fall down on. For those who don't know, you are clinging to the pole by jabbing about 1/16" of spike into the wood pole and one false move will make the spikes cut out and you either fall or slide down the pole - note: from previous climbers the splinters all point up so sliding down the pole is not a good option.

I opened the terminal and about 100 paper wasps had made it their home, and they weren't happy about my intrusion. With heart pounding I carefully climbed down the pole and miraculously didn't get stung once!!!

So now when I have to play a song that I'm not really happy about playing, I think of the wasps and everything is OK. And then in spite of myself, once the song starts, it's just music, and I forget that I didn't want to play it and have a good time anyway.

A bad day playing music, is better than a good day climbing telephone poles!!!!!!!!!

Sorry if I'm contributing to the hijacking of the thread :-(

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

I was trying to look where Noteboat posted anything on this thread you had me confused but I think he posted that on another thread.

Anyway like I said before Notes you are a lucky guy to be able to do what you love everyday. I'm sure you've been there and done it all when it comes to stuff like this.

I had the same epiphany when I was young but it wasn't soemthing that pushed me to music. I got a fulltime job when I started college and after the 1st semester I was making so much money (at the time) and not having any real bills decided that I didn't college so I took about a year and a half off and kept working. One day ( I used to make all the Phillips head screw drivers made by Stanley Tools) when I was working on the milling machines one of the oil lines broke while I was cleaning the oil pump and I got about 5 gallons of dirty machine oil on top of my head and in my eyes. That's when I decided that this workign in a factory stuff wasn't for me and went back to school and got my degree.

Not as good as your story but at least I've been able to stay employed even if it's not my dream job.

I got my college degree ... I'm a registered nurse and make good money and do you want to know what I got on me last night? :lol: Umm .. no, you don't. :roll:

I would have made more money if I had stayed in the electronics business. I have a "Cable TV Engineer's" degree (which in all reality is a glorified technician degree). But my stint in the phone company and another short stint as a CATV field engineer showed me that I wasn't cut out for the "straight life".

I do make enough money to pay the mortgage, and buy new cars (which I drive until they have over 200,000 miles on them). I do go on vacations, but I don't have a lot of luxury items. I live in a small house on a half acre in a great neighborhood, 300' from the east coast of the mainland of Florida and I have a wife who is a best friend and my band partner.

But every day when I'm gigging, I say "I GET to go to work today" which is a lot better than saying "I HAVE to go to work today" like I did when I was in electronics. After all, what do you spend your money on? Fun stuff! Well I have fun stuff when I'm working!!!

I am very lucky, and I know it.

I'm approaching "senior-citizendom" and it's still fun for me. I don't plan on retiring, I will be playing music as long as I can fog a mirror.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Notes you're still my idol!

Do they have senior citizen cruises? I'm sure they do maybe you can get back into that in your golden years.

TR I can (well maybe not)imagine the stuff you get on you in your job. I worked as an OR orderly when I was in school for awhile and actually particpated in a spinal fusion. I got to pull on the patients feet while another doctor pulled his head so the doctor that was chipping away at the patients spine with a hammer could get the Harrington rod placed. That was quite an experience seeing someone cut wide open from their throat to their belly button and all the stuff inside. It took me a minute or two before I could get enough courage to actually look but the worst thing was the smell of the little machine that they use to burn the small blood vessels, the smell of burning flesh made me nausous. At least I didn't puke though, whenever they brought a new class of student nurses into oneof thes operations at least 2-3 seemed to either vomit or faint.