# Just me venting (disregard if you wish)



## broj15 (Apr 21, 2016)

So about a month ago some people asked us to come play at their house with a couple other bands tomorrow night. The show is about 4 hours away but we were down to play because it seemed like a fun way to spend a friday night (funner than working at least). A couple weeks go by and we send the people who were hosting the show a couple messages and receive no response. There's also no event page or any information/promotion about the show online. 

We've got some friends that also play in bands in the area and asked them what they know about the people booking the show and they said that (as this place is apparently a "trv crust punk" house) the people who live there are known to be flaky and hit up bands for shows, only to give them the cold shoulder if they change their minds and don't want to host the show anymore. 

At this point we're all assuming the show isn't happening. Then, tuesday morning we get a message from one of the people living there asking if we're still down to play. We called them out on ignoring our messages and they apologize saying some messages "just slip through the cracks". We had a band meeting/practice that night to decide what to do. 

Now, i know the smart thing to do would be to decline the show (assuming they were being unprofessional), however we decided to agree to play based on the thinking that it's never a good idea to burn a bridge, and that this will hopefully get us a bit of buzz/ help make connections in an area we don't often have the opportunity to play in. This will also give us an opportunity to make sure everything fits in our jeep and to test drive our new set (which we're all stoked on). My only worry is that they did actually throw the show together last minute and there's been no buzz meaning we'll be driving 4 hours to play to 5 people. 

At this pointed we're already committed and not about to drop the show so I guess any kind of advice would be overdue. This was mainly just me blog posting to people that can hopefully relate. On the bright side we have 3 more confirmed shows on the calendar, not including this show, so things are finally starting to happen.

tl;dr: trying to book shows in the DIY scene can be an "experience" to say the least.

To get some discussion going share some horrorific and/or humorous experiences you've had trying to book a show or your own band.


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## Tysonimmortal (Apr 22, 2016)

Driving 4 hours just to play to (maybe) 5 people and then drive home isn't great, but lord knows I've done it before. Its probably not worth it. Do you have a show the day after or day before to help with the gas cost?


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## broj15 (Apr 23, 2016)

Tysonimmortal said:


> Driving 4 hours just to play to (maybe) 5 people and then drive home isn't great, but lord knows I've done it before. Its probably not worth it. Do you have a show the day after or day before to help with the gas cost?



No shows the day before or the day after. Thank god. If we did have anything booked we'd have to drop it because we're all pretty wiped out.

So, figured I'd any let interested parties know how it went: Pretty fvckin good (all things considered)

The house wasn't too hard to find (it was the only house on the street covered in graffiti with a huge sign in the yard that read "occupy vacant homes"). Apparently it's less of a squat and more of a "commune" as they called it with an "open door policy", meaning no locks on any doors, with the exception of the bedroom doors of the people living there (5 people actually living there, with anywhere from 3-5 "couch kids" crashing there as well). The house was actually really cool: every surface covered in some kind of art/graffiti. Almost as soon as we walked in we were handed markers and told to write or draw whatever we want if we could find an open space and the people living there were really nice (if not a little weird/awkward... but so are we so it was cool ). 

We ended up playing last and there were about 30 people there in all (not bad for a house show that was probably thrown together last minute in my opinion). As far as how our set went I hate to toot my own horn but I'm going to anyways: we fvcking killed it. We start off slow with a kinda shoegazy build up with a spoken word over it. I got a chance to look around the room during this part and everyone had a kind of "I don't know about this" expression. After that I kick on my feedback box (aka a fulltone OCD) and after playing through the opening riff to our first song the room totally exploded and didn't stop until we were finished. The energy in the room was on a completely different level. It felt completely liberating and cathartic to get in people's faces/have people get in my face while we were playing. At one point I was slammed into a wall and cut my arm just deep enough to draw some blood.

I've never received as many compliments on my music as I did last night. One of the guys who lives at the house loved our sh_i_t and said he books shows at other DIY spaces in the area and practically begged us to come back and roasted us for not having any official releases (as he put it "I need more of THAT in my life and I don't want to wait for you guys to come back to get it" )

tl;dr: things were obviously disorganized, but that's par for the course. All in all everything went better than expected and we definitely plan on coming back. We also made enough money to cover a little over half the gas it took round trip so that was pretty great.


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## Unleash The Fury (Apr 26, 2016)

sorry if this has already been mentioned, but are they aware that your coming from 4 hours away?


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## dhgrind (Apr 26, 2016)

lol I forgot crust is still mildly popular. now I'm curious if you have any tracks up I can listen to!


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## bostjan (Apr 26, 2016)

Sounds cool! I used to live in Indiana, and I thought it was a pretty different place from the rest of the world. I never heard about any of the neighbourhoods you mentioned, but I'm not surprised such exists there.

Some of the most exposure I've ever received was from house shows. You get a sort of audience there where people seem to be more into whatever you are about to do, since one of their friends, or at least a friend's friend's friend booked you for the show. I've never been let down by a house show, but, then again, I don't think I've ever went into one with grand expectations, either.


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## GunpointMetal (Apr 28, 2016)

I don't care if I'm playing in my sister's living room. If we're driving four hours for a show that someone contacted us about, the second email is going to be a discussion about how much gas money we're guaranteed, what they are doing for promotion, what other bands are playing (so I can check and see if we're playing with a bunch of "starter" bands with no draw or a totally wrong bill), where we are in the set (no band should ever drive that far to open up to no-one on an all-local/regional show) and hopefully, start a group convo on FB or something with the other bands/house people to keep things organized. It kind of sounds like a dick thing to do, but at the same time, if you appear professional, other people tend to try and act a little more professional, and things get done a lot quicker. It sounds like it worked out alright for you as far as exposure, but exposure doesn't fill up a gas tank. I like the "warm-up" shows when a new set is in the works or there are some technical things to figure out, but I prefer them to be in our "backyard" so it's not actually COSTING us money.


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## VBCheeseGrater (Apr 28, 2016)

To stay sane in that situation you just have to do it for the fun of the trip and "open practice". 

Further proof i'm turning into an old man is I have -zero- tolerance for this sort of thing now, but did it plenty back i nthe day and glad I did. Last minute party shows are some of my fondest meories (specifically a frat party at ODU where the frat boy/sorority girl crowd actually really enjoyed our near death metal style set  and then i proceeded to get hammered beyond recollection).


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## bhakan (Apr 28, 2016)

I've played lots of similar situations and while poor planning can definitely backfire, and you frequently don't get paid much, I gotta agree about the energy. If you get the right DIY shows, you can end up with 200 kids shoved into a small basement and all just going nuts. I've never played a proper, well put together show that has the same level of energy as a good house show.


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## broj15 (Apr 28, 2016)

Unleash The Fury said:


> sorry if this has already been mentioned, but are they aware that your coming from 4 hours away?



They were not until we arrived. They asked us when we wanted to play and we said that since we drove so far we'd rather play last and they were totally cool with it. 


dhgrind said:


> lol I forgot crust is still mildly popular. now I'm curious if you have any tracks up I can listen to!



Nothing of note just yet. Should have our ep out by the end of the summer We're also not really a crust band. Think a darker, noisier, heavier Kidcrash.



bostjan said:


> Sounds cool! I used to live in Indiana, and I thought it was a pretty different place from the rest of the world. I never heard about any of the neighbourhoods you mentioned, but I'm not surprised such exists there.
> 
> Some of the most exposure I've ever received was from house shows. You get a sort of audience there where people seem to be more into whatever you are about to do, since one of their friends, or at least a friend's friend's friend booked you for the show. I've never been let down by a house show, but, then again, I don't think I've ever went into one with grand expectations, either.



Ahh, I'm living in Illinois now, which has a pretty prevalent diy scene. Indiana has one too, just not as big or as established. Bloomington and Indy both have pretty great hardcore/punk scenes and New Albany in the south (across the river from Louisville, KY) is starting to see a little love


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