Tag: Blog

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How to do the Fringe

This is as much as a note for me to refer back to next year as it is info for you lovely bloglings, but if any of you are planning on going to The Fringe, maybe some of these tips will help –

  • Venue – things to take into consideration.
    The average edinburgh audience size is about 6, literally. If it’s your first year, you’re very likely to end up doing a few shows to virtually no-one. With that in mind, book a small venue. It’ll save you money, and feel less crap when you eventually get up to 15-20 people.

    a lot of venues charge more for ‘prime-time’ slots, so think about when your show is best going to attract an audience. I seem to do pretty well late night, so can take a cheaper slot between 11-12, rather than trying to book between 7-10pm, which is pretty much the main time for shows.

    When you talk to the venue, haggle over the cost of the room. I’ve never paid full asking price for an Edinburgh venue. Check what the extras are (do you need a tech? lighting engineer? door person? backstage help? most of that will be charged) – bargain with them. The usual deal is to pay a ‘guarantee’ and then it’s a 60/40 split in your favour over and above that. Some places do a straight hire fee where you get all ticket money. others can be convinced to do a straight 50/50 split.

    It’s also worth finding out what kind of publicity the venue are going to do. If you go into one of the ‘big five’ – The Pleasance, The Underbelly, The Gilded Balloon, The Assembly Rooms or C Venues – they’ll have a load of publicity of their own. It’s not worth relying on (shows in each of these venue complexes still end up with 2 people in the audience), but it’ll help. A bit. possibly.

  • Promo before the fest. Make sure you get signed up to the EdFringe press office mailings, there are lots of useful things to do in there. They send out info of lots of press opportunities and other promo things like playing at the Fringe Opening party, Fringe Sunday etc.

    Get good photos! there’s no substitute for having a really eye-catching image, something that says something about your show. Remember, there are close to 2000 other shows on, putting on nearly 30,000 performances in the month. That’s a lot of competition, and a tiny amount of time you have to grab the focus of your prospective audience – you need to grab them with the picture and show title first, then the strap line, then the blurb. It’s all got to be there, arty doesn’t really cut it. I’ve been given flyers where I can’t tell a) what kind of show it is, whether it be music/drama/comedy/physical theatre/dance etc. and b) what the story is if it happens to be a narrative piece. It’s all got to be there on the flyers and posters.

    Also worth spending a lot of time on is your fringe programme entry – you’ve only got 40 words, so they have to be the greatest words you can think of to describe what you do. Quotes are good if they’re relevant. be descriptive, pique people’s interest, be hyperbolic – everyone else will be.

    Work out your budget for promo. Flyers and posters are a must. An absolute must. But you might want to take out an ad in the programme, or some ads in the free papers at the festival (Three Weeks and SkinnyFest), or even on the EdFringe.com website. Again, you might be able to haggle on price, or team up with another show to take out an ad between you.

    One way to expand your budget is to get sponsors – this can either be individuals – see Richard Herring’s SCOPE appeal for more on this – or companies that have some vested interest in the publicity you can offer. For the last two years, my show has been sponsored by the Bass Institute – an excellent music school in West London. They can obviously get access to loads of people interested in music, particularly bassists, through my show, and I give them a logo on thousands of flyers and posters, as well as a full page ad in the show programme. A great deal for all.

    Use the press list! The Fringe press office sends out a press list, with the contacts of everyone who writes or broadcasts about the Fringe. Write a great press release (get help if needs be), and follow it up with additional news etc. Stick to the recommended method of communication, and don’t bug the people if they ask to be contacted only once. This again is where those killer photos come in handy. Press people are 100x more likely to write about you if you got good photos. head over to Steve Brown’s site for photo stuff – he regularly takes magazine front covers, so knows all about generating eye-catching, product-selling images for artists.

  • Once you get to Edinburgh – keep doing all of the above. Use the internet to follow up radio and press contacts, chase up reviewers and sort out cabaret and showcase slots. There are a few of these – you should contact them before the fest if possible, and then follow up when you get there. Some times people have slots to fill last minute, make sure they’ve got your mobile number for last minute bookings. A lot of the showcase and cabaret slots will be 10-15 minutes long – make sure you’ve got a highly portable extract from your show. This is harder if it’s a play, but it’s worth doing for the audience it generates. Shows like Mervyn Stutter’s Pick Of the Fringe are a great way to reach a much bigger audience.

    And now all those flyers and posters come into their own – put posters up in every legal possible place. Shops are a great one, cafes, restaurants – get there early to guarantee a slot on the walls. Make sure your venue has done enough promo around the building, you want to catch as much passing trade as possible. Don’t go too mad putting out piles of flyers alongside all the other piles of flyers – they get buried fairly quickly.

    Then it’s time to hit the high street and sell the show – have a one sentence description – ‘late night music show’, ‘chill out comedy’ bizarre road trip comedy’ ‘shakespeare on ice’ – something that’ll grab people’s attention. Then have a prepared one paragraph description, so you don’t um and ah through it. Be confident and smilie, very friendly, ask people’s names, shake hands, say how much you’re looking forward to seeing them at the show. In short, make them feel like they are as special as the show is, and they clearly belong at it! As for quantity, you really need about 7000 flyers for your first week, and 5000 for each successive week. We had 5000 this year, and could easily have done 7000 in the time we were there. If you can get friends to come and stay and flyer for you, that’s great, but there’s nothing quite like people seeing your picture on the flyer and then chatting to you about the show.

    Same with posters – about 150-250 a week should do it – make sure you put them up on the pillars on the Royal Mile at least three times a day, as they get covered up pretty quickly. Same for the boards outside the E-ticket tent.

    Work out with your venue before hand what they are happy for you to do in the way of comps, 2 for 1 deals etc. Do you need to have special stickers for it? can you just write it on the flyer? how precious are they about it? If you’re doing three weeks, I’d recommend doing maximum effort in the first week just to get people through the door, try and create a bit of a buzz, get the word out. Lots of two for ones, comps to the casts of other shows etc. Be generous with other performers, most of them won’t have much money for full price tickets.

  • Take care of yourself. Edinburgh folklore is all about people staying up late, getting drunk, stoned and shagging anything that moves. Clearly not a good idea if you actually want it to be a success for you. Almost everyone at the fest loses money. Perhaps this is why. I’ve never lost money there. I hardly drink at all while I there, and try to get enough sleep – I really don’t want to be falling asleep on stage. If you’re a pro, it’s work, 24 hours a day. If you take it seriously, you can do well there. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t go out late night – it might be a great way to meet people who could come to the show, or review it. There’s a whole other world at the fest that starts at midnight. Just proceed with caution. ;o)
  • And finally, make sure the show is shit-hot. If your show is lame, all the promo in the world isn’t going to sell it. People will come, and you’ll get crap reviews, crap word of mouth and the crowds will die off. Come with a great show, and it’ll go the other way. Spend the time making it right, and you can do really well.

    What have I missed? If you’ve ever been there, post your best tip in the comments section…

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Travelling musicians…

The current clamp-down on carry-on rules for planes is already bollocksing things up for lots of musicians such as these orchestral musicians, destined for the Edinburgh Festival and the Proms.

What a load of balls – are these laws making us safer, or just there to let us know how serious the threat is and make us oh-so-grateful to our loser government for protecting us from a possible attack.

Andrew Collins, whose blog is one of my current faves, highlights the vagueness of the current ‘news’ in this brilliant blog post. Have a read. Let’s see if anyone ends up in court.

And this post by Bruce Schneier highlights the utter uselessness of basing security measures on what the ‘terrorists’ have already planned. Here’s a couple of choice quotes –

None of the airplane security measures implemented because of 9/11 — no-fly lists, secondary screening, prohibitions against pocket knives and corkscrews — had anything to do with last week’s arrests. And they wouldn’t have prevented the planned attacks, had the terrorists not been arrested. A national ID card wouldn’t have made a difference, either.

and

Banning box cutters since 9/11, or taking off our shoes since Richard Reid, has not made us any safer. And a long-term prohibition against liquid carry-ons won’t make us safer, either. It’s not just that there are ways around the rules, it’s that focusing on tactics is a losing proposition.

It’s easy to defend against what the terrorists planned last time, but it’s shortsighted. If we spend billions fielding liquid-analysis machines in airports and the terrorists use solid explosives, we’ve wasted our money. If they target shopping malls, we’ve wasted our money. Focusing on tactics simply forces the terrorists to make a minor modification in their plans. There are too many targets — stadiums, schools, theaters, churches, the long line of densely packed people before airport security — and too many ways to kill people.

Security measures that require us to guess correctly don’t work, because invariably we will guess wrong. It’s not security, it’s security theater: measures designed to make us feel safer but not actually safer.

And meanwhile, thousands of travellers the world over are having their livelihoods screwed up by the legislation. I’m all for getting people to stop taking short-haul flights, but not just by fucking up their travel plans. That’s hardly an integrated transport policy!

But, it looks likely that I’ll be getting the train to Italy in October – with this inter-rail ticket it looks like I’ll be able to get a 22 day ticket for £295, which’ll get me all over France, Italy, Belgium and Holland, so I’ll need to get a ticket from London to Paris, and a ticket from Holland to Viersen just over the border in Germany (if I end up playing at the European Bass Day in Germany). Which will work out OK, financially, be better for the enviroment, give me plenty of time for reading books, transcribing tunes and relaxing, and will mean I can take two basses with me, without the fear that some loser at an airport is going to try to see if my basses bounce…

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Thursday at The Fringe.

Thursday began in fine style – we were booked to play at ‘Mervyn Stutter’s Pick Of the Fringe’ – a fantastic show that highlights the best of what’s on across the city. Julie had emailed them, and their lovely booking lady Trudy had come to the show on Tuesday and booked us.

That went superbly well – great reception from the audience, lots of promises that people would come along. Yay!

After that, it was flyering time. Lots of it. I think I gave out more flyers than on any day since Saturday. A busy time, for sure.

In the morning, I’d dropped into a junk shop on Dalry Road, where I’d seen a Mama Cass album for £2 in the window, and given that Amy Lame’s show that TSP and I saw last weekend was called ‘Amy Lame’s Mama Cass Family Singers’, I bought it and dropped it off to Amy after her show, who was delighted.

My dodgy knee was feeling pretty bad by about 7 o’clock so I went and bought a ticket for Sue Perkins stand up show – I’m a HUGE fan of Sue, whether solo or in the double act with Mel; their Saturday morning show on Radio London rivals Danny Baker for the greatest radio I’ve ever heard. She’s clearly supremely intelligent and a great observer of the world, and the show was indeed both very funny and acutely observed. She finished on a really poignant note about her grandmother – great way to end a comedy show. Definitely worth going to see.

I nearly missed the gig, as I thought she was on at the Pleasance Dome but was on at the Pleasance Courtyard – not an easy journey to make in 6 minutes on a buggered knee. Ow.

After that, it was back to flyering for a while, then down to the venue for soundcheck and gig.

Another lovely night – similar numbers to last night, so pretty good, but really need a couple of big nights tonight and tomorrow to make some sensible money on this trip.

The Lot is SUCH a great venue – for those of you in and around Edinburgh, you really ought to get on their mailing list, as they book some really top class jazz stuff (I’ve mentioned before that Theo has played there with his quartet) – it’s really lovely, and the food in the restaurant downstairs is top notch. I’m really hoping to come back to the same place next year. Great space, great people, and it’s run as a charity funding venture. What could be better?

After our show, Julie and I were back doing the Midnight Carousel in C Central, compered by Dusty Limits – again, we went down a storm, got an encore, and gave out lots of flyers to many promises that people will come along… Edinburgh promises – not worth the flyers they’re printed on, but we can but hope. :o)

So Today is a usual Edinburgh day – shitloads of flyering and postering during the day, dinner with the lovely J (lovely G is away, sadly, and TSP back in London, so it’s just lovely J and I meeting for clandestine munchies in Henderson’s). Then going to see a beautiful show in The Speigeltent – a Belgian voice and accordian duo, that I’ve completely forgotten the name of, but who are just fabulous, and played at Mervyn Stutter too. Then the show.

Two night’s left – come and see us!

thenewstandard.co.uk

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First night success!

We had two gigs yesterday – the first was a 20 minute set at the Fringe opening party. I did this last year where it was a bit of a pointless waste of time given that I was on straight after a Stones tribute band… not the best of Stevie warm-ups, I’m sure you’ll agree…

Still, this year we were told the band before us were a cappella as I mentioned…. were they shite! Four singers with massive fog-horn voices and a rhythm section doing vegas stylee cabaret stuff. Great.

Anyway, we played, a few people watched and really enjoyed it, so that’s good. More worthwhile than last year methinks.

The rest of the day was flyering and postering. Got back to the venue after the opening party gig, and friends started arrived – the oh so lovely G and J, our delicious hosts from last year, and Simon who organised the gigs with Duncan Senyatso last year at Greenbelt.

The balls up was that the gig before us wasn’t due to finish til 11! which is when we were due to start. Then they overran… fuggin’ jazz nonsense. So we got on as quick as we could, while they packed up slowly and chatted to friends. Started about 25-30 minutes late, but the audience (my biggest opening night crowd at the fest yet) stuck around and were very appreciative. We played pretty well – only a couple of mistakes that no-one but us would have noticed. So apart from the jazz-induced lateness, a very fine night.

No proper gig today – instead we’re doing the Midnight Carousel, a cabaret club, which’ll be great fun. :o)

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Where did summer go?

Not sure what happened, but when we got north of Leeds yesterday, it suddenly morphed from early August into late October – cold, wet and miserable.

Now in Berwick, and heading up to Edinburgh during the day today, then off to Glasgow for gig tonight at Brel (see you there Weegie Bloglings!). Hoping today’s weather is better than yesterdays – haven’t been outside yet…

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Other peoples opinions on your music…

I’ve just been reading a thread over at BassWorld.co.uk. One guy posted a link to a recording of a solo of his, and another guy posted the following response –

“I have to do a solo during “Into The Arena”, a rock instrumental we open the second set with, and I hate doing it, mainly because I’m not up to it, it’s really difficult to fire off some quick licks while keeping the momentum of the song going, and when there are musos in the audience, you just know they’re watching your every lame move, and thinking to themselves, “I could do better than that”. “

and here was my response –
I’m not sure how serious this feeling is, but if musos are in the audience are sat thinking ‘I could do better than that’, they really ought to F*** off. It’s such a non-response to music, such an irrelevance to what’s going on. For a start, ‘better’ is such a nebulous concept, given all the variables, it’s largely taste-driven so not really valid in terms of assessing whether the band are doing what they want to do, and the simple fact is that you are doing it, and they aren’t.

It’s like people who say ‘you really ought to do such and such’ – no, YOU really ought to do such and such! If you think it ought to happen do it, don’t go projecting your own musical wishes onto someone else who almost certainly doesn’t share them.

So, play the solo you want to hear, and remember that if there are musos in the audience, it’s because you’ve got a gig that night and they haven’t, so any complaints are moot.

It’s why I refrain from commenting on most of the stuff I hear online – there’s very little of it that really does it for me (all of us actively dislike most music – making great music is really hard, that’s why it’s such an addictive life-long passion. If it was easy, it wouldn’t feel special), but in the grand scheme of things, I don’t want to discourage people from making music by telling them that it doesn’t do it for me. That’d be a complete waste of my time and theirs, because no-one in their right mind should take what I or anyone else says about their music on an online forum as being worth the pixels it’s written on.

Play the music you want to hear, learn all that you can about the process of music making, never stop studying, try to stay focussed and ignore the opinions of people who haven’t actively earned the right to comment on what you do by demonstrating clearly that they understand fully what it is that you are TRYING to do. The relationship that matters is the one between intention and outcome, not audience expectation and outcome.

…that was my response on the forum.

This is something that really bugs me about the way things have gone with the net, and I’m caught in a paradox. Like any musician, I like encouragement. It’s lovely when someone says ‘I really like what you do’ – that doesn’t really require qualification, it just says that they are enjoying the music. It’s pretty much vital that a reasonable number of people feel like that, otherwise I’ll be looking for a new job rather quickly.

However, when people feel the need to qualify their comments with ‘but I don’t like this, and you should do this, and why don’t you do a whole album of funky stuff, or a whole ambient album or whatever’ there’s an assumption behind it that I’m in someway trying to meet their criteria for what a good album is. And I really couldn’t give a shit what their criteria is for a good album. In the midst of the creative process, I don’t make music for anyone but me. I write the music that I have to write, the music that feels like it can’t not be written. Once it’s recorded and out there, I do my best to market it, to get it to the ears of the people who are likely to like it. Of course I want people to hear it, and I really don’t mind if there are people who don’t like it – I’m a solo bassist, FFS, there are a heck of a lot of people who won’t have any frame of reference for instrumental music without drums or an orchestra. It’ll just sound alien and weird, and that’s fine.

The problem comes when I start thinking about those markets in the process of making music – ohh, maybe if I do something with a drummer, it’ll sell more. Or, conversely, I’d better not work with a drummer or solo bass purists will think I’ve sold out.

It’s all utter bollocks. As I said in the response to the email above, the relationship that matters is the one between intention and outcome, not audience expectation and outcome. – that’s a really really important notion for musicians to grasp. Your audience don’t understand what you do. Even if they like it, they as a mass of people don’t understand it. What they hear is different from what you hear, and their reasons for liking it are almost certainly not your reasons for recording it in the first place. That’s not a snobbish musician thing – I don’t understand a lot of the music I listen to, and I don’t need to. It’s become part of MY soundtrack, so has my own set of very specific and utterly subjective resonances and meanings and the thing I liked about it in the first place may well be something entirely un-musical – it reminds me of a place, or time, or person. None of that could or should have any influence on the person making the music. You can’t control it happening, and you certainly can’t recreate the effect.

Stil, loads of musicians try. Most of them disappear, some become very rich because of it. But in my limited experience with such people, they aren’t the happy ones. They aren’t the fulfilled ones. To sell millions of CDs for making entirely unfettered music is clearly ‘the dream’. Does anyone manage it? I dunno. I’ll tell you when I sell a million. :o)

The problem with worrying about sales is that small-artist-syndrome kicks in, and the music can become willfully obscure, as cynically influenced by public opinion as someone ripping off Britney. I can’t play that, it’s too pop. I can’t make that album, it’s too mainstream. it’s too happy, not dissonant enough, it’s got a singer, it’s fun, it might actually be an album that should by any commercial estimation sell thousands, and it doesn’t. Which makes me face up to the fact that great music doesn’t sell CDs. Great marketing sells CDs, and the music just has to be sufficiently inoffensive to stay out of the way of the marketeers.

OK, that’s a touch cynical, but still 95% true in the industry. That doesn’t mean that great music doesn’t sneak through – I thought Crazy by Gnarls Barkley was an outstanding pop record – but it’s not a prerequisite of selling records. Otherwise, Top Of The Pops would still be vital viewing, and it hasn’t been for well over a decade, and that’s why it’s been axed.

Anyway, musical bloglings, be true to yourselves, make the music you want to hear, need to hear, and be open to the advice and counsel of those who have earned the right to give it.

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This just in from Ahmad at Darbucka…

I’m going to blog about what’s happening in the middle east soon – it’s too huge for me to rush into without reading loads and doing a lot of thinking. It’s also heartbreaking.

However, this has just come in from Ahmad at Darbucka, about a fund-raising event they are holding on Thursday – I only wish I could be there. I can’t, but you might be able to –

____________________________________________
Many of us are deeply saddened and feel helpless about
the war in Lebanon. To help get urgently needed
medication to Lebanon, we are organising a charity
event at Darbucka. This has been organised in less
than a week not to waste time in getting the
medication to Lebanon, therefore we are relying on
friends to help promote this.

The event will take place this Thurs at Darbucka (182
St Johns St, EC1V, tubes – Angel or Farringdon). It
will start at 6.00 in the gallery with posters
displaying information about Lebanon followed by
entertainment downstairs, – tribunal dancers, DJs,
raffel (first prize -dinner for 2 at the Gallery
bistro at Darbucka, 2nd prize- champagne, 3rd wine,
plus other little prizes). We don’t want to exclude
anyone so we are asking for donations on the door
rather than an entrance fee. Lebanese meze platters
will be available – £5 of the cost will go to Lebanon.

Lots of us are feeling very depressed by what is
happening in Lebanon. This event will include
entertainment to raise our spirits so that we can
continue with our efforts and not forget about this in
a few weeks. This will not take away from the
seriousness of what is happening.

Even if you can’t come, please forward this message to
people you think might want to come.

Asthma inhalers are desparately needed. If you have
any unused inhalers or untouched antibiotics, please
bring these along to the event.

warm wishes
Ahmad and Catherine

DARBUCKA WORLD MUSIC BAR
182 St John Street
London
EC1V 4JZ

Tel: +44 (0)20 74908772
Mobile: +44 (0) 7930 345 288

www.darbucka.com

Tube: Farringdon or Angel

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Two nights at the vortex.

Been to two gigs at The Vortex in the last week – last Monday, I went to see the launch of Ingrid Laubrock and Liam Noble’s album ‘Let’s Call This…’ – I’ve heard Ingrid play before, in a quartet, but wasn’t familiar with Liam’s playing other than through MySpace. The music was exquisite, whether improvising or playing Monk tunes, the interplay between the two was gorgeous, with Ingrid switching between squeally extended range techniques and lovely lush full melodic stuff, with Liam providing entirely unpredictable but completely logic accompaniment – a really really interesting piano player.

The album is released – like so many great UK jazz albums – on Oliver Weindling’s Babel Label, home to such artists as Polar Bear, Acoustic Ladyland, Christine Tobin, Huw Warren… definitely worth investigating.

Then this saturday, Lianne Carrol was booked to play but fell ill, so the lovely and ever-so-slightly mad Estelle Kokot was booked to fill in, and did a fab job. It was also a rather nice London jazz hang, with JazzShark over from NYC, Orphy Robinson calling in, Huw Warren visiting from north west Wales, Christine Tobin nursing a nasty cut in her leg from a bike accident, and the aforementioned Oliver Weindling from Babel Label.

The Vortex is a lovely place to hang out – if you see something on their Programme that you’re going to, drop me a line and I might meet you there if I’m not playing myself.

Dalston feels like it’s a bit out of the way, but if you’re driving from north london it’s really easy to get to, and it’s just round the corner from Dalston Kingsland BR station… Go on, go out and support some homegrown jazz instead of wasting your time and money on an overpriced trip to Ronnie Scott’s.

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Douglas Coupland interview

Douglas Coupland is without doubt my favourite fiction writer. He’s the only one I can think of right now that writes in my language, where I don’t have to step out into someone else’s world to read it. Reading his books is like talking to friends you’ve known for years, with whom you have endless shared jokes and a whole private vocabulary.

I’ve just finished his book-before-last, Eleanor Rigby, which is wonderful – full of the usual Coupland-style reliance on huge coincidence and wrestling with the most enormous questions of modern life, without positing any particular answers, just challenging all of us to live for something bigger, better, more noble than the world as it’s presented to us.

There’s a wonderful interview in the back of the book, which I was trying to find a link to online, but all I found was this one which accompanied his latest book JPod. JPod’s another fine book, though it’s more impressive than deep, in the way that Eleanor Rigby is deep, or Girlfriend In A Coma… it’s back to the zeitgeist defining magic of Generation X, Life After God and Microserfs, rather than the more traditional novel narrative of Miss Wyoming or All Families Are Psychotic.

Anyway, if you haven’t read Eleanor Rigby yet, but the version got the interview in the back – the interview is worth the price of the book itself. Great stuff.

I just wish he’d keep a blog, but I guess after a day writing, the last thing you want to do is write more. It’d be like me putting tonnes of free music online daily. Great idea, but really, if I’m going to be recording music, it’s going to be working towards a bigger project, not just throw-away MusiBlog stuff…

And now that book’s finished, I’m reading ‘God Has A Dream’ by Desmond Tutu – more about this when I’ve finished it. Suffice to say, he’s one of the most profound and inspiring human beings I’ve ever come across.

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