You will have all seen by now the Facebook Post that is going around titled The Top 39 Annoying Things That Bands Do (via MetalSucks.net).

I am a local musician and band member and anyone that knows me knows that I do as much or more than most to assure that gigs that I am involved in are successful for all concerned venue, acts, audience etc.

I understand that running a venue and being in the retail food and beverage industry is a hard gig with lots of competition for the entertainment dollar along with regulatory and other pressures like drink driving laws, neighours, staff etc etc etc. I am critical of commercial and community radio, the media, Industry Organizations, and Government for not supporting the local music scene and the artists, bands, venues, and other professionals who make up that scene.

I am also critical of acts who don’t show up on time prepared to play, don’t have sufficient skills or songs to do a full quality set, who don’t read worksheets, who are always looking for a bit more than they agreed to or deserve, who drink too much and make asses of themselves and generally give the rest of us hardworking professionally minded bands and artists a bad rap. I am sure that the 39 things that bands do is a true reflection of some but not of most from what I know.

Having said that, below are The Top 39 Things That Venues Do That Annoy Local Bands. Some of the items do not apply to every venue in my local which is Melbourne, Australia but some of them do and I am sure all or some of them apply world-wide. It must also be said that there are some great venues out there professionally run, well organized, who are honest with musicians, treat them with the respect they deserve and understand that they are there to play music and that playing music in the local live music scene costs money…no matter how much we musicians love playing and performing it still costs money.

1. Venues that for some reason assume that local, regional or even international acts are responsible for providing customers to consume their goods and services.
2. Venues that as a requirement of being booked in their venue want acts to promote gigs by providing posters to the venue and various other means of promotion then…
   1. Do no promotion themselves for the gig.
   2. Fail to put up the supplied posters at the venue or put them in places where no one will see them.
   3. Fail to even post the gig details on their own website or Facebook Page.
   4. Want to reduce the agreed fee terms because of “poor attendance”.
3. Venues who assume that acts should serve as their cheap marketing and promotion staff. Why would a business owner want to have a band of misfits as described in their “39 Things” undertake marketing and promotion on behalf of their business then wonder why there is poor attendance at their place of business?
4. Venues whose idea of cleanliness is relative to a barn full of farm animals…then wonder why people don’t come to their venue or leave after seeing their friend’s band…and fast.
5. Venues with “Bandrooms” who seem to think that a local band of any quality will draw a crowd to their smelly, sticky floored, uncomfortable, loud, obnoxious, poorly serviced, with a crappy sound system Bandroom at $10 a head (or any price for that matter).
6. Venues who charge bands for Sound Techs (who are generally overpriced and not that good), door person, security and other misc things, damn you might as well ask them to pay the bar staff and wash the dishes before they leave.
7. Venues with Bandrooms that are attached to a restaurant that will do absolutely nothing to convert restaurant customers to Bandroom customers, then complain about poor attendance in the Bandroom.
8. Venues who assume that their venue is the only place in town where live music is being played so everyone who has ever heard of a band, all of their friends, acquaintances, workmates, distant cousins, Facebook Friends and their entire family should be at their gig drinking up copious amounts of grog…on a Tuesday.
9. Venues that open up outside of the major music neighbourhoods or the centre of the nightlife then expect to have the same level of customers as the “in areas” but do no local advertising, no promotion with the intent of attracting a local steady clientele then expect local acts to pull people out of the “in areas” where they are much more likely to “get lucky” than they would out in the suburbs.
10. Venues who insist on having 3 acts on a night which requires 3 times as much set up and breakdown and time for customers to leak out. This actually reduces the pulling power of all 3 acts as they are limited to 40 minute sets when what might work better is an opener set of 30 – 40 minutes and 2 X 1 hour sets from the main act which allows fans to hear more of the bands they like, retains customers, and general patrons get to hear more music and less changeover noise…sometimes a venue needs to think outside the square develop a differentiation between their venue and all the rest.
11. Venues with no identity, what kind of music do you offer “oh a little bit of everything” so people that want to listen to some folk rock, dance to some hard rock, spin out completely with some metal or have a chat with friends with some nice original singer songwriter stuff in the background don’t go to your venue when they go out because they never know what to expect even though its conveniently around the corner. Thus the venue never establishes a steady clientele based on the music offered.(See Item 10)
12. Venues and or bookers with no “reply” function on their email systems or worse an automated response. How hard can it be to respond to emails…No slots available till XXXX, Send us links to your stuff and we’ll get back to you, No thanks we only do hard rock here, No thanks your band isn’t up to it…or whatever.
13. Venues and or bookers whose first response to an inquiry is, and I can assure you we have all heard this one a 100 times, “How many people are you going to bring in”… Answer 1 – 4 that is how many are in the band, Answer 2 – What do you think we are running a bus service, Answer 3 (my favorite) – How many people are you going to have there for us to play to? We play music it’s your venue you do the marketing.
14. Venues who hire “I just wanna be part of the music scene” bookers who have no idea of what they are doing, what kind of music is suitable, how much lead time is required for promotion, what happens at load in/out, what a rider is etc etc etc
15. Venues who hire or do a deal with a local “promoter” to act as a band booker for their venue … they will only book bands they are familiar with as it is safe, will not listen to any one who approaches…”I only act on recommendation…because I have no idea myself”. These are the people who will tell the bands anything followed by “oh yeah I will be there to make sure everything goes smoothly don’t worry” but when you get there no posters are up, no promo has been done, there are not enough mics, and the promoter you find out later went to some half baked local festival because he knew one of the drummers from Queensland.
16. Venues who tell you when you go to get paid at the end to the night that they don’t have any connection with the booker “they just book bands in here, we don’t know what they agreed to”…”didn’t you get a copy of the worksheet they sent us”…“no”…“can you call them up and confirm what it was”…“no we don’t have their number and they don’t work here”. Then you talk to the booker the next day and you get “what who did you talk to?, oh you should have talked to Lucy she is the manager she knows what’s going on”. We have all heard this before and frankly it makes the venue look really unprofessional … you wouldn’t eat there if they don’t know where the cook is ordering food from.
17. The Late Notice Gig – it goes something like this … on Tuesday you get a call from a desperate venue owner or booker “mate we had a line up drop out for this Friday do you think you can organize a line up”…“well I’ll see what I can do, not going to be much time for promotion”…”well mate how many people do you think you can bring in on short notice 50 – 60?” “not a chance if we can get a line up together at all”, or you could just have no music on Friday that’s another option.
18. The Double Booking – it goes something like this… on Tuesday you get a call from a venue owner or booker “hey sorry to do this mate but the booker/the owner booked this other act/function/staff party on Friday so I will have to shift you to another night how does 3 months from now look for you guys?” “No worries mate that’s great I’m sure all the boys will be really happy to hear that this Friday we are going to be able to stay home with Grandma rather than be out gigging like we told everyone in the world we were going to be doing…how about you pay us half of our fee as a cancellation fee”…“laughter can be heard from various parties for 5 minutes” conversation over.
19. Venues with Beer Gardens…yeah yeah we all know about the smoking indoors regulations for restaurants and bars but hey how about you design the place so that the Beer Garden is close to where the music is being played, or close the Beer Garden at least while the bands are playing…after all you want to be a music venue don’t you, or pipe the music out to the Beer Garden…you will sell just as much beer maybe more.
20. Booking bands to play on different stages without notifying any of the bands, so they get there and they find out that not only do they have to compete with every other venue for an audience but they have to compete with another stage in the same venue.
21. Venues that refuse to issue a worksheet or details of the agreement in writing prior to the gig no matter how many times you ask for one…plausible deniability it’s called “oh no there wasn’t going to be a fee just a rider” and remember Item 12 no “reply” function so there is no sense sending them a confirmation is there.
22. Pay – it goes something like this (I could probably list another 39 here);
    1. Expect bands to play from 8 – midnight for a couple sets of strings then tell them what a great deal it is.
    2. Don’t pay as agreed for any reason you can think of.
    3. “Oh sorry not enough of a crowd so we can only pay you half of what was agreed it was supposed to be a minimum of 100 people so we are doing you a favour”
    4. “You have to come back on Tuesday and beg for the agreed payment”
23. Bookers that lie.
24. Promoters that lie.
25. Venue managers that lie.
26. Venues who expect the initial contact person to organize support acts.
27. Venues with no organized secure gear storage area.
28. Venues who won’t send you an equipment list but swear they have plenty of gear…well until you get there and find out otherwise.
29. Venues with limited supply of power to the stage so you can only use 1 electric guitar or 2 guitars and no bass amp.
30. Venues with poor, dated, inadequate sound and lighting equipment, no back line and all of it in some state of disrepair…but hey we have a smoke machine.
31. Venues who provide a load in time but when you get there no one is home.
32. Venues who put no thought or planning in to load in/out access, parking, management as you are dragging equipment through a restaurant full of people, the bar, the toilets or the kitchen.
33. Venues who provide Sound Techs (and I use that term loosely) who double as bar staff, security or other duties while they are on the board, or set and forget Sound Techs who are more interested in their messages, Twitter or Facebook than the sound, or have no idea about mixing and are disciples of the volume fixes everything theory, or have a don’t bother me attitude when you ask for a bit more guitar in the monitor, or the worst continue to play with the mix in the middle of a song.
34. Venues who pay no attention to safety either in set up or during play.
35. Venues who claim to support local music but don’t and will book an out of town band no matter the quality if they can get them cheaper than a local band.
36. Venues who offer a percentage of the bar but can’t justify the figures when it comes to paying the acts “oh that’s what the accountant said was the take”.
37. Venues who offer a percentage of the bar then direct all the hard liquor drinkers to the main bar “we only offer beer and wine at the band bar”. Thanks for that next time we will only invite beer and wine drinkers.
38. Venues who claim that they are offering an act “exposure” so they should be willing to play for nothing just for the privilege of gracing their stage.
39. Venues that are firmly of the belief that all musicians play because they love it, that there are no costs involved in playing the local music scene and that playing music is a hobby not a business and they all have day jobs so they should be happy to play for free.

This is all true stuff and so it seems that this conflict of ideas, protocols, standards and understandings between the venues (along with the bookers and promoters) and the musicians (and their managers and fans) works both ways. The two things that venues need to come to grips with are 1. WE PLAY MUSIC, that’s what you hired us to do and we need to do it and do it right (and of course we professional types are always going to promote our shows as best we can) and 2. IT’S YOUR BUSINESS you are the ones making a profit or not the onus is on you to make your venue a place where people want to go listen to music, hang out, drink, eat and be happy.

You can read more from Bob Crain by following his blog, My Take.