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pilsner_ffc

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On 21/02/2020 at 19:54, The Naitch said:

Passed up the chance to go to that gig tonight. Regretting it big time.

It was class. Great fun.

Inhaler were excellent last night, enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. The sound in the venue was okay for once as well.

Got Temples at King Tuts tomorrow night, The Orielles at G2 on Wednesday, potentially The Wants on Saturday and The 1975 on Sunday. Quite glad Lana Del Rey cancelled on Friday as I don't think I could've really been arsed, despite her new record being decent.

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On 20/02/2020 at 13:14, AsimButtHitsASix said:

Well that's fucking diabolical. At the risk of sounding like a hipster fud I doubt bands make more than £200 profit (if they're lucky) for a lot of the touring bands I go see. There's no way brilliant mini festivals like Decolonize Fest, for instance, could continue if they need to recoup nearly £250 for each person performing.

Scum. Subhuman scum.

Is this designed to kill touring bands in the uk? £250 to enter + you need £1000 sitting in your bank account and also needing 3 months notice(so no chance of bands getting added as support in the preceding weeks or joining a festival bill late on)

we’re going to see far fewer bands and paying higher prices for those that will come, for what benifit?

 

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3 minutes ago, parsforlife said:

Is this designed to kill touring bands in the uk? £250 to enter + you need £1000 sitting in your bank account and also needing 3 months notice(so no chance of bands getting added as support in the preceding weeks or joining a festival bill late on)

we’re going to see far fewer bands and paying higher prices for those that will come, for what benifit?

 

The majority of touring acts from outside the UK don't make much, if any, money from tours over here and survive on per diems and their cut of sales from the merch stand. Sturgill Simpson said as much in an interview as recently the other day, and he is a fairly well-established act (playing venues of 1,000+ capacity). 

With stipulations like this, there will be next to no overseas artists playing here except stadium and arena sized acts, for whom ticket prices are ridiculously high anyway. UK-based grassroots artists who rely on support slots with touring acts will suffer massively as well and will be stuck in the cycle of playing with the same UK-based bands, with far less cashflow to sustain themselves solely as musicians and therefore unable to break out in order to tour Europe and overseas.

Utterly grim in every way possible.

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19 minutes ago, parsforlife said:

Is this designed to kill touring bands in the uk? £250 to enter + you need £1000 sitting in your bank account and also needing 3 months notice(so no chance of bands getting added as support in the preceding weeks or joining a festival bill late on)

we’re going to see far fewer bands and paying higher prices for those that will come, for what benifit?

 

I saw Weedrat (check 'em out: https://weedrat.bandcamp.com) last year at Decol and they were outstanding. This is an unsigned band from an Indian reservation who nearly never made it because it's near impossible for some Native Americans living on reservations to get passports. Four game over: the band plus one roadie. Even with a fundraising effort to get them over and folk sorting them out digs and food for free they still made a loss and tried to make it up with a few other gigs around the country they managed to get by begging, borrowing or stealing. I would never have heard of them if it wasn't for that gig and almost certainly will never see them again. Throw another £2k onto their costs and they just aint gonna come over. Ever.

Even bands who I consider a decent sized band like, I dunno, Bleached. Will they come? If they do come are they gonna take the risk paying for travel/accom up in Scotland and putting their trust in a booking agent to make it worthwhile when they know they can cover their costs, at least, with one decent sized show in London?

And all this is just me, with ma narrow wee musical tastes, but ignores musicians of other genres like jazz or world music or whatever other niche markets are out there. Even classical music will take a hit and make it more out of reach for many. £250 per person for an orchestra and the road crew? Does it include actors and ballet dancers and other forms of live theatre? Where does the line get drawn? Wrestlers?

ETA: I do listen to a lot of anarchist punk bands so I imagine they'll turn up on tourist visas and tour using other band's gear and find an illegal way round it which will be a laugh

Edited by AsimButtHitsASix
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4 minutes ago, AsimButtHitsASix said:

I saw Weedrat last year at Decol and they were outstanding. This is an unsigned band from an Indian reservation who nearly never made it because it's near impossible for some Native Americans living on reservations to get passports. Four game over: the band plus one roadie. Even with a fundraising effort to get them over and folk sorting them out digs and food for free they still made a loss and tried to make it up with a few other gigs around the country they managed to get by begging, borrowing or stealing. I would never have heard of them if it wasn't for that gig and almost certainly will never see them again. Throw another £2k onto their costs and they just aint gonna come over. Ever.

Even bands who I consider a decent sized band like, I dunno, Bleached. Will they come? If they do come are they gonna take the risk paying for travel/accom up in Scotland and putting their trust in a booking agent to make it worthwhile when they know they can cover their costs, at least, with one decent sized show in London?

And all this is just me, with ma narrow wee musical tastes, but ignores musicians of other genres like jazz or world music or whatever other niche markets are out there. Even classical music will take a hit and make it more out of reach for many. £250 per person for an orchestra and the road crew? Does it include actors and ballet dancers and other forms of live theatre? Where does the line get drawn? Wrestlers?

ETA: I do listen to a lot of anarchist punk bands so I imagine they'll turn up on tourist visas and tour using other band's gear and find an illegal way round it which will be a laugh

I can see a few blagging it(I know some uk bands do this in the states) 

hadn’t thought about other art forms, could this have an impact on the fringe? 

This has been set up either by someone who is completely ignorant on how much the industry relies on artists working together just to put shows on or by someone who is deliberately ignoring it. 

Yeah arena bands can afford it,  but are artists going to get a chance to play them if they haven’t had the chance to build a fan base in smaller venues first? 

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I can see a few blagging it(I know some uk bands do this in the states) 

hadn’t thought about other art forms, could this have an impact on the fringe? 

This has been set up either by someone who is completely ignorant on how much the industry relies on artists working together just to put shows on or by someone who is deliberately ignoring it. 

 

Yeah arena bands can afford it,  but are artists going to get a chance to play them if they haven’t had the chance to build a fan base in smaller venues first? 

 

UK bands who blag getting a visa are just at it, to be honest. It’s not a difficult process, and indeed far easier than lying to the CBP officers about a 6 week trip which goes to different cities every day.

 

You see it every day during SXSW - a band which has been struck from the showlist at short notice is almost always due to “visa irregularities”. And that’s just for “Western” bands. Bands from Africa or Central Asia are blocked for no reason whatsoever.

 

My guess is that there’s already a visa process for band coming to the UK to perform, but this is just a way of bumping up the prices. It’s certainly going to prove problematic for bands on labels which already struggle to turn a profit. As you say, this has been made implemented by some 60 year old white guy who only listens to Classic FM (and classical music orchestras is another issue) and who thinks all musicians are millionaires.

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