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Promotion/venue troubles
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| Dojomaster26 |
I'm sure some of the long time posters here have had this come up...
Gex and I run events in NC under the name Random Transitions. On this coming Friday we were supposed to have an event at a new venue in Hickory called Medusa. The top floor of this place was going to be occupied by a Breaks group, and we had the bottom floor. The Hitmen were doing a PA for the top floor, while we booked titanZERO to headline the bottom floor. Flyers were made, marketing was done, TA thread posted, etc etc.
(Gex was handling all of the work with this event, since I'm here in GA, so he has been responsible for organizing the Random Transitions events in NC while I work on getting events going here.)
Today, and I mean three days before the event today I found out from Gex that the event has been cancelled! The owner at Medusa changed his mind about pricing at the last minute. The deal was that we were going to eat the cost of the headliner and have a no cover event. The idea here was to bring people in to buy drinks on an otherwise empty night for the venue, while we get a venue to play in return. From what I heard (Gex can elaborate on this), the owner decided that he was going to charge a cover @ the door, with none of the proceeds going to either promotion group (after advertising everywhere about this FREE event, the least one could do is help us pay for our headliner!). On top of that, the owner wanted to charge $1000 for rental of the venue, even though we agreed beforehand to have a no cover, no rental event. Finally, the fickle owner told Gex that the bottom floor (our floor) was going to be closed!
In a nutshell: We had a gig all planned out, and three days before said gig, the owner royally f***ed us over :(
Hopefully Gex will come on here and clarify/fill in any details I may have missed.
I am trying to do damage control at the moment, but being here in GA leaves me to only making phone calls. Although this event was out of my hands, I am still annoyed that the Random Transitions name has been damaged like this, especially when we are still trying to get our start in the area.
Some lessons can be learned from this:
1. Good communication is key!
- Somewhere mis-communication happened. Maybe we weren't clear enough about the arrangements for this events, or the owner wasn't clear with us about what was going to happen. Either way, a message was lost somewhere, which is why we are getting shafted so soon before the gig.
2. Talk to the owner/those involved with the event yourself!
- Gex relayed to me that the top floor promoter (who I won't name on this site) was handling the communication with the owner. This is probably where some miscommunication happened. I would like to have club owners' numbers on my phone's Contacts list, if possible.
3. Get a contract!
- Its sad that we may have to resort to this even in such a small-scale situation, but money was lost in this deal, and our reputation was damaged as well. Having a contract with a security deposit that is refundable on the day of the event may become standard practice for us...
4. Know the venue/owner before jumping into a deal!
- I don't know much info about the venue that we were supposed to play at. Normally I would want to visit a place a couple of times to make sure that its not too sketchy, and that our event will fit the venue (don't play DnB at a Country bar :D )
Is there anything else that we should be considering/doing different? What can we do to 'mend our wounds' from this non-gig? Any advise from promoters on here would be appreciated. |
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| Progress Ent. |
| Welcome to the world of being a promoter. Had a club owner close his club when I had DJ Rap, Seb Fontaine, Matt Darey, and Steve Porter under contract. Cost me a relationship with a good friend, who will remain nameless, because of that one. |
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| Dojomaster26 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Progress Ent.
Welcome to the world of being a promoter. Had a club owner close his club when I had DJ Rap, Seb Fontaine, Matt Darey, and Steve Porter under contract. Cost me a relationship with a good friend, who will remain nameless, because of that one. |
That really sucks :( At least we only lost some fees for the headliner and fees for the rental of CDJ1000s and a DJM600 mixer... |
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| Freak |
| Welcome to the club business.... its full of and s. |
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| Allied Nations |
| quote: | Originally posted by Freak
Welcome to the club business.... its full of and s. |
seriously! |
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| miamitranceman |
| Yeah man, get some sort of contract from now on. The deposit is a good idea. |
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| Tony Morello |
| quote: | Originally posted by Freak
Welcome to the club business.... its full of and s. |
+1
don't forget blow, it's full of blow too |
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| IntegraR0064 |
Wow, sorry to hear that....it sounds like you learned from it though, I really don't have any more input for you.
Thanks for posting |
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| Nemesis44 |
Yup, totally agree with Freak and Tony.
Get everything you can in writing if applicable, I know small time clubs might not agree to that but you are entering a business agreement. And never rely on another group of promoters to do anything for you, never, there is a conflict of interest and they will want to stitch you up in a lot of cases as you may steal their thunder.
That said, I wouldn't mind coming to one of your events and playing in the new year... how about it?
Cheers
Nem |
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