attn: people who go to shows (seriously reply)

[kasey (admin acct)]

I'm know this gets talk about a lot ect. but what can we do to make it easier for people to know about shows? Cuz just about every show i've been too has had pretty a weak turn out. I know it's the summer and people are at the lakes ect. but there should be more then 20 people at a show.

I know lots of people say they feel out of the loop since there haven't been many as many shows but there's myspace, xanga, and an email list now, plus this board, and flyers so you shouldn't have to look hard.

but what can we as promoters do to make people want to come to shows? Charge less? bring better bands? more local bands? if you have any ideas post them.

there's also little things you can do as show goers if you enjoy going please invitie new people if everyone brings one person we double the amount of people.

Ps.this isn't about making money or anything. Granted I lots 100 dollars last night (and it wasn't my show) its just more fun when more people are there and most the bands we bring are pretty good and well worth 5 bucks to watch.

[Wang]

I say bring more bands that people know about. I mean yeah I'm sure if your bringing a band that you like, it would be sweet, but you gotta think about if alot of others like them and would actually come and see them.

And with flyering, alot of the time when you flyer and just give someone a flyer and walk away, that doesnt really help alot of the time. You have to explain to them about the show. The price, the time, where it is, what type of music it is, and all that jazz. You gotta be friendly about it. That's what Me and Jed do at least, and it really seemed to help with the step on it show. Another thing is to get people to help you out. For example, we have a friend that goes to the skate park all the time, and we give him flyers to hand out, THIS HELPS. It really did for us. If you know someone that goes places where theres alot of peeps, giv'em a stack of flyers.

Another good thing to always do is to put the bands websites on the flyers, so people can listen to them and can know what's to be expected.

I really don't think charging less would be nessesary, $5.00 is a hell of a deal for a show. Charging less would only be nessesary for an all locals show I think.

More local bands would help. Get local bands that attract alot of people. I think Marty Mcfly should be on every show hehe, cause they bring alot of people, and they kick ass.

That's all I got for now, post more ideas peeps.

[JedFelix]

I think charley is right but in the end it realy hasn't helped that much, we could have just been lucky at step on it?like half those kids were there to see marty mcfly. Im thinking stripers??? other thatn that i think we should post a link to this thread everywhere and see if kids might actualy tell us some stuff??

[Ryknow]

this always has been an issue with shows weather the show is mostly out of town bands or all locals, i think people just do not care any more( or the munber of the one who do care has gone down alot in the past year or so).... i still hear people bitch that there is nothing to do here... then how come there is a show almost every weekend here... for god sakes we have every kind of band coming here form the just formed local act to bands that are on the ozzfest playing here this summer....i have racked my brain for to long on this and have no ideas how to get more people to show... that is why i'm not going to do shows for a while i might stop for good....i have been going to show in this town for a very long time and one thing i do not see any more is alot of band members at shows like i have in the past maybe that might help( afterall the HPR said there is something like 200 bands in the fm if the average band has 4 people in it that wold something like 800 people that you'd think would want and see what other types of bands are in the FM even if i had half of the band people at one of my show i'd have no clue what to do......

ryknow

[kasey]

the main reason i think shows aren't drawing is a severe lack of diversity in the bands that are playing here. i'm not saying this about every show by any means, but overall the scene in fargo really lacks anything melodic right now. there's too much falsecore and standard hardcore punk, and not enough of any other genre of music. i think by adding a diverse assortment of music on the same show, more people will come, be it a touring band or a local that is involved. too many times the same touring bands or another band very similar to a band that was just in fargo have too many shows. this dwindles interest and makes people want to search for other things to do besides going to shows because there's rarely anything that appeals to them.

diversity is key.

[bill]

I believe everyone has some good points, and I have always throughly believed in diversity, but the show on Sunday was quite diverse there was everything from indie to hardcore on that show. The Step on It show was an all hardcore show pretty much, except for Code of the West and that drew a shit ton of people. Though I do believe diversity is good, you cant force people to start a shit ton of bands in differnet genres haha. I think shows are awesome though if you have lets say bands like Battle at Sea, Any Day, Dude Bazooka, and then some crazy out of towners or whatever. But what sucks sometimes with this though the diversity brings in many people, there are some people who will be like "oh this band isnt a metal band I dont want to watch them" and then they will leave. This sucks indeed. I try to make shows I set up as diverse as possible, but this hasnt even been helping lately. Chris Moore will always do a show at the All Star with pretty much all locals and everyone shows up. The show on Saturday was mostly locals and there was a quite a few people there. I believe a diverse blend of locals are the key, but the hard part is getting people to stay for the touring bands. Even if you throw them in the middle people still go outside. This is a brutal scene and it fuckin sucks. Like Charlie said, more well known bands would probably help, but a lot of the smaller bands are way fuckin better. Bands such as Three Fifteen and End of a Year were amazing and way better than a lot of the bands out there. Those smaller bands are all way to underrated and much better than a lot of the shit in the "mainstream" you could say. The next show I am doing is with a band called Man Mad Films from Massachusettes sometime in October. They are crazy as hell and their music alone is diverse. www.myspace.com/manmadfilms but a lot of people will not know who they are. I have in my head for this show to be diverse with bands being Any Day, Code of the West, Battle at Sea and possibly one more. Maybe Marty Mcfly! I havent asked any of these bands yet, but these are just ideas for the show. These are all great ideas and we need to keep brainstorming like this.

[bill]

correction it is www.myspace.com/madmanfilms

[JedFelix]

Maybee people should learn to be more involved that come to shows. There are alot of people who are involved but some of these kids that come to shows have no idea how the show happened or what gose on. I think it would be sweet if more people were pumped to go out and flyer for shows that are coming up, just litle things like that would help alot. OR we could go with my first idea and get stripers.

[Avery]

Hey,

I like Wang's input, when you take an extra minute or so to talk to someone or a group of people, it has way more effect than just shoving a flyer at them. Word of mouth is the best chance of getting the news about a show out.

I don't think it is neccessary to lower prices, i haven't ever set up a show myself (although i'd like to sometime in the near future, with any combo of these bands just cuz i want to see them again: Battle at Sea, Descry, Any Day, Necktie Suicide, The Black Letter, and of course the infamous Marty McFly, although i've never heard them, but everyone is raving about them.), but anyway, my point is it costs money to put on shows, and if someone is willing to put their time and effort into promoting, that should be payment enough, they shouldn't be losing money as well.

The best suggestion I can add to this post is that shows should be advertised further in advance, maybe this is just me here (since i live in the remote area christened "Hawley, MN"), but it seems like i rarely find out about a show more than two or three days in advance. This is a problem for me and i assume for others in the same situation as me because i can't get out of work unless i take a day off more than a week in advance, so unless my schedule is luckily open i have trouble making it to shows.

That's all i have to say.
For all the promoters who read this (ryknow) I realize you probably get quite frustrated with low turn outs but don't doubt for a minute that your efforts are appreciated, thanks for all of your work.

My Myspace page = www.myspace.com/15751357 ( i know, i need to change my URL), Add Me as a friend. C ya around

P.S. Before I could finish typing this i noticed Jed made a post, and yes i have to agree, strippers are indeed good.

[cutandrun]

What we need to do is all get togther on shows. There are 20 people setting up shows and 1-3 people work togther on setting up a show.

Why dont we all work togther if we all handed out flyers we would hit more people, Shows would not be double booked, and it would just be easier all the way around.

I will also make a pitch for doing shows at the VFW, it is cheaper than billiards, air conditioned, and you do not have to clean up. That is my job.

Dan

Plus we should have dude bazooka play every show.

[JedFelix]

cutandrun said:

Plus we should have dude bazooka play every show.

[kasey (admin acct)]

so far the only thing I don't like about this thread is almost everyone who posted sets up shows. I want more feedback from the average person.

As far as what Danny said I almost think we should all get together and make some kind of booking collective type thing, where we could all work together to do shows. The only thing is we all like different kinds of music so it would be hard for us to decide what shows to do. We could do it right not like down and out, but usually things like that don't work for very long. I'd be up for it if anyone else wants to. let me know

The diversity thing is a double sword like Bill said. My biggest show the outbreak show had like 200 people and it was all core bands, the last ep show was huge and it was mostly core bands. I just find it's like 20 people for each bands and they only watch the band they came for.

I like what charley said we should just get people excited about that bands. Like modern life is war Justin, Gabe, Trev, and I hyped them up for like a year before they came and that show was a big turn out. That's why I have a distro I try to sell cd's of bands coming here and bands I'm trying to get here but mostly sell them to my friends. I envisioned makeing the scene like 10x better but I didn't chance much.

Doing shows is really stressful and you get burned out even when they go well and need to take time off, but I'm ready to go and take a chance and having a few failures and good shows

[justin]

i agree with danny on working together for more things, and the whole trying to do a real collective f/m booking thing that wont fail. so far this board and the various myspace/xanga sites have helped i think.

i also agree with VFW shows, i would have done sunday's show at the VFW as well as Crime In Stereo, but i booked them back in may at billiards so there isnt much i can do about it now.

if people worked together on shows more, like even splitting the venue costs and such, then that would at least take some stress off the promoter(s) because then one guy isnt losing a huge chunk of money.

as everyone knows it is unrewarding (minus seeing awesome bands and such) and stressful, but that doesnt mean that you should have to break your bank account to do one show.

i had more to say but thats for another time. the diversity thing is a tough one, simply because so many people are close minded when it comes to music (i.e. hardcore kids only want to go to hardcore shows, etc). even i will think twice about going to a show if it looks something like this

Metal Band
Metal Band
Band I want to see
Metal Band
Metal Band

nothing against the fargo metal bands, its just not my music scene. i also think that there is such a thing as being TOO diverse. i hope you all understand what i mean by that. we need diversity in bands, yet we also need similarities to get people to want to really go.

for example, the Crime In Stereo show is primarily a hardcore show that danny and i are doing together now, but with that you've got long island poppy hardcore, heavier straight up hardcore (life long tragedy) and the band from miluakee is more of a screamo hardcore band. then of course we have the locals, fast and thrashy what the h?! and marty mcfly, and melodic any day. hypothetically, this show should be a huge success in fargo.



and for the record i absolutely hate making a separate little sub-genre for every band, i just did so above to show what i was talking about. in the end they are all hardcore bands plain and simple.

[cutandrun]

Ok, heres the deal we start a collective of our own. Here is a little idea that Gage from sioux falls gave me: We do out of town bands like we usually do and do one all local show a month with that money we put it away in a savings account or just a cash box. If we start having bad shows we will have that money to fall back on in case we lose out. Jed, Charley, Konrad, Trevor, Justin? Are you all in on me with this? I will talk to Chris Hennen who does a lot of the bigger shows and see if he wants to be part of this. We can talk about this more and have a meeting or something just get back to me at [e-mail].

Danny

[Wang]

I'm down with dat for sure. Count me in.

~C-dubs

[bill]

I think that would be a good idea, but we have to be careful to be fair. To make sure the bands people want to play, play. Also we need to be careful of making such a thing elitist so it makes it hard for other promoters who may just want to bring a band here and could make it hard for different locals to play. (i.e. new bands or kids who just dont know anyone) we need to avoid biases.

[bill]

also I do agree with Konrad in that we need input from the average person everyone who posted on this is either a promoter or in a band or both. The collective thing is a good idea, but we need outside input from the show going public.

[Wang]

Yeah, more peeps need to know about the thread, SPREAD THE THREAD!

(although most people will look at it, and leave, and not post anything)