Promoter's Commandments III: Thou Shalt Not Book More Than Four Bands Per Show

hey all!

This was set to run on Friday, but for some reason didn't. So here it is. I'll update again THIS Friday, for realsies.

This is the third in my “Promoter’s Commandments” series. Click here for the first and here for the second. All caught up? Good!

So let’s assume that you’ve accepted losing money, and gone ahead and promoted yourself silly to get a crowd in the door. You haven’t won yet. You still have a lot of room to screw the pooch with your show. And in my experience, nothing does it better than Band Overload.

There are a few reasons I think people shoose to turn what should be tiny shows into the NEXT-next coming of Woodstock. Sometimes people are googly-eyed running their first shows and want to include as many of their favourite bands as possible. Other times, people think that by booking the most acts possible they’ll draw more and make more cash. Both semi-logical theories, but ultimately ridiculous.

My housemate Luke has an awesome story about this. He used to play with a band called A Moment’s Embrace who did reasonably well in the indie Christian screamo scene. They once got booked for this huge show where the promoter had done everything right and there were around 500 people there, and AME were headlining. The only concern was that the promoter had overbooked and made a massive beast of the show, with seven (!) bands on the bill. Of course the openers went waaaay over their time allotment, so AME didn’t get on until well after midnight, when the crowd had dwindled to maybe 100 people. To add insult to injury, one of the openers sold out all their merch, while AME, who were supposed to be the “stars” of the show, were forced to pick up the scraps after their truncated set.

So to review: EVEN IF you book a band people actually want to see, and EVEN IF you manage to pull enough people to make money, and odds are they’ll leave after the third band of 10. There’s no better way to piss off your headliner than by thinning the ranks of the audience before they get on, and even you’re paying them a handsome fee to be there it’ll be tough for them to justify coming out for you again when you delivered an audience to someone else at their show.

Now, some people will undoubtedly say that if the headliner is big enough people will stay to the end. You’re right, but generally they won’t be there for the beginning. I know that if I see more than two openers on a flyer I make sure to get to the venue an hour and a half after doors. I’m all about finding new bands, but I’m also about seeing what I paid for and not wasting my time. If people show up late and miss the opening acts nobody gets the exposure that you (presumably) wanted them to have. A good general rule is to think about your own concert experiences before making decision about your own show. Does anyone enjoy hearing more than two openers before the headliners?