Fri 27th Feb 2009

I had a long shift at work because of overtime through the evening after working a full day. There was a gig I had to manage. It would have been a fairly easy too, were it not for a ‘difficult’ support band. The show as a whole was light-hearted, unpretentious and generally pleasing. I generally find such ‘non-precious’ occasions must more instantly satisfying, whereas egoist parades only seem to develop any worth with the benefit of hindsight (mainly because the most pedantic and disciplined of artists consistently seem to be the ones who go on to have greater commercial success).

I consider myself to be quite an easy-going sympathetic type of character. This is, after all, an industry whereby people are sold as products rather than materials. Sometimes however, certain artists can even manage to rouse my much-repressed irritation. 15 minutes after they were due on stage, the support act tonight were nowhere to be seen. This is despite numerous printed signs and a previous approach from me, informing of them of the stage times. When I eventually found the rogue act, they told me not to worry, since their act was only short, they would still have their set finished on time. This turned out to be a lie, as they continued playing for a good quarter of an hour past their allotted time. I am by no means dictatorial, and can understand it when a band strays five minutes or so over time, but fifteen minutes really is pushing it. It might sound a bit of a laugh, but this type of behavior seems disrespectful to the other artists (who may need to have their own sets cut short), the venue staff and the audience alike. On top of this, after their performance, the band left all their gear over the stage and simply went home. When I say gear, this included two big amplifiers, a couple of keyboards and more confusingly, a bench press. This meant I had to move this heavy array of equipment off the stage by myself ready for tomorrow’s artists to load their gear in. It was very annoying. Needless to say, they won’t be invited back to perform again.

I simply cannot understand the point of this kind of behavior. If acts want to get bookings, the least they should do is follow some simple rules, which are only ever laid down in the spirit of fairness.