In part one, I pointed out how many artists are not looked after by promoters and how promoters fail to pay attention to detail.
As well as these issues, another great way to kill live music interest is to try and promote live music in a space that is totally unsuitable for this purpose. I have countless examples of this, but here are some favorites.
Once example is a venue where the layout means that even though they “promote live music” only a third of the café can actually see the artist! The others can hear the playing faintly in the distance above the conversation of assembled diners. Another example was an EP launch where the light on the stage was literally a single 60 watt light bulb which gace out such poor light that my video recorder couldn’t properly get a picture and this piece of gear worked well in low light, but not that low light!
Other issue can be where the sound kills the artist performance. This can be true for even major venues where I hope against hope for decent sound and its always terrible. I’ve stopped going to such venues as I know I’ll always be disppointed. Unfortunately artists can be complicit in maintaining all these problem scenarios and the end result is that they unintentionally are killing the public’s enthusiam for live music.
This is mostly all avoidable with a little bit of joined up thinking and attention to detail. Perhaps I’m expecting too much?
