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Mark2 -> RE: steady gig contracts (Oct. 3 2005 19:44:30)
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Ha Ha Alternative? No this place was the hottest club in town and full of beautiful women, but I'm married, so it did me little good. Imagine humping your amp though a super crowded dance floor, then going back for your guitars, mike stands, etc. No fun.
Cancellation should pay no less than 50% of the gig, unless it happens the day of the gig, in which case you should get it all. Dealing with CD music is doing the work of a dj without pay, and letting idiots use your expensive mike and having to hang out to adjust it for their voice and keep it from feeding back, thus depriving you of part of your break, is lame! Once after a flamenco show, I got into a beef with an event planner over overtime. She agreed to pay an additional $500 for 20 minutes, this after they had ignored two 50 minute sets with some of the better flamenco dancers/singer in our area. They wanted to dance, so we played rumba for what seemed like 20 minutes straight. The audience, all Texans, were up doing the conga line, the dancers were down on the dance floor, doing that cheesy "get the audience up to dance" routine, while me and the other guitarist were breaking our hands. The event planner followed us off the stage, and started reading me the riot act because we only played 17 minutes! After beefing with her, I returned to the stage to breakdown the pa, only to find drunken texans had taken over the PA and were singing country tunes, one of them banging on my condenser to keep time! Took an extra 45 minutes to get out without causing further bad feelings.
I do agree about the CD music helping your break-once I put on some cante during a break, and after a couple of minutes the client came running in to tell me we had to go back on now, because they hated the cd!!!
OTOH, yesterday my four piece played a gig at a bay front multi million dollar spread and at some point a yacht cruised up with a happy birthday sign on it with two guys on the deck playing cajin music! I have no idea if the boat was the present, but they had the dough, so who knows. They decided it would be fun if the band had a few drinks , so we were given excellent martini's , good food, good audience, good acoustics, and good money. The violin guy was going on about how much he liked the "trophy wives". If I could do that kind of gig everyday, my day gig would go bye.
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