MCD - Let's talk... (1 Viewer)

[Rimbaud]

Of course i could be totally wrong about black dice/mcd...

 

[SONYMEGADRIVE]

Originally posted by Rimbaud
Of course i could be totally wrong about black dice/mcd...

you're not wrong...
it's 12 euro (i think) and i bet there'll be hardly anyone there
anyway i don't care. it's not like mcd puts on many of the gigs i want to go to

andy

 

[thickaspigshit]

Saw John Spencer a coupla months back, you couldnt get tickets thru ticketbastard only at 'usual outlets' road etc. The gig was in the Tivoli and he played for 2 hours as in the music he played was 2 hours and not including support.

Proof it can be done. I guess some people have morals and maybe the time to plan it this way, maybe in this day and age bands (in the public eye) havent time/resources to do this.

MCD does it all for em, which isnt my personal gripe to be honest, thats reserved for TM. I love going to the 'local acts etc', wish more would, Goldblade on tuesday was excellent, yes im a fan, but thought the 2 other bands were top bollox. Not bad for 8 yoyos.

Just a shame it doesnt happen more often

 

[Knacker]

Well... MCD did fuck over those guys who were meant to put on Kid 606... they saved up loads of cash to bring him over and were then gazumped...

"AlphaRelish" is right though... it's a business and businesses do what businesses do. Only problem with them is that they're pretty much a monopoly and that's giving them free reign over ticket prices (hence the silly "that's the going rate" excuse).

If you're really pissed off with the situation, read Niall McGuirk's Document and do something about it.

 

[thickaspigshit]

whats niall mcguirks document?

Seriously, I dont know.

 

[snap-apple]

Originally posted by thickaspigshit
whats niall mcguirks document?

Seriously, I dont know.

'tis a book about a thing he ran (wiv other folks) called the Hope collective who put on loadsa independent gigs and brought bands (like Fugazi) over to ireland and kept low ticket prices etc. and the book has vegan recipies too. you can get it in road or on the things stall and its a really good read. alot of current bands have some roots in that scene. as does thumped.

 

[Pantone247]

http://www.thumped.com/hope/

stuff about Document here

 

[SONYMEGADRIVE]

Originally posted by Knacker
If you're really pissed off with the situation, read Niall McGuirk's Document and do something about it.

yeah - cook a nice vegetarian meal for your folks. they'll appreciate it.
they put up with your shit for long enough!

andy

 

[Ex-User (1487)]

there's plenty of different approaches you can take to putting on shows. i don't think anyone would shoot me for saying that mcd is at one end of the scale and that hope would be at the other. correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think hope was in the business of giving bands guarantees to play which many of the bands i put on *need* in order to take the risk on coming over here to play. if a band came over here to play, there's just no way i'd let them leave without giving them enough to cover their costs, as in what they've worked out, over the whole span of the tour, what they need to get from each date to cover the rental of their van, equipment, food, road and ferry charges etc... not just what it cost them to get from where they played the night before. this usually works out at around 300-400 euros per show and has meant that i had to give bands money out of my own pocket sometimes. but then a show might go really well for me and i'd get this money back so it all balances out in the end. i posted something on this earlier today, reasons why i charge 10.00 or so into shows for touring bands and less for shows for only local bands. i have been fortunate to see this from every angle, the punter, the promoter and then playing shows myself. 20 is the very most i'd ever pay in to any gig. no matter what. anyways, i've said too much.

 

[Pantone247]

just out of being nosey, on average would Alpha R "break even"
like I know your probably not keeping strict accounts, but generally does it cover itself?

just out of interest like

 

[Ex-User (1487)]

on average, the gigs do, yeah. i haven't lost money on a gig in a while. in the early days, i'd lose money every second show and make it back from the next one. (i lost over a grand on the blonde redhead show!!!) you need to understand that i don't pay myself as such from these gigs. i pay for posters, i pay the venues and the bands and there's really fuck all left over. i normally give the bands more that their guarantee as well if the show does well, simply because i don't really need to take money from it, i have a day job and for the most part, i do it for fun. and i know how hard touring is ... it's not fun, it's a job ... with perks. i don't depend on it as an income, that's why i'm able charge between 7 and 10 euros in. if anyone does the sums and is aware of how many people come to the shows i put on, it's pretty obvious i'm not getting silently rich off it but believe it or not, there are people out there who think i fuck people over in this respect... but there'll always be stupid pricks, ahhh what can you do...

 

[HarpoonFace]

What happened with the Kid606/MCD incident ?!

 

[GARYXKNIFEDX]

I'm not a fan of big promoters myself but hag makes some valid and obvious points. However I don't understand why the gigs are so expensive as compared to elsewhere. Maybe it's because we have no real choice once the gig is booked?
However from my own experience of being in a band and working with mcd I found it atrocious. My old band thekabinboy were asked to play with At the Drive in,There driver new us and asked specifically for us to play one of the gigs.We discussed it and decided it would be ok if.......We never found out because after we were asked we replied asking a couple of basic questions before we committed to it. They never replied to the many emails or phone calls that we made. My conclusion was they are very poor at there job.I know if I was playing for any of the smaller promoters in Dublin they would have replied,they always did. I would not be keen on playing for mcd since then.
Sorry I got off the point a bit there but it's a bit related

 

[Theseus Mock]

The only way to screw over MCD is by buying one of their tickets from ticketmaster by telephone. Order the ticket well in advance and then the week before the gig actually happens, ring them again, tell 'em you didn't get your tickets and ask where the fuck are they? They'll set aside duplicate(s) at the box office ready for collection on the night. (whilst you still have the ones that got *mislaid* in the post.)

Just remember to note the reference number they give you initially so that they know your details.


[edit: "Allegedly" this works]

 

[pete]

Some random quotes from posts of yore that may shed some light on some of the bad feeling... or maybe not, because i seem to remember there being a lot more bile and venom on the old, pre-november 2000, board.

Anyways, I just did a search for "promoter".

http://www.thumped.com/bbs/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4168

http://www.thumped.com/bbs/showthread.php?s=&threadid=630

http://www.thumped.com/bbs/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1527

http://www.thumped.com/bbs/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1552

http://www.thumped.com/bbs/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1541

Happened across this too:

PROMOTER ENTERS

"We're gonna go doors in a few minutes, so we're gonna have the great unwashed in here."(pointing to the queue for the gig.)

David: I bet we're more unwashed than they are. They're pretty clean.

EXIT PROMOTER

David: That's a perfect example of what we're talking about. You've got a promoter who's referring to people, who are paying money to come to his club, and whether he's being ironic or not…

Efrim: And he's not. The great-unwashed…nice guy…

David: That was the thing too. We started getting e-mails from people in Dublin. I don't know if you know these people are. It's a website called "Thumped" We got a bunch of e-mails from a group of people telling us that the people promoting the gig here were FUCKERS and that they could do it.
I think that hopefully we can get to a position that we're playing in cities and deal with people that we can respect, and that we are playing in spaces where we all feel comfortable playing in.
Every town seems to have one promoter with a monopoly on all the out of town bands coming over. But these people are providing an alternative. There's always gonna be an alternative.

(I could go on, but i got sidetracked reading posts by Florian Fricked, Osimino, Johnny_Fontane, Keeror, Vinnie, Johnny S. Legend Man and so many other old faves... oh and someone called "fake working class". Ah, them were the days.)

 

[pete]

usual disclaimer applies - it's late, i'm rambling etc

Originally posted by AlphaRelish
mcd is a business, businesses exist to make money and defeat competition.

That's bullshit, and you know it.

Yes, MCD is a business. Yes, they exist to make a profit. But no business has the right to "defeat" competition!

This is why we have a Competition Authority (try reading their website without thinking of the current concert promotion situation in Ireland). This is why businesses with Significant Market Power (such as formerly state run telecoms companies like Eircom, or British Telecom in the UK) are regulated to ensure they don't (ab)use their dominant position in their markets to prevent new entrants establishing themselves the marketplace.

MCD are the number one player in Irish concert promotion, and there's nothing wrong with that. They've been in the game a long time, and obviously have built good business relationships with bands, record labels & booking agents. Fair play to them.

But when combined with the number of venues they directly (or indirectly) control, it gives them a huge amount of power. They dictate who plays, where they play, when they play & probably most contentiously of all - for how much. At that just ain't healthy. It all creates the potential for them to engage in monopolistic practices - exclude competitors from your market and you can keep ticket prices artificially high, for example.

It'd be interesting to see if they've any 'no compete' clauses in their contracts with booking agents or labels, preventing bands on their roster that they pass on from doing business with other Irish promoters.

Now that I think of it, it could probably be argued that there's evidence of a cartel operating in the Irish concert promotion market. The market certainly seems to have been carved up into a couple of quite neatly defined demographic chunks between the main operators, and I don't recall ever seeing any promoters undercutting each other....

[MCD]... doesn't pretend to be anything else.

Apart from when it’s calling itself "Humanitat", of course....

 

[pete]

You know, there was a time when i could elucidate my thoughts quite clearly.

You'd never guess it, would you...

gahhh

 

[Vinnie]

The main thing is that Rollers Sparkers are supporting Guapo (I think). What a bill! Best bill ever. They'll confuse the fuck out of each other. That's a good thing!

 

[Vinnie]

First up, Pete, how was the wrestling? I don't think I've ever been so jealous of anyone EVER!

Second up, I've been playing gigs for some money for some time. Money always goes back into the band to create futher opportunities to play gigs and make records. Ask Dudley, Joss, Hag, hector, C4O, Fogarty, Damien, GTJ, Coldspoons, Anthony, Richie, Niall, Merve, Mattie, POR, Dee, HGF, Johns, et al whether we'd rather have music as a hobby or as a living and the answer is a given. We want to live off music. So badly. How badly? I don't know. Genuinely....

 

[nlgbbbblth]

Originally posted by pete
Some random quotes from posts of yore that may shed some light on some of the bad feeling... or maybe not, because i seem to remember there being a lot more bile and venom on the old, pre-november 2000, board.

is that old board still accessible?