Wednesday 2 January 2013

Nathan James Campfield / Breathe In The Silence

Name: Nathan James Campfield

Band: Breathe In The Silence (facebook.com/breatheinthesilence)


Where: Swansea


ED: I did a bit of research before posting this (Nathan told me the name of the "promotions" company) and realised these same people tried to book a date on my soon-to-be-former band's November tour. Luckily they were mega slack and by the time they got back to us to confirm the date (a week before the tour started and about 6 weeks since they'd said they'd put the show on) we'd been offered a decent support slot in Milton Keynes instead. Funny how things work out.


Basically, there was a gig in a Swansea city centre venue. A half dayer event with a good headliner and pretty sick bands throughout. On the promoter's part looking at it on paper, not bad. My band were also on the bill, and we were pretty stoked for it.


We knew beforehand these promoters owed our friend's band money from a previous show, but in this industry you sometimes bite your tongue and have to take what you can get. That same night, the venue also failed to receive the £100 hire fee that the promoter was supposed to pay, but they were let off under the condition that when they book again they have to pay upfront. 



In the build up to the show, we realised that these promoters were not the sharpest tools in the shed. Their logo was a stock image of an acoustic guitar edited in MS Paint, their posters were also mis-spelt and made on MS Paint too. You may think I'm just being overtly fussy, so I've attached the "poster" for the show to prove my point...



ED: HOLY SHIT THAT'S FUCKING AMAZING! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!


It gets worse (as expected). Not only were this bunch the hardest promoters to talk to, but I swear they couldn't string a plain English sentence together either. Examples include "Sho @7 lodin a 3" and "Wot is bak line?"


They also decided to only invite the bands to the gig's FB event page and not do any further promotion themselves. Not even a printed version of the poster they made on MS Paint, let alone a properly designed one.


The cherry on the cake was the day before the half dayer. In the morning there was talk of the show being cancelled, the reason being they had to pay money upfront. Neither could apparently afford it. 


They posted the news on the Facebook event page that the show had been cancelled and didn't contact any of the bands. Three different people even said that if they kept the show on, they would pay the venue fee up front for them!


This continued up until 3pm the next day (the day of the gig) until the final word from venue said the gig was not going ahead.


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