Know your limit

I give you a guitar as a present. Then you complain that I'm not there to tune it whenever you play it!

That is the feeling I get when I do favors for people and they just come back with problems. First, they nag that they want to play on a certain festival. I happen to know people and talk to the artist booker at the festival.

Suddenly the artist comes back to me and wants a better and bigger stage time. First, this artist is only booked on my recommendations. In reality, they have no value for the festival in this case.

After that, the management for the band starts to complain that they don't have the money to get to the festival and think I should fix some government sponsoring or if the festival can pay a bigger fee since they need more people with them to do a better show.

Not joking its kind of usual. People don't see the opportunity just the problems and want everything to be perfect.

What happens to the speech I got when they nagged. "we do anything to get on the lineup". No more like, I want you to fix us the most paid gig on our career on the biggest festival.

Had enough of that crap.

Making favours. Or really don't do it.

I had a friend that runs a music company. It's not a record label it's more a company that takes care of recordings and stuff. But we meet during a festival and he was speaking of a band that had used his services and he really liked them. Also, he wanted to get them into a festival in Sweden. I said that our booking team would take a listen to it if he sent it over.

So he did and our team listened and, yes it was pretty good. Not so were dancing in the ceiling but ok to get a small spot on the festival. I got back to my friend and told him that yes the band could get a spot at the festival. He then looped me in with the band telling the great news.

The band just said, OK we want 3000 euro to be there!

Well, you are not the main act, you are on a small spot and your friend just went through quite much to get you in the position. The band still was just that they needed as much paid as the main act on the festival to get there.

The thing is that they are not worth that kind of money. Second, there is more than we let go of a small spot just because we thought their friend was nice.

This is why I don't do favors for bands even though they many times says: If you find something you can book that for us. This is why I need papers on the bands I'm working with. The risk that they burn contacts that I have worked up are too risky.

This band really put my friend in a shit spot. Well, I just told him not to do favors for these pricks again and I guess he learned and would never help a band like that.

Get these blogs updates straight to your mail.
Enter your email address:

Don't trust old people.

And here we go again. Some old dude that worked on a record label during early 2000 finds a totally hopeless case and can't stop nagging about it.

What is it with these people? It seems they missed a lot of a information these years they were off from the industry working for the government or a school since they were chosen not good enough to stay in the business, but now are back.

You can hear me say, don't trust anyone over 40 in the music industry, they are too old.

In too many cases it is so damn correct. In too many cases they just come dragging with something that the cat puked up. The rest of the industry has already seen this band and just don't want to deal with them.

Then the jack ass starts to get the hopeless case favors that will just prolong the ultimate end.

We need some kind of diploma system. Just because you worked in the industry you really don't know it today.

It's about connections and favours.

The Magnettes did a show at Sofar Los Angeles yesterday. For that we needed special equipment. Usually on the tours we have drumpads and tracks but on Sofar it's semi acoustic.

So we got a problem, we needed a Cajón  and a acoustic guitar. Yes you can easy rent that, it's just for one show. But we had the show late evening and have to leave super early next morning there was no room for take any rented equipment back.

Here comes the coincidences that if you have a large network will happen and you as a manager are dependent on.

I was standing in a bar in Austin two years ago and a friend of mine introduced me to Jesse. Not long ago Jesse sent one of his bands Klez to Sweden and wanted some help to get the artist into the market. For that he connected me with his boss Roger at Soundx3. It showed that Roger was connected to some gigplaces in LA so we helped each other out. I got he's band some stuff in Europe and he got me some stuff in USA.
So now when we was in LA on a showcase Roger fixed with his bands and mine. I talked to Roger about the guitar. And sure enough he had the nicest guitar that we could borrow.

We needed the Cajón. A guitar is lying around is possible but a Cajón?

Now we have to go back several years. I meet Fiona Bloom in NYC I don't remember where and when, but she is very connected in the industry. I invited her to Live at Heart to speak at my conference a year ago. She then hooked me up with Jeremy Hulsh who has Tune in Telaviv in Israel to get him to Sweden. Jeremy spoke on Live at Heart and he invited me to Tel Aviv to see his conference.

On Tune in Telaviv I was on the hunt to book a band to Live at Heart 2017. And on a small gig I found this amazing band named Trubdr Adam Road. And I booked them on the spot.

Now it so happens that Adam is in LA at the same dates so I invite him to our showcase. During the showcase I was talking about my trouble with the Cajón. Adam then says, my manger has a Cajón! And it turns out that she is there with him. He introduce me to Yael Kempe and sure enough she has a Cajón that we can borrow.

It's things like this that are the music industry. It's people around the world helping out with things. It's about connections and favours.

So The Magnettes did a great show thanks to people I meet on totally different places years ago. The best part with it I got some really good new people that I will help achieve things in my network.

There is no back door.

I get these messages from time to time that people always think there is a backdoor to everything. Right now it was for a showcase festival abroad where we had booked bands before. Suddenly people think that we know a back door to that festival and start mailing me if I can give the email to a person that could bring in their artists to the festival.

In this case, all we did was applying and our band is that way that they took them on. Maybe they took an extra listening since they know me personally and we have meet during the years, still I took the normal way, even payed the entrance fee.

Sure I could have mailed my friends and pushed it. But I don’t think it would have helped. In most cases there is no back door. There are personal contacts so people listen to what you have to say. But that is not that much of advantage. It comes down to good music and a good product and if it fits in that year.

Same with recordlabels. Time to time people call me up to get the personal address to someone on the labels we work with. Same here there is little point. Yes if I personally send the stuff then they look at it since it’s me sending and they have worked with me for a long time. To be honest most of these people that ask a question like this don’t have their shit together and that is why they don’t get in. Also the reason why I don’t want to waste these peoples time with something that they can’t work with anyway. And it wouldn’t look good if I started to send stuff that is not good, and the person behind it doesn’t have their shit together, that can end in a loss of trust.

Then there is the back door. If you pay money, for example if you want your own stage on a festival there is certainly always a price. Seldom have these people that contact you wanted to pay that price, they just want the favor that never will be returned.