********************************CLUBS 101***************************** This email thread conversation is a sloppy crash course on running night clubs. It is in response to a series of questions about running a club, having bands play, costs, promotion, ect. The dilogue is from an email thread on the Kontrol Faktory rivethed list. I hope it is as informative for you as it was therapudic for us to write. Views expressed are from personal experience. YMMV. ********************************CLUBS 101***************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Quoting White Rabbit ...Why, is there always drama when booking bands? ...How much does it cost to have a club? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 17:04:00 -0800 From: stevil To: "White Rabbit" CC: rivethed list Subject: Re: [rivethed] clubs 101 - was: No Final Show these were the same questions i had before i ran a club. i played in bands for years dealing with snobby promoters, venues that couldn't put a show together for the life of them, pay to play(aka: presale tix), bad sound/lighting, we can't pay you excuses, "it's easier/cheaper for us to have a dj than to bother with bands", ect. the bare bones you need to have a club are: 1) a venue - $ negotiable depending on location, night, gear(sound/lighting) & how desperate they are to get people in the door to buy their booze. usually ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand per night. deals for divying up the profits also vary & can effect 'rent'. i had a nice clean 'we keep the door,you keep the bar deal' with Red Velvet. but, clubs often split percentages especially on weekends or 'no cover' nights. but then you have to really watch your back. 2) music - also negotiable depending on your dj's, your bands, your relationship with them. unless you are flying in the latest bigshot band/dj/robot from europe, you can get away with a couple hundred bucks or less per night. alot of people just want the exposure or enjoy performing for fun. 3) advertising - fliers, posters, website, weekly ad's... plan on a few hundred bucks a month. you can cut corners if you can design & distribute the shit yourself or get slave labor to chip in. the jobs include: owner: the guy who pays the rent & wants to see people drinking, doesn't want the neighbors to complain, or the cops to shut his venue down because of yourjackass patrons who cant respect the haus. security: somebody to check id's & escort people who cant hold their alcohol out the door. often included in your 'rental' fee. bartender: the person who puts that liquor license the owner spent so much money on to use. promoter: person who is responsible for bringing heads in the door. sound/light geek: person who makes sure all the equipment works so your patrons dont throw shit at you for having a shit club. the door chick: someone to take the money & refuses to let anyone in for free. ;) entertainment/content: dj's, bands, karaoke machine, ect. dj's & karaoke machines bring in a reliable crowd with a set format. bands in general are less reliable but are often capable of drawing larger crowds usually at an extra expense. -dj's: it's 1 or 2 people, 2 turntables & a microphone, they come in, spin records & leave. -band: 2-10 flakey musicians with gear to setup & take down, with varying degrees of egomania & incompetence. some bands are awesome, draw heads, help promote, easy to get along with, know their gear. others are a pain in the ass, want you to provide a ton of extra equipment, a rediculous rider, sound check for too long, refuse get off stage when the crowd doesn't like them, stink up the place, want too much money, disperce unconfirmed information, ect. there are a ton of variables. some people can wear more than one hat. the thinner you spead yourself the harder time you're going to have keeping your shows interesting. venues that put shows on every night are a little more hard up to keep the entertainment cycling/money flowing than people who have all week to put together something new. some nights you dont do shit & a few hundred people walk thru the door, other weeks you work your ass off & nobody turns up cuz you forgot it was the opening day for starwars. it's all a bit of a gamble. plan on having at least a grand to drop. some trustworthy help that isn't in it exclusively for the power trip is always a +, just keep in mind the more help you have, the harder it is to keep track of the details. some nights you lose money but there's potential to make a decent chunk of change back. the drama is a virus. as much as you might do to avoid it. with that many people in a confined space over a period of time it will eventually infect your little pet project like a disease. if you can find it's cure i'd elect you for the nobel prize. Stevil ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: "Mike Hell" To: rivethed list Subject: Re: [rivethed] clubs 101 - was: No Final Show Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 18:02:32 -0800 just putting in my 2c worth of comments... > the bare bones you need to have a club are: > 1) a venue - $ negotiable depending on location, night, gear(sound/lighting) & > how desperate they are to get people in the door to buy their booze. usually > ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand per night. deals for divying up > the > profits also vary & can effect 'rent'. i had a nice clean 'we keep the door, > you keep the bar deal' with Red Velvet. but, clubs often split percentages > especially on weekends or 'no cover' nights. but then you have to really watch > your back. Very often what you will have is what's called a bar guarantee. it works like this: If you have a $2,000 guarantee, and your patrons drink $500 worth of alcohol, you owe them $1,500. If they drink $3,000 worth, you get none of the excess. Problems with bar guarantees: 1) a bartender may be spending time flirting with the customers and not pouring drinks, yet you aren't his/her bosss so you have no control over him/her. 2) you have no control over drink prices and/or quality of drinks. If the venue charges $10 for a watered down drink, sooner or later your patrons will figgure it out and stop buying. 3) Venue owners can lie about the $$$ they actually brought in. They can re-set the register in the middle of the night. Always sign or initial the top of the register tape. Venue owners can be greedy bastards. 4) venue owners tend to have a cow if they catch you trying to get your moneys worth. For example, you notice it's a slow night and you know you'll be at least $1,000 away from meeting your guarantee. So, you buy $1,000 worth of drinks for everyone. Makes sense, right? nope. Venue owners are greedy bastards and want the money without selling the alcohol. > 2) music - also negotiable depending on your dj's, your bands, your > relationship > with them. unless you are flying in the latest bigshot band/dj/robot from > europe, you can get away with a couple hundred bucks or less per night. alot of > people just want the exposure or enjoy performing for fun. Weird thing I found is that it's sometimes the best bands that ask for the least amount of money. The ones that totaly suck usally bitch and whine because there's not enough money to pay them. Make a point of telling the band EXACTLY what they will be paid before the performance. Put it in writing, if possible. Never, ever, do the "we'll pay you depending on how well we do". The bands will put 500 people on the guest list, and then say "look at all these people, you did really good..." Bands guestlists can put you in the poorhouse, especially if it's a real niche thing like industrial. A band may know alot of your paying customers, and put them on the guest list. They'll put people on the guest list who would have normally paid, ask for free drinks, and then complain that they didn't get paid enough. > 3) advertising - fliers, posters, website, weekly ad's... plan on a few hundred > bucks a month. you can cut corners if you can design & distribute the shit > yourself or get slave labor to chip in. I personally have much more respect for promoters who do their own promotional materials. The promo materials are the whole look and feel, the entire essence of a club. To me, it's like an artist asking someone else to do his painting for him. > owner: the guy who pays the rent & wants to see people drinking, doesn't want > the neighbors to complain, or the cops to shut his venue down because of your > jackass patrons who cant respect the haus. Owner: Very often a dirty, slimey man/woman who speaks broken english that wants alot of money. Words used to describe many venue owners include, jackass, slime, bastard, asshole etc. Back in the ol' days of Osko's I heard even worse when refering to Osko. > security: somebody to check id's & escort people who cant hold their alcohol > out the door. often included in your 'rental' fee. Security is sometimes someone who tends to make matters worse than they are. Sometimes known to harass the girls by shining flashlights on their asses, etc. > bartender: the person who puts that liquor license the owner spent so much > money on to use. See above bar guarantee rant. > promoter: person who is responsible for bringing heads in the door. This is you. > the door chick: someone to take the money & refuses to let anyone in for free. > ;) My comments... Never hire a door person who needs the money. Try to hire someone who doesn't know any of your regular customers. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: "Mike Hell" To: rivethed list Subject: Re: [rivethed] clubs 101 - was: No Final Show Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 07:49:24 -0800 > These are incredibly good points. There is so much you have to do to make a > very good club. It is very sad when you do so much work and put blood, sweat > and tears and no one goes. I am glad you are pointing this out. I think It's not all that unsimilar to having a band. You can work your ass off, put work, blood sweat and tears into the project, yet it can still suck. I've thrown some really sucky clubs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 10:19:25 -0800 From: stevil To: rivethed list Subject: Re: [rivethed] clubs 101 - was: No Final Show Quoting Mike Hell : > Venue owners are > greedy bastards and want the money without selling the alcohol.<<<... > Owner: Very often a dirty, slimey man/woman who speaks broken english that > wants alot of money. Words used to describe many venue owners include, > jackass, slime, bastard, asshole etc. Back in the ol' days of Osko's I heard > even worse when refering to Osko.<<< the vietnamese guy that owned red velvet also owns a 'hot asian club' called majestics. he was proud to charge a $25 cover & $10 for a dinky drink with no alcohol in it to people who overdressed to watch bad covers of VH1 tunes. while this is a highly profitable business model, i just cant bring myself to that level of assholism, i mean capitalism. > Weird thing I found is that it's sometimes the best bands that ask for the > least amount of money. The ones that totaly suck usally bitch and whine > because there's not enough money to pay them.<<< this is true. a lot of acts know this & plan on selling cd's & tshirts to your crowd as a means to generate revenue. some venues ask for a piece of the bands mechandise sales but i'm of the opinion that the practice is fucktarded. especially if your crowd likes them & you want them to come back. > Make a point of telling the band EXACTLY what they will be paid before the > performance. Put it in writing, if possible. Never, ever, do the "we'll pay > you depending on how well we do". The bands will put 500 people on the guest > list, and then say "look at all these people, you did really good..."<<< this goes both ways. i've brought hundreds of paying customers thru the door for promoters who promised $1 per head & they were nowhere to be found at the end of the night. fortunately said promoter had a bad memory & couldn't remember where he recognized my bandmate from when he ran into him at a rave years later. violence is a great reminder. > Bands guestlists can put you in the poorhouse, especially if it's a real > niche thing like industrial. A band may know alot of your paying > customers, and put them on the guest list. They'll put people on the guest > list who would have normally paid, ask for free drinks, and then complain > that they didn't get paid enough.<<< there were originally 3 accomplices that went into making Conspiracy happen. one of us did nothing but put 50 people on the guest list. he didn't last long. of course those 50 people were irate when we booted him but you are going to ruffle some feathers because damn near everyone wants a freebie & they dont really care that the bottom line is coming out of your ass at the end of the night. & once your club closes you'll probably never hear from the parasites again so who really gives a fuck what people think in the first place. > Security is sometimes someone who tends to make matters worse than they are. > Sometimes known to harass the girls by shining flashlights on their asses, > etc.<<< know your security guards. bullshit with them in the early evening when it's slow. encourage subtlety & keep an eye on your 'gungho' guards. > My comments... Never hire a door person who needs the money. Try to hire > someone who doesn't know any of your regular customers.<<< also, having partners who can keep their hands out of the till is cool also. trust is an invaluable & damn near obsolete commodity. > It's not all that unsimilar to having a band. You can work your ass off, put > work, blood sweat and tears into the project, yet it can still suck. I've > thrown some really sucky clubs.<<< tuesday nights are rough, opening a club in the winter is rough, going with a format that does not cater directly to a proven demographic is rough. but these are all concerns for the upper division course ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: "Mike Hell" To: rivethed list Subject: Re: [rivethed] clubs 101 - was: No Final Show Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 11:00:58 -0800 > the vietnamese guy that owned red velvet also owns a 'hot asian club' called > majestics. he was proud to charge a $25 cover & $10 for a dinky drink with no > alcohol in it to people who overdressed to watch bad covers of VH1 tunes. > while this is a highly profitable business model, i just cant bring myself to > that level of assholism, i mean capitalism. This is what I refer to as an "S bar". There are alot of cheesy clubs that end with the letter S. Coincidence? I don't think so. > this is true. a lot of acts know this & plan on selling cd's & tshirts to your > crowd as a means to generate revenue. some venues ask for a piece of the bands > mechandise sales but i'm of the opinion that the practice is fucktarded. > especially if your crowd likes them & you want them to come back. The band that consistently drew the largest crowds at KF was Babyland. However, they were the easiest to work with, and asked for the least amount of money. > night. & once your club closes you'll probably never hear from the parasites > again so who really gives a fuck what people think in the first place. man, don't get me started... When I was doing KF, there were lots of people who claimed to be a "good friend" and whatnot. Ya think I've seen or heard from many of them since? Nope. Once I closed down the club, for some reason alot of these "good friends" vanished. It goes to show who yor friends really are. > know your security guards. bullshit with them in the early evening when it's > slow. encourage subtlety & keep an eye on your 'gungho' guards. Sometimnes there's no getting people with a security guard mentaility to think logicaly. Sometimes you cant get them to think at all. > also, having partners who can keep their hands out of the till is cool also. > trust is an invaluable & damn near obsolete commodity. That's why I prefer to work alone. > Tuesday nights are rough, Mondays can be as bad as Tuesdays. It all depends if you have something worth going to. > opening a club in the winter is rough, going with a Opening durring Xmas break can be good, but the first week of February is always the slowest night of the year. In all the years I did KF, the first week of February was ALWAYS dead. Usally stays dead from Feb until spring break. It then picks up momentum from spring break till summer. > format that does not cater directly to a proven demographic is rough. I've always had the best luck catering to a niche crowd that is NOT a proven demographic. When you try to go for a proven demographic, you'll have competition. It's a bigger pie that more people are tying to get a slice of. Go for the small pie, but take the whole damn pie. I've always look for opportunities that everyone is ignoring. One thing that really gets to me is when people open clubs and try to be like other clubs that exist, or existed before. Copycats rarely do well. Don't try and be like perversion. Don't try and be the new KF. Put some CREATIVITY into it. Use some simple common sense. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 12:35:05 -0800 From: stevil To: rivethed list Subject: Re: [rivethed] clubs 101 Quoting Mike Hell : > The band that consistently drew the largest crowds at KF was Babyland. > However, they were the easiest to work with, and asked for the least amount > of money.<<< if a local band is planning on going on a long tour. catch them before they leave. KDC was all excited to play & was hanging out at the club before they went on tour. when they got back from getting their egos stroked on the road for several months, their attitude had changed. as a side note, this is a key ingredient for adapting to the manic depressive lifestyle of the entertainment industry. you perform locally & a few people like it & all is well. then you go out on the road & it's hotels & fans & everyone kissing your ass & your brain is soaring. then you come home & nobody gives a shit. why aren't they aware that you are king of the world & why did that guy turn into an asshole. it's a weird dynamic. very similar to the 'everyones your friend when you can get them in the door free' phenomenon. > I've always had the best luck catering to a niche crowd that is NOT a proven > demographic. When you try to go for a proven demographic, you'll have > competition. It's a bigger pie that more people are tying to get a slice > of. Go for the small pie, but take the whole damn pie. I've always look for > opportunities that everyone is ignoring. > > One thing that really gets to me is when people open clubs and try to be > like other clubs that exist, or existed before. Copycats rarely do well. > Don't try and be like perversion. Don't try and be the new KF. Put some > CREATIVITY into it. Use some simple common sense.<<< from what i've seen it often takes a while to build up a crowd when you are doing something really different. so you need a venue that is into what you are doing & isn't going to rape you with expenses while you build up your momentum. you can find smaller venues with dead nights that are open anyways & not drawing any heads. i watched the dead retro/britpop scene go from 10 people showing up at cafe bleu a few years back to the trendy omnipresent "punk" fused fad it is today. but there are some dedicated people at the core of that scene that poured their hearts into giving it a vibe again. once again it's the hands on attention of the promoter that can turn a loud booze trough into someplace that sparks a social interst in people. s: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: "Michael Dannov" To: rivethed list Subject: RE: [rivethed] clubs 101 - was: No Final Show Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 19:54:19 -0800 If you've ever wanted to open a club, this thread was for you. Stevil and Mike Hell have basically done a full education program here for your benefit. The only areas I saw insufficiently covered were competition and significance of location to your attendees. Competition has a whole sub-section on how to fight the war for attendance with related scene promoters. My only recommendation I can add to the whole subject altogether (mind you, I have never opened a club) is that "overall, you should think long and hard about whether this is something you really want to do. At the end of it, you probably won't get rich doing it; and you'll probably feel under-appreciated while you're doing it too. However, if you feel driven by passion such that you feel you have no other choice, then I'd say do it; but make sure you can also think like a business person and know when to say no." -=Michael