2 posts tagged “summer”

Its festival season once again, and as usual the City of Manchester manages to serve up a healthy platter of local talent all crammed into the bank holiday weekend in venues around the Northern Quarter.

Its called the MAPS Festival and it’s the brainchild of several local promoters who have all clubbed together to ensure all the major venues in the area are flying the same flag. Basically, it’s “In The City” without the industry bullshit.

We were asked quite along time ago if we wanted to be involved in the festival and since its always nice to be asked, we agreed to participate. We are coming to the end of a run of six or seven gigs, many of which have been in Manchester, and which started with the Thriller Killer gig back in February. We felt it would be nice to be onboard with a well promoted, well organised (I hope) event to bring the campaign to a conclusion. The remaining gigs include a set at The Ruby Lounge on the 21^st June, the Coventry gig at the Kasbah, and a show in Glossop on the 31^st August, if memory serves. The time to retreat, write, record and take stock once again will soon be upon us. So really, if you fancy catching us live, you should get yourself down to MAPS and check it out before its too late. I’m sure it’ll be one of the gigs of the year.

Our exact stage and venue time is: 10pm (ish), The Mint Lounge (Oldham St, a few doors up from the Night and Day Café), on Sunday 25^th May.

And yes, it is a bank holiday weekend, so there’s no excuse not to raise a glass and join us along with pretty much every local band of note, and party.

It’ll be interesting to see how the general public take to the MAPS festival idea. In recent years, Manchester has enjoyed several summer events aimed at promoting local music. Aside from the obvious ITC related activity, we’ve been lucky enough to have enjoyed the D-Percussion Festival, which really was quite a major event and also free. I had the misfortune of being hungover at a previous D-Percussion and I remember it all got rather too busy and hot at about 6pm in the evening and I had to leave. They certainly cram them into the Castlefield arena, that’s for sure. The event is also memorable because Lee was sick after drinking three sips from a can of Stella at 11am in the morning. Although this was a few years ago now, and I trust he knows better! Why were we drinking Stella at that time? Well, you couldn’t take your own beer in so the cans had to be drunk before entry because the price of beer on site was beyond tolerable.

I remember on one occasion, there was a street festival around the Northern Qtr with some large outdoor stages, and the line up included 808 State and Kinesis, amongst others. Mr. Scruff normally gets his tea-stained fingers involved in some capacity at these events, being a local lad. I think I remember seeing him at D-Percussion a few years back. Mr. Scruff had a few years of being the best thing since sliced bread around these parts, but I could help but think he was a little overrated, and certainly when I saw his Glastonbury show last year I was a little disappointed. Too downtempo for the Saturday night.

I know there is no getting away from it, but in the end these “local band” festivals do rely on the band bringing their mates along to generate a bit of atmosphere, and I must admit that it's also rather galling to have to put up with yet another great event where we are not being paid. In fact, with the cost of transport and rehearsals, it is costing us money to do the gig. The whole “get the band to sell tickets and only pay them for ticket stubs returned” thing may make life easier for promoters but it essentially means that the band have to do most of the leg work and frankly that annoys me.

If you are doing a lot of gigs, this becomes impossible to manage. Its not my day job, don't forget. IMO, if the band are willing to play for free, then the gig should be free. Otherwise, they should get a fee, even if it simply covers expenses. I imagine the only people who will be making any money from this shebang will be the bars, because everybody likes a drink. Why don’t the bars put their respective hands in their pockets and help pay for these events? Afterall, we are the people who frequent these establishments and keep them in business week after week. Stop ripping us off. When we were at the Troubadour in London, it cost me £6 for a gin - that was more than the ticket price for the show. How is that justified?

What we need is a hit single then we wont have to worry about this sort of thing…!

MAPS tickets in advance (i.e. the ones that we will get a cut from) are available from the band – just drop us an email – and are priced £6. I know I'm moaning about the ticket thing, but I really do think this will be a great event.

Here’s the full line-up: