19 February 2010 — Closure in Moscow Dropped From Soundwave Lineup
A few years ago, one of my bands was playing a support slot for an international band, at a good venue in Melbourne. The gig had been organised through our manager, who knew the promoter. I can't remember how we got the gig exactly, but I suspect it was because our manager spoke to this promoter about potential international supports, and this was the one we were given. As far as we could tell, everything was great. We showed up to play, we met the band and their manager and everything was still good. But then it came down to a detail about the night, where we had been told we'd be doing one thing, and they thought we'd be doing another. It turned out that our manager had made a demand that the promoter was now suggesting was unreasonable, and was going to make the night run less smoothly. We didn't particularly care, except that out manager had led us to believe that it was an important detail, and that he'd helped us out by getting this term agreed to. Things actually got a little bit tense, because we were dealing with phone conversations with different people involved, who all had different opinions on who was being demanding and who was getting a raw deal.
In the end, everything was fine, largely because we were happy to go along with the new arrangements, and most of us were in the room together: we could all talk, and we knew that there wasn't any attitude. I suspect, however, that the relationship between the promoter and our manage became a little strained as a result though. Part of the problem was because the promoter felt like he was doing our manager a favour in the first place by even having us on the bill, so it irked him to have to go along with demands that he though were detrimental to the way the night would run. This happens all the time in the music industry. All the time. Mostly, people work it out, but often it ends badly.
Closure In Moscow - an Australian band who've been living in the US recently - have just been dropped from the lineup of the 2010 Soundwave festival. Here is the post on the Soundwave website announcing the decision, and here is Closure in Moscow's response, from their Myspace blog.
Firstly, I have to assume that both parties are being honest, from their point of view. I don't know any of the people involved, and there's no way to tell if anyone is deliberately lying in their statements. Obviously though, people have different interpretations of events. Here are a couple of points:
• The organiser of Soundwave claims that he only booked Closure in Moscow as "a favour to their manager", which the band is happy to accept as true. Aside from anything else, this is almost certainly a big part of the problem. Doing things like this as a favour leads to resentment from both sides. Also, the fact of the manager's involvement makes it likely that Closure in Moscow weren't entirely aware of how the deal was made. AJ (the Soundwave organiser) suggests that Closure in Moscow were being paid "10 times above what they are worth", while the band states that "nobody asked him to offer us as much as he did". I wouldn't be surprised to find that the band were kept somewhat in the dark when it came to the financial arrangements between AJ and their manager. So, while they may be telling the truth, AJ may have already fostered some resentment towards them for negotiating a deal that he considered extravagant.
• It's quite common for people to have conversations over the phone that leads one party to think that everything went fine and the other to feel like they were treated rudely. AJ claims that the Soundwave worker who took their call was treated aggressively, while the band denies having even raised their voices. They do, however, suggest that they didn't have any information about their flights or accommodation, and were calling in regards to that. It's easy to imagine that they may have been frustrated at having to leave such arrangements so late, and it's equally easy to imagine that the person they spoke to would interpret this as them being aggressive.
Is there anything to learn from this? I think the main thing is that if you have someone acting on your behalf, like a manager or booking agent, let them handle all of the arrangements that relate to their field. If you're on your own, then good communication with the people who book you is crucial, but if someone else handles that side of your affairs, let them deal with all of it. Stepping in at the last minute, without knowing the people involved, and without a good understanding of the agreement you have with them is a sure way to put people's noses out of joint, which is probably what happened here. It could be that this problem was a result of one side simply behaving badly, but I doubt it.