For the love of money

Funny thing.. at the last gig, several of the crowd suggested that we must have been getting paid well for that night due to the fact that they enjoyed it so much. I see some logic in how that should be the case but of course this isn't how the music industry works. The way it works is that you'd probably get paid ten times more as a musician going out and finding suitable places to play 'Lady In Red' and 'Hi-Ho Silver Lining'. Subsource followers should rest easy knowing that we'd never sell out and you're not going to start hearing electro-frenetic versions of 'The Locomotion'. Performing original music live doesn't pay well... and my Mum keeps hassling me about it. Being in Subsource has some frills but a good health insurance and pension plan aren't included. Company car... kinda dubious...

So when an organiser says he'll let me know the day after a blisteringly good gig like at the Surrey Uni to tell us how much he can pay us and then you don't hear from him, you know that he must have not quite gotten round to checking his email over the past 2 weeks. So whilst we're waiting a bit longer, here's how much we ought to invoice him:

[30 (rehearsal cost) x 15 (number of rehearsals needed to get something like subsource working)] + [25 (approx. hours spent each writing a track) x 10 (tracks in the set) + 3 x 15 (number of our hours spent in the rehearsal) + 6 (hours spent travelling/soundchecking/waiting to go on/performing)] x 4 (how many of us in the band) x 5 (minimum wage for 'unskilled' labour) = £6470.

So Owen, if you're reading this, please make your cheque payable to 'Subsource' for £6470. But cash would be better.

Actually I found this photo below amongst the photos taken from the last gig. I could possibly concede that this photo is worth somewhere in the region of £6270. So that leaves a cash remainder plus 3 beers, an orange juice (no ice, no lemon) and a pack of nuts if there's any change. I know I've already posted photos of this crowd, but I love the looks on everyone's faces... just look at them. Anyhow, I'm not giving you trying to force feed you all some cheesy crap about how we do it for the love of music, I'm just demonstrating perks of the job, but you can't trade in perks for a working clutch.

Myspace

I have issues with Myspace:

1. Any Internet site that bombards me constantly with adverts offends me. I know it makes it a free service but I'm still offended.

2. Half the time it's soooo slooooooow. Or broken.

3. Yes it gives people who are too lazy to learn basic HTML a chance to get something online. Very possibly maybe I'd agree that these people deserve this chance. But then a significant number of these people then blow it by thinking black text on a dark grey background (or something similar) is a good idea. These people don't deserve their own retinas.

4. Spam with chips, no. Spam with peas, no. Spam with spam, yes. I don't know who you are and your music sounds shit.

5. On the plus side, I always forget people's names so I can just look them up. Except I would, but I can't recognise anyone because they've all got pictures that are excessively arty or they've used one that's makes them really good-looking... far much more than they are in real life and I don't recognise them.

6. What the heck is it with people who are having what appears to be a fairly private conversation using publicly visible comments? Is this their voyeuristic nature? Why do I find it so fascinating to read them... damn.

7. Rather than just read an email, I get an email telling me to check the message on Myspace and it's so sloooooooow and takes so looooong. Then it breaks or I've died in the meantime. In doing so, I end up going to hell, where my 4,132 friends have said, "thanks for the add", and then fucked off into the ether and never spoken to me ever again.

"Uh.. um... cod?"

Had to take a couple of shots because the stage was pretty wide, so here's the right hand side.

My favourite moment was when the guy from the university radio show (spot the nice guy with the mic in this photo) asked us what our favourite fish was... Stuey drew a blank and in true Homer-style you could see his inner voice telling him over about ten seconds repeating, "Don't just say 'cod' because you'll look like an idiot who can't think of any other kind of fish."

Gig Review: 14th March - Surrey University Student Union

This crowd were really going for it tonight.. an amazing vibe. Gotta say that's the first gig where people have actually said they've been following this blog, which is touching and rewarding.. thankyou! Great to see lots of familiar faces, hopefully we'll be back again soon. We're not sure what the Magic Roundabout theme tune was about that introduced our set, but it seemed to work. 

Gig Review: 11th March 2006 - Goldsmith's College

F.O. Machete and Horsebox were awesome.. we rocked it as hard as we could, not as many people there as we'd have liked but oh well.. had fun.

Tonight is becoming an epic saga as unfortunately, our van broke down on the way to the gig. After setting Neil onto arguing with our insurance company for the roadside recovery that we paid good money for (ha.. they didn't see us coming) we eventually got picked-up and towed to Goldsmiths. Luckily, we still managed to have time for the soundcheck, but had severe worries about how we were going to get back and were deciding who would sleep in the van overnight to go and get it repaired in the morning. Eventually, we managed to blag a second free tow back home.. and as I write this, Stuey, Neil and Kimba - the three brave custodians of the white behemoth have just been picked up and will probably be due back in a couple of hours. Then we'll find out how much a clutch replacement is going to cost... eek.

Well.. I'm going to sleep then. Night. 

Hooray for haemorrhoids

 

Gig Review: 7th March, Oxford Cellar Bar

What a great little venue tucked away just off Oxford High Street, and a lovely crowd. It's been a while since we've gone out and done a gig where we know our audience isn't really expecting us... but they were moving healthily by halfway through the set. I wasn't particularly looking forward to getting up the following morning after a few hours sleep, but these things have to be done I suppose. It looks like brainy people can like Subsource too. Ha.

E-mail oops

Okay, I had major headaches with the e-mail mess up last week - thankfully it looks like it's all blown over (and therefore I can cope with writing about it because I certainly didn't feel up to it last week). Of course I realised the mistake of forgetting to BCC correctly about 2 seconds after I hit the send button and although I promptly pulled the plug to the computer, I was mortified to discover it was too late. It took a few days for the coprolalia to subside although heavy relapses occurred on finding a couple of other companies abusing the mistake. Thankfully, the law is on the side of spam prevention and aside from bemused watchers of a certain video clip, I'll never have to hear about it again.

If you're reading this and not knowing what I'm talking about, then I make no apology and only recommend you sign up to the Subsource e-mail list pronto for more entertainment. And if you do know what I'm talking about, don't forget that link is just for you. And the other 429 people who were on the list at the time...

Whilst sorting through the e-mail list sign-up sheet from Carlisle, I came across this nice little comment that someone left. We're humbled, thankyou!