Here’s our band’s experience with “The Stage Saloon,” located in the Gaslamp district in downtown San Diego. Had they been up front with our band from the beginning, we may or may not have accepted the gig, but even if we hadn’t there would at least have been no hard feelings. The way these people do business with local musicians is unacceptable.
When we originally agreed to do the show at “The Stage,” the owner of the club – we’ll call him Eric – told us up front that he was unable to pay us for playing. This was fine with us – we have played free shows before and we are not in this for the money (though it is nice when we at least break even at the end of the night). Unfortunately, it was the only honest thing to come out of his mouth. Instead of pay, Eric assured us that our band would have an open bar tab for the whole night. We actually thought this was a little too generous, but who were we to argue with that?
Finally, we were told that we would be allowed to play our full setlist, which runs somewhere around an hour. This last point to the agreement was what was most important to us, since we knew that any of our friends who came down to see us play there on a Saturday night would more than likely have to pay the extremely high prices for parking, and we wanted to be sure that they all got the most for their money.
As it turned out, things were quite different when we arrived. First, we were given only one drink-ticket per band member - good for only one drink (domestic beer and wine only!).
As related above, this was not what we had agreed upon when booking the show. However, things continued to “go south” from there. We were then informed that we were not to change any of the equipment settings (they had a full backline), since they had already been set to the preferences of the Disco Pimps band members (a successful local cover band who we were opening for - Eric is apparently a band member), that tonight was a big night for him because he had “celebrities” coming in, and that we would not need to mess with the settings anyway because we were only playing for a half hour. When one of us suggested to Eric that maybe we should not even play, Eric started giving us this line about how he gets bands in there every night of the week, and he never gets complaints from them about this setup.
At this point our band unanimously came to the decision that this was not worth our time, nor that of our friends and fans. We realize that we are still a relatively new band and that we still have a lot of work to do as far as building a good name for ourselves in the local music scene, but we are not “chumps” and we will not let dishonest people like Eric use us to fleece our friends. We do not want THAT kind of local reputation. Our only regret is that we did not find out about how unethical this establishment is run much sooner.
So we packed up our stuff and walked next door to “The Bitter End” - a place we have had many gigs and they’ve always treated us fairly – and asked them if they wanted a free live band that night. The Bitter End has always been good to us, and our friends – and has in fact become like a second home to us. It was DJ night though, so they didn’t have anything setup for live music. We thanked them, stashed our stuff in our cars, and had a great party with our fans at other establishments around the area.
It’s funny - when we booked the gig and told Eric we had played several good shows at “The Bitter End” (right next door to “The Stage Saloon”), he had the gall to bad-mouth them– saying how they were corporate run, and treated their bands like dirt. HE, on the other hand was a musician himself and would treat us like “Rock Stars!” Yeah, right!
Last night was especially disappointing to me because I’m leaving the country for a month and a half (school related) and this was going to be my last gig for a while. Still, I’m with the rest of the band on this one. I think we made the right decision.
Cheers!
Isaiah
