I keep seeing walls of text, yet all I can hear is...
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No offense, no slight intended, etc. etc.
Anyway, now that thats out of the way.... heres another perspective of why to
NOT bring a PA, since I have more of the "not true gigging" experience of playing with your buddy-bands in dive bars for sparse crowds and getting paid in beer.
You'll find many a musician who shows up to their own gigs without equipment. No amp, no cab, no guitar, no bass, no mic, etc. etc. When you're feeling generous or pitiful you loan out your piece, keep an eye on it, grab it the instant their set is over.
Do you really want to go through this whole hassle if you bring a PA??? Suddenly the other 2 or 3 bands playing that night want to use your PA, so they can run their own sound, because "The soundguy in this place always sucks!" (often said by the less-experienced / less-polished bands.) Then they want to mic their whole drumkit. Then bassist or guitarist want to try running stereo because they read about it on a forum. Then suddenly when it comes to tear down, it appears all those guys you let use your PA decided to wrap up your cables and take them back to Jersey in their tour trailer (Jersey shout what up!)
I was in a band that owned our own PA, initially we'd mic the whole band and the whole drumkit, but once we found that other bands would have to depend on it we cut out the guitars and bass, and myself and my guitarists added some speakers to our rigs. We'd allow other bands to use it for vocals and simple drums, just for consistencies sake (generally if they brought their PA but we set up ours, they'd just use ours. Don't think I've
ever had a band insist on us tearing down our PA so they could set theirs up.) Its also not time effective to be doing the ole' switcheroo all the time with a full PA. But dragging a guitar rig or bass rig on stage is easy and quick.
Since I don't plan on coming back to this poo-flinging match, I'll tell you what (some) of the bars' mindsets are too. We've played shows for places that were on the fence about bringing in metal music... usually you'd work it out that the bands get a cut of the door, but being the first opening local band, you often get skipped over. If we hear we're only getting $30 from the total cut of the night, we're more likely to give it to the touring band trying to support themselves, or spend it at the bar on shots. We all work full time in non-music fields, we're in the mindset that if we didn't have a musical outlet that we'd go BONKERS at our day jobs, so "stickin it" to bar owners who are "profiting off our hard work" isn't the highest on my priority list. If the bar owners and bartenders are happy, the band is happy, the audience is happy, then really why does anyone else think its their business?
This "you people are killing the scene" thing has to stop. Anyone who whines about that, I'd just like to tell them to face reality and stop trying to make a living by playing music. Dayjobs suck, thats why its called "work" and not "play." If a venue is truly making a killing and screwing over a band, thats one thing. But we're talking shows where the band's lucky to make enough $$$ to cover gas expenses, the bar's lucky to make enough $$$ to open its doors the next night, and the patrons are lucky to have enough $$ leftover at the end of the night to pick up a rubber and a Mountain Dew on their way home.
