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Help, got a gig at a five-star hotel

pklima

pklima

Commercial User
May 2, 2003
8,468
7,070
Kraków, Polska
Disclosures
Karoryfer Samples
#1
This is a big, scary step up for us. What should we know/prepare going into this? We're playing a corporate party at a five-star hotel in a couple of weeks, and if it goes well they want us to play there weekly.

Not only is it a five-star hotel, it's next door to the old royal castle and during the Euro the Dutch team will be staying there. So, we're talking major fancy. On the bright side, we'll be at a casual/sports bar attached to the hotel so we don't need to wear tuxes, just no shorts/no flipflops/no shirtlessness. We're not there to play "hotel lounge music", they already have a pianist and a harfist for that. The manager of the hotel has seen us play a few times, so they know what they're getting into from their side.

Any advice on song selection etc? Our setlist is split about evenly between Portuguese, English and Spanish and includes country, reggaeton, dancehall, electro, samba, pop, reggae and rock.
 
#3
Ha. Yeah, the manager made sure to pre-empt it too.

There is one thing which worries me and which I'd like some advice for, though... we will largely be playing for foreigners from rich Western countries who have corporate management jobs. We know our setlist works for audiences which are probably close to half foreigners, but they're mostly from Third World countries and work in call centers. Very different demographic.

What kind of music do Westerners with really good jobs like? Cause I'm guessing it's not country and reggaeton, but in reality I have no idea.
 
#7
dmusic148 said:
Oh, this is SO sig-worthy.....

I'm sorry but I have nothing useful to add. Dress nice, and don't play too loud.
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Heh, thanks. I figure we'll do all right, just try a variety of stuff from Shakira ballads to "Wegue Wegue" and see what gets the best reaction... If we end up doing this weekly we should have it figured out well by the third gig.
carl h. said:
If what you did wasn't appropriate, you would never have been hired.
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Well, just to be on the safe side we'll leave "International Ass Investigator" out of the setlist!
 
#11
pklima said:
What kind of music do Westerners with really good jobs like? Cause I'm guessing it's not country and reggaeton, but in reality I have no idea.
Click to expand...

While I can't speak for all Westerners as I am an American and in fact I can't speak for all Americans either, but I find that most Americans with really good jobs tend to like American Top 40 sort of stuff. Obviously this isn't true of everybody but probably a good rule of thumb.

Very little music from outside the US becomes particularly popular here (the US music industry is too powerful to allow that).

My reasoning for why people with good jobs would be into top 40 stuff is most of them probably don't have time to search for obscure music but still want to come off as with it.

Again America is the only frame of reference I have in regards to what "Westerners" like.
 
#12
I'm a western European with a good corporate job and in my experience of chilling out with colleagues after a long day of meetings (a lot of them in Wroclaw as it happens) most people in the sports bar will want to kick back with a few beers and will be willing to listen to any sort of music as long as it's played well.

In fact, far from the American Top 40, so many corporate guys are so sooooo sick of a lifestyle which involves travelling from home through faceless international airports, taxi to ubiquitous 4/5 star hotel (where the only difference anywhere in the world is whether the bathroom is on the left or the right) to a meeting room that is identcal to any other meeting room in any anonymous office then back to the hotel - it sucks. It's an old cliche but on a long round of European meetings, every aspect of corporate travel is so similar I have genuinely had to remind myself what country I'm in sometimes "It's Wednesday, I must be in Italy...or is it France"...IMHO a little local colour and internationalism will be a refreshing change.
 
#15
Thanks, some useful perspective here. This bar has Tex-Mex food, so we do fit in with the menu (LOL), and we have some recent top 40 as well - Sean Paul, Shakira, Don Omar, Alexandra Stan etc. Not really American top 40, but at least Western Europeans should know those songs.

The bar manager wants us to start with quieter/slower stuff and progress towards dance material. We've got about four hours worth of songs and they want us to play for 1 1/2 hours, so we've got plenty to pick from.

If this goes well we get the weekly gig. If the weekly gig goes well they'll budget bands playing three nights a week during the warm months next year, so some other people will get nice gigs out of this as well.
 
#16
Obviously they want some Bring Me the Horizon, and other metal :bassist: ;)

Seriously though, like the others are saying, you were hired for what you normally play so play what you normally play. If you really do want to have confirmation, call them up and ask. They're not going to think badly of you for making sure you're playing the stuff they want you to play.
 
#18
Renaissance said:
When I traveled around a lot, I wanted to hear more of the local based music. Whatever gets played in the local clubs would work for me. My .02
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I think this is the right advice. People have become more oriented towards "world" sounds -- and there's no point in trying to pretend like you're from NY or LA or Memphis, right? You go to the local bar, you ask for the local beer -- same basic idea. People love tunes with a solid groove, catchy hooks, vocal harmony -- all the better if the language and style are novel. And realistically, the chance of playing somebody's favorite song from their high school prom is just about zero, so why try? Just be yourselves. My only concern would be volume: in a "classy" venue, I would try to play as quiet as possible, most of the time, so that you have room to turn it up a little when you want. Headroom!!
 
#19
btp said:
My only concern would be volume: in a "classy" venue, I would try to play as quiet as possible, most of the time, so that you have room to turn it up a little when you want. Headroom!!
Click to expand...
Good point. We're not rock band loud and will have an electronic drum kit there, so volume should be easy to take care of.
 

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