Live Jazz? They'll be fighting to get in!

by Minim Pro
It's Monday afternoon and you drive past a bar/restaurant about 20 minutes from your house with a chalkboard outside. The chalkboard says:
•Free Wi-Fi
•Food served daily 12am-10pm
•Tuesdays 4-6 Two for the price of one
•Live Jazz Wednesday from 8pm

You don't have any plans for Wednesday night. Will you go and check out the music? I bet for most people reading this, the answer is 'probably not'.

Why is this? Well, probably because 'live jazz' doesn't really tell you anything - and you've played and seen enough of these kind of gigs to assume that it's not going to be an evening of musical invention and compelling entertainment. Probably the best case scenario is that you tell yourself you should look the venue up on the web and see if you can find out who's on...and then forget by the time you get home.

On the other hand, if the sign said 'Herbie Hancock Quintet Weds from 8pm', would that change the likelihood of you attending? In the last post I talked about the problem of badly-paying gigs. Unfortunately, part of the problem is that venues and musicians view gigs in different ways and this usually results in poorly attended, short-term gigs that pay bad money.
Next time, I'll be explaining exactly why such a dichotomy exists, why it leads to poor-paying gigs and what you need to do to increase your average gig fee.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with one thought; if Herbie Hancock was on that gig, I guarantee you he wouldn't have to worry if his fee would cover his fuel expenses.
Hope you'll join me next time...
http://playjazz.blog.co.uk/2010/04/19/live-jazz-they-ll-be-fighting-to-get-in-it-8401907/