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How to get a properly paid gig - part 10

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Professional quality photographs

These are more essential for solo artists who are selling an individual personality than for bands. For bands a photo on the poster will usually suffice (if your poster does not include a photo there may be a stronger argument for the inclusion of a photo as a separate item). Real professional photographers can be expensive so cost/benefit analysis needs to be done here too. Digital cameras and domestic printers make the DYI approach a real option particularly since you can take an unlimited number of shots for no extra cost until you get the right one.

Some booking sites require high quality photographs of the band as part of the booking agency style.

Aimee Chapman's function band Mojito obviously went to some effort to dress for and light this promotional shot. They also did non-goofy poses...

Promo stickers, button badges, fridge magnets, t-shirts...

When included in a promo package, these "feel good" items can impress potential clients and put them in a positive frame of mind towards your act. Everybody loves getting free stuff! Some of these items may eventually become merchandising opportunities, but don't build up your expectations unrealistically. To sell merchandise you need punters, and at this stage you haven't yet got a crowd who will pay door charge!

Many companies produce these items but they can be expensive. You can produce all of the above items yourself for much less, however. (The Musicians' Union has a band promo scheme that will help you with this)

Hopefully you have done, and continue to do, your market research, so you know the venues, agents and audiences appropriate to your product. Now you must start the business of contacting them, providing them with your promotional material and negotiating actual paid gigs. There is a lot of very useful information about this phase in a previous Dues "how to" series entitled The Young Shark's Guide to Negotiation (see issues 1-3 of The Dues). I strongly recommend that you read and digest this.

Next time we'll talk about pricing and promotion.

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Book reviews

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The Damn Right It Is Real Fake Book
Compiled by Subdeacon Harold Aardvark, Smelton Gerk, Emily Plate and Sir Wilhem Verdent Haxelgris
Er Um Publishing, 2006.
Available at Ho Ching’s Empire Dragon Palace Restaurant, Lytton Street, Lower Cameldung.

All of a sudden we are up to our armpits in thick, spiral-bound volumes of standards and originals of jazz, funk, ritz and all the other biscuits. Yet, from among the flattened forests of trees this song-publishing boom represents, this lean, mean volume of some 20 warblings from a yesteryear better forgot stands out as both irrelevant and unremarkable.
The song charts are set out so they can be read from as far away as Nepal and each song contains full chord sequences, melodies and lyrics. Subdeacon Aardvark and co must have searched the most obscure archives and dingey back bedrooms to come up with such, er, gems as Scatterbone Blues, whose lyrics begin:

My baby she done went left me.
She gone but I know where.
She try take my silver dollar
I gonna find her and pull out her hair.
Oh, scatterbone rag, scatterbone rag.
Why for youse make me so mad.
Oh, scatterbone rag, scatterbone rag.
Even bald youse don’t look so bad.

And so on.
Among the unloved and unlamented dirges along with Scatterbone Blues are Alaskan Bluearsed Fly, Youse Fugly but, Dang, I Loves Ya, Raindrops Keep Coming Through My Roof and Raunchy Hill Dog Rattle.

The Marxist Brothers Picture Parade
Edited by Kyle Cattermole and Tanya Dudd
Upanishad & Foyle, 2006.
Note: Future editions prohibited under revisionism doctrine

This gorgeous, luxurious glossy picture book will amuse and delight all lefties from those in pink nappies to blood-red-faced raving octogenarians. Even after a century of their antics, it seems that the enthusiasm for Carlo, Giuseppe, Fidel and Zeppo is as high as ever.

Stalin reading the script for his new one-man comedy revue Gulag Schmulag!

The photos, propaganda posters and cartoons are drawn from the full range of their rich and varied production; from Papa Giuseppe’s Show Trials to A Week at Sea in a Small Boat in a Futile Effort to Escape an Island Paradise and the hilarious The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is only a Preliminary to the Inevitable Withering away of all Government and the Appearance of the Communist State. This book is a great companion to classic stunts and sketches that make Who’s On First seem like a firing squad.

The Marxist Brothers' smash Comedy Musical set in South America.

This reviewer’s favorites are the posters relating to The Second Bourgeois Altercation Aimed at Diminishing the Radiance and Purity of Papa Joe’s Genuine Love for His People. Sheer artistry, especially the anvils and hammers.

You won’t repent buying this volume, no matter what the evidence.

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