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You know what I think I'm going to start doing? When a promoter asks me (inevitably one of the first questions), 'how many people can your band bring' - I'm going to start asking 'how many people can you, the promoter bring?' If they say it's all up to the bands then tell 'em to fuck off since they're obviously not prepared to do any work at all.

So the guys from Torture Garden, who actually handle booking at the Purple Turtle, got back with a reply via My Space

Hi

Ive just read your post, and we knew. unfortunately, that we would get some flak for this policy. Can I explain a few things why we had to go down this path. Im sure I will get attacked but eh worth a shot, maybe a few would understand. there is obviously two issues here, the economics of being a band and the economics of being a independant live venue.


The Turtle has been a live venue for nearly 3 years now. We generally wanted to offer the venue to live promoters to put on their nights and we have had mixed success with this. Though generally promoters who work in a specific genre do better than generic indie nights.


We started running our own unsigned band night, getting 4-5 bands of a similar genre down to play, and at the time we didnt want to do pay to play we thought we would offer the bands a good deal. We would keep the door price down to £4 and give the band any money taken after the first 10 people trough the door that came to see that band. A decent enough offer for a London venue. However the sad truth is that many bands didnt bring anyone, or just didnt even show up, no phone call or nothing...The bands who had put in the effort ended just playing to their crowd that they had brought and their music wasnt heard by new people.


Now as a bar we rely on drink sales to make money, but most of the time we are just breaking even. At the beginning of the year we decided that we had to try the policy you've written in you blog., to run along side some of the other nights that we promote which are not pay to play. We have had one or two bands say no, which we understand, but most of said yes. The result being we have had very few no shows and bands bringing more people. The bands then get to play to a reasonable crowd and have a more enjoyable gig, hopefully picking up a few more fans along the way.

Like you said we only ask for £50, the band can sell as many tickets and they want, we dont ask for any more money. We get to cover the sound enginneer and security costs. We also still have quality control and just dont put on any band thats willing to pay the money, and we also still try and get the line ups to be of a similar genre.


When bands approach us we give them the option of playing for one of our nights, or approaching one of the promoters who use the turtle. We also tell bands why dont they organise their own nights and take the venue for themselves, they can organise the bands, crowd and take all the profits from the door and its great to see alot of bands now doing this (ok we charge a hire fee so is pay to play anyway but give the bands more control of the night).
Naturally, any band who is decent and brings a good crowd is invited back (to play and/or their name passed onto other promoters)


We have tried alot of things to make this venue work, and to keep it going, we need to be open 7 nights a week to survive, we will monitor the situation.



London has alot of venues, and live nights in London rely on the bands bringing people. There are not many live nights that can rely in walk up.


The Turtle is in Camden offers decent facilites, at the end of the day its choice...the bands can shoose to play or not.


As for Emergenza and Surface....I dont personaly believe in their business models, however they play the hire fee and the bar takings are good. Any band has a choice to play these kind of events or not, they should google them and find out the what they need to know, then choose if its soemthing they want to do) These bookings keep us open so we can run our other nights, ie Ska all dayers, alt band nights, death metal etc.


However after attending a few of glasswerkz/surface events, the atmosphere inside the venue is great, a real buzz. The bands that i have spoken to have enjoyed playing to that size of crowd in that atmosphere. All bands want to do is to play their music in front of people, and unfortuantely only a few will ever make money out of it.


Anyway, to recap, the Purple Turtle does run around 5 nights a month, but we also run nights which are not. We also have alot of 3rd Party promoters who do not run P2P nights and some that do. We are trying to get a balance. Would people prefer us to stop being a live venue? We just want to make sure that whatever the case you have a good live sound when you play.
Posted by Torture Garden on Monday, March 16, 2009 - 4:04 PM

No, there's no excuse for play to play. If you can't book decent honest bills and research enough to make sure the bands you put on will turn up and put the effort in then don't put on gigs.

Yeah, sure if you're just going to book the first five bands you can find then you're going to get pissed about by no shows and bands who don't care, there's far too many uncommited bands pissing about, do your research! There's an art to booking shows, there's an art to promotion, and pay to play is not the answer.

There is absolutely no excuse or argument for pay to play, forced ticket buy or any of the other things you people tart up Pay To Play as.

And you Torture Garden people have been in bands, you've been through all this, you should know better, don't you remember how bad this was at the end of the 80's early 90's when YOU were trying to get your young band going? I do..

None of us want to go to these Pay to Play gigs where you just throw the first five (usually not very good) bands who are sucker enough to pay up. We all know these gigs have no quality control, the bands generally have no relation to each other in terms of their sound, no cross polination, no nothing, these kind of gigs are never worth paying to get in to, a regular gig goer I generally know if I'm going to check out a band at one of these events to not bother getting there in time to see the other bands or to bother hanging about after the band I wanted to see, I know the rest of the bands are going to be crap and the promoter hasn't bothered. In the same way that I know if I'm going to see a band that a good promoter who cares is putting on then get there early the other bands will probably be worth it - Goonite gigs, Silver Rocket gigs and such, gigs put on by people who give a shit and do things for the right reasons, always discovering intersting bands I've never heard of on their bills...

There isn't too many venues, you're wrong there - there are too many bad lazy promoters who are willing to short change us and make money out of us gig goers and bands who don't know any better.

You suck for holding pay to play events in your venue and for allowing people like Surface Unsigned to polute your venue with their empty promises and their milking of young bands who don't know any better I for one don't go to your venue anymore on principle because of your atittude and policy and because of your support for people like Surface Unsigned, I'd rather wait and see the band in a venue that treats people/bands right, or indeed not see the band.

Shame really, your venue is one of the better ones in Camden

None of us want to see bands ripped off like this. There is no excuse, no justification and your attempt to explain here just exposes things a little more THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR PAY TO PLAY.


AND YES, IN ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION, I'D RATHER SEE YOU CLOSE DOWN AND GO OUT OF BUSINESS THAN RUN A PAY TO PLAY OPERATION.... Mostly I'd rather see you put on good gigs with good bills and exciting bands we want to pay to see!

And as for that bit where you say you disagree with Surface Unsigned but they pay the hire so they ca ndo what they want... what an awful attitude.. Would the same happen if say the BNP wanted to put a show on at your venue, is there a cut of point or can anyone hire your venue? Sound like as long as a promoter pays the hire they can do whatever the hell they want...

Hi sean

For the record, Torture Garden dont run the bookings for the Turtle.

I help run the place and deal with 3rd party promotions independant of Torture Garden. i just used the TG myspace account to answer your post as that is the only one I have.

Just to let you know, after talking with the management, we will be offering bands some other options that wont be P2P.

Ill post here as soon as we have finalised them.

Just options? You should be saying a complete no to any form of Pay To play! That includes forced ticket buys and any other dressing up of the practice! You have a good venue there, why cheapen it like this?