Posted By The Hand That Wounds on 10 Sep 2007 8:48 AM
Do any of you feel it's actually worth playing or going events for unsigned artists such as HWCH and Castlepalooza? While the intentions are ostensibly good, I can't think of too many bands that have gone on to great things from playing either of those events or any similar festivals (though I may be wrong). From my experience, the audience at something like HWCH is composed mainly of other musicicans, not "civilians" or record company staff. What do you think?
Working Class is a great festival.. as JamesT pointed out, it's a free gig with lots of promotion without having to push to get heads in. We played it last year, second last slot on the Sunday in the Music Centre to a crowd of around 400 - 99% of whom we didn't know.
That alone is great for any band (esp as Peaches were on in the Meeting Square at the same time!), but it also saved us the cost of hiring the venue. From experience, I know that venue hire in Dublin is mad expensive (for the decent venues)- we've rented the Music Centre and Crawdaddy for gigs & believe me, you spend half the night worrying that you'll get enough bods in just to cover the cost of it, let alone cover the cost of transporting gear, or even paying the support acts.
Besides all that, there's also the other benefits - we got radio play from it on Alison Curtis' show & then she invited us to do a studio session. Plus there was the "mentor sessions" during the day - I got to meet Stuart Clark of Hot Press, who was an absolute gentleman & they gave us a handsome write-up the following week. Hardly international mega-exposure, but better than a kick in the hole.
And while you can't think of "too many bands that have gone on to great things", that really does depend on how you define a band's success. Not every band is actively chasing a record deal OR looking to be the "next big thing"... we were offered 2 tours out of it - one took us on a 7 day stint thru Belgium (with a slight diversion into Holland, of course) and the second tour we did along the North coast of Spain... OK, we made f**k all money out of it, but it cost the band nothing & the experience was amazing, not to mention the number of people we got to play to that would otherwise never have heard of us.
And surely that's what making music is all about.. playing songs you love to audiences you don't know. Otherwise, you just play the "game", try & sound like whatever genre is "in" at the time & play with no soul. I know what I prefer!