How to Promote Prog Rock or Orchestrate a Festival

(Lessons in Sodomy)

I pine for the glory days of Progressive Rock! Oh, how I love the genre. And, with only minimal research on that wonderful World Wide Web, I’ve discovered that there are still folks writing, recording, and selling this glorious type of music. And the aforementioned minimal research has also revealed that there are still a goodly amount of fans out there interested in current Progressive Rock. Who knew?! And then a strange idea pops into my enterprising little head: I’ll organize a festival and invite these brave bands to come play for all of the folks who are still supporting this music.

So I enlist a few of my like-minded buddies to help out. And they’re keen on it. We form an “organization,” give it an acronym name, and launch a web site. It doesn’t take long before bands are swamping us with free CDs, thereby submitting themselves as candidates for our festival. Not part of my initial noble intent, but the hundreds of free CDs is a cool byproduct.

So overwhelmed by the interest, we decide to make the festival a two-day event, thus doubling the number of bands we can have! My buddies agree that this is a good idea because by increasing the number of bands, we’re sure to increase the size of our audience. And so we begin researching the bands that have submitted CDs. Most we’ve never heard of, but they do sound like Yes or Tull or Genesis or Gentle Giant or ELP or Crimson or Rush…save for the consistently poor singing. But they’re progressive. And me and my buddies like prog. So we all agree to sit down and narrow the field down of our inaugural venture to ten bands; five each day.

But then we start getting strange emails from folks who tell us they’ve been purveyors of underground progressive rock for like six decades and that if we want to put on a “legitimate” festival, we better shoot some invites to such and such bands. And then my buddies call me saying that they’ve visited some newsgroups and we’re being accused of orchestrating a “vanity project” for bands we like…and for some reason, that makes my buddies feel like doggie doo. So, we forget about the bands we like and the bands that have submitted themselves for consideration, and research some of these other bands that we’ve heard are the only acts that can bring credibility to our event.

We spend a few weeks finding these recommended bands. Neither I nor any of my buddies have ever heard of them, but each one is billed as single-handedly keeping prog alive. To our ears, they’re all fusiony like Al DiMeola, or they sound like 1975 King Crimson pretending to be the Grateful Dead. Which is good enough for us! So we contact them about appearing at our festival. Most of them are very keen on playing (in their cool, avantly, apathetic way), and let us know that they’ll do it for a couple thousand plus travel…and most of them live out of the United States. And then my buddies and I start getting a bit squeamish, as we never thought that these bands would actually expect to get paid. So we decide to scrap the overseas bands, and go back to our original list of candidates.

We figure if we sell tickets at 50 bucks a head, we’ll have a budget of about 10 grand to work with. This is all scientifically done by guesswork. I manage to get a nice performance hall to agree to let us use it for a “rock and roll event,” by promising to buy our own insurance. They rent us the hall at an incredible price: $1600 ($800 a day), but they get 10% of the ticket price. Therefore, we jack up the ticket price to $60. I find out that insuring the event for property loss, bodily injury, and general liability will cost us $600. I beg Uncle Lester to lend us the services of his catering business. He won’t lend us his services—he reminds me that he’s a business man, after all—but he will provide them at cost plus a sign that we’ll need to have made especially for the event. And that’s a better deal than we could get anywhere else. We agree to do it for $1500 for the weekend, plus the sign which costs $150 to have professionally made. A steal. I call the portable toilet folks and set up half a dozen to be rented for our weekend. Because I tell them we’ll be doing this every year, they give me a deal: $400 for the weekend. My buddies call around town for a sound and lighting company that is good enough to sonically capture the nuances of progressive rock. And they're successful. Since we’ll be using audio and lighting, they give us a package deal: $1800 for the weekend and only $200 for the dude who runs both sound and lights. They try and sell us a guy that only does lights and a guy that only does the monitor mix, but we figure they’re professionals. One of them can run sound and lights simultaneously. We figure we’ll run print ads in our local paper, the national prog publications, and a radio spot on the local classic rock station the week of the event. Although we’re a bit surprised that this will cost us $750, we do it. After all, the key to a successful business is marketing. Of the projected budget, we have about $5000 left. Awesome!

After revisiting the CDs of all the bands that submitted, we find our ten bands. My buddies and I really think these guys are great. I call the representative of the first band. In what can only be seen as a fortuitous omen, this band lives less than 200 miles from the festival venue and they would be happy to play! He is quite adamant about knowing what other bands we are considering. I tell him. We make him our offer of $500 and he politely states he’ll get back with me. My buddies contact three other bands with similar results. The first band calls back and says they’ll do it for $1000 if they’re billed as the headliner and they get a free merc table. The band rep reminds me that they’ve been together 19 years and have produced two well-received CDs. And, considering the other bands we’ve told them are playing, he believes that they deserve to be the headliners. I tell him I’ll discuss it with my partners and get back with him. My buddies tell me that the other bands they’ve talked to also want more money. I get a little miffed at the greed of these musicians for wanting $1000 to play for 75 minutes. That breaks down about $600 an hour. Hell, even airline pilots make less! I decide to delay negotiations and let the bands stew. After all, how many chances do they get to play before a progressive rock audience? After two days, one of my buddies tells me that his band called back, apologizing for playing hardball, and agreed to do the festival for $500 and a merc table. We agree and make the announcement of our first band on our web site.

By midnight, we’ve received almost a hundred angry emails from the expert folks demanding to know why one of their suggested overseas bands wasn’t the first band announced. I make the mistake of publicly responding that we don’t have the money to bring in bands from overseas. The next day, my buddies call me wanting to know why the news on the Web is calling our festival a laughable, pop music vanity show. We realize that the experts must know what they’re talking about, and so we contact one of the fusion bands from Germany we’ve never heard of before. Their rep tells us they’ll do the festival for travel, $2000, and a merc booth. And they must be the headliner as they’re the only international band at the festival. I research our costs for flying them over to the States, and find a great deal—for 4 band members and their manager—a reasonable $3200. Some quotes were as high as $7000, so I feel good about it. I discuss it with my buddies and they remind me that this one band alone will consume all of the remaining budget and leave us nothing for the remaining eight band slots. We decide to raise ticket prices to $75. I call the German band and tell them it’s a deal. I call back my first band and tell them we’ll have to charge them $50 for their merc table. They reluctantly agree.

We announce the German band on our web site. Most of the experts are quite angry that they weren’t the first announced, but they give us “reserved praise” for what they hope will be a “diverse line-up.” We spend the next couple of weeks hyping the festival to ALL of the bands that submitted CDs, reminding them of how great exposure can be to a fledgling act. Four of the bands (they all sound like Rush) offer to play gratis, provided we give them a merc table. Needless to say, we accept.

The successive announcements of these bands brings about steaming shit piles of reproach from the experts who, quite accurately, accuse us of getting these bands because they wouldn’t cost much. My buddies tell me they’ve had enough and are bailing. I beg them to see things through, but they can’t endure the abuse they’re getting on the Internet from folks who’ve never met them. I’m alone.

To save the festival (I’ve already spent $7000 of my own money on deposits for the above listed things), I realize I’ll have to secure another band that the experts are clamoring for. In an obvious gift from God, a Swedish band shows interest and tells me that they’ll do the festival for a flat $2500 performance fee and a merc table. They claim their government will fly them over here for free. Needless to say, I accept.

I announce the band on the web site and get the suspicious kudos from the experts. But, to my shock and horror, I watch as a different group of experts suddenly emerges accusing the Swedish band of being a bunch of prog poseurs. I call my buddies and offer to pay them a wage if they’ll come back. They won’t.

By my math, I see that I have a little over $1000 of the budget left to secure the remaining 3 bands. To save costs, I call the German band and ask them if they can lengthen their show to a two-hour set so I can drop one of the second day bands. They seem put out by my request, but agree.

In another twist of luck, a buzz starts circulating about a certain band from the opposite coast. They are supposed to be “the next ELP!” And, as if God Himself were telling me to book these geniuses, I find that they will be in my area the week of our festival! I manage to contact their rep, and he says they could indeed headline the second day. I tell him that the German band is headlining the second day, and that we’ve already bought the plane tickets. He says he’ll get back with me. He calls back a few hours later, says that they have a show the night of the festival’s first day, but, providing we make it worth their while, they’d consider playing in one of the early slots. He also tells me they want to be billed as the first day headliner, even though they’ll be slated to play second. I begin to tell them that the Swedish band is the first day headliner, but tell myself that the Swedes can be duped. I offer him $1000. He laughs. Again, I am shocked at the greed of musicians. We get into a discussion about exposure and he wants to know what the other bands are making. In a moment of anger, I tell him. He demands $2000 and reminds me that it is the bands that drive these festivals, not the other way around. His reasoning eludes me. This is my festival. I remind him of the exposure his band will get. He counters that his band doesn’t need exposure, they need to be compensated for performing. Again, the greed!

I counter with a $1500 offer and he agrees, provided they get a merc table. I agree. I decide to raise the ticket price to $80.

I announce the “buzz” band on the web site and get roundly criticized for bowing to popular pressure. My wife tells me I’m an idiot and that if I even suggest doing this next year, she’s taking the children and leaving. I decide to take a break from finding the last band, and go back to preparing for the festival itself. I find out that renting merc tables for nine bands will cost me $300 for the weekend.

For the ninth and final slot, I contact a band I have loved for ten years. Their music is deep, the songwriting is solid, the musicianship is stellar, and the vocals are always superb. They are delighted to hear from me and tell me that they would be honored to play the festival. I’m shocked that they don’t insist on being the headliner either day, and that the cost of travel will be included in their performance fee. I ask them how much that will be and they tell me $1000. $1000 for 75 minutes. Needless to say, I tell the greedy bastards to go to hell, and in a fit of passion, trash all of their CDs I own. In their place, I find a fusion band that all dress up in ape suits. They agree to play the festival for exposure and a merc table. Some on the Internet complain. Some are delighted. Strangely, despite the fervor of their opinions, they still somehow manage not to show up to the festival.