sell more beer!

that's not the reason the hoey is shut at all, i didn't think.

The decor sucks and theres no ambience. Id go heaps more if the vibe was right. If I wanted to frequent rsl clubs I wouldn't hang in the inner west.

I can see where he's coming from but still ''If you can't do the numbers, don't do live gigs'' doesn't quite sound right

IMHO, it's fine - if you can't do the numbers, play a smaller show. that's reasonable.

i doubt it's meant to reflect the sentiment 'the only good band is a popular band', or anything of that sort

passion for the music to one side, the venue has material reasons for hosting gigs that are entirely legitimate

i don't follow how ''bands who failed to draw a sufficient number of punters were contributing to the demise of Sydney’s live music scene'' makes sense though: who's responsible for hiring these bands? are they just being duped by everyone who walks in and claims they can pull a crowd?

Running a live music venue has no guarantee of success. It's hard enough to get punters through the door for local bands, then to try and keep them at the venue long enough to drink (and only if they are a drinking crowd...). Many punters only go to see the band they want, rather than stay at the venue all night. I've been involved with gigs in the past, that were sold out, but only $500 was taken over the bar. So, there are endless varying factors, which basically end with a small live music venue will only survive id live music isn't the sole income stream. You also need a cracking public bar, good food, etc.

Furthermore, I would go as far as saying that a pub that can profit without bands, would be the perfect place to host bands!!

I'm not sure that's true crash - pubs that run bands immediately run at the exclusion of people who don't want to see bands, unless the pub can accomodate both. scary, but there's a whole breed of people that don't want to hear live music while they drink.

but there's a whole breed of people that don't want to hear live music while they drink.

don't know the c*nts.

Of course it's sad. Just kind of reads a bit harsh to take it out on the bands. It appears there's some finger pointing in the direction of the artists. Surely they're not solely responsible for the fact that venues have to close.

Well the quote is from a November 2009 interview so not sure if it reflects the current state of mind.

The band room was completely separate, so bands wouldn't impact the public bar, as least that's what I thought the times I was there.

But then factor the equipment and maintenance costs, which are huge for a venue. You really need a lot of people drinking at that second bar to keep that side of things above water.

the sando was not cheap to book either.

The second bar being in a different room to the bands, and there only being one tiny door in and out of the band room, makes it a bit of a pain to get another drink while a band is actually on, too. Bet that impacts their taking.

if you book bands based on how many people they can pull, most of the time you get shitty bands who are playing their first few gigs and their mums and dads show up as well as every first cousin and friend for the pity attendence quota (the ''alright we'll watch you once so we can say we've seen you and you stop sending us stupid facebook invites'').

if you keep booking bands based on this, all you get is punters who follow that particular band, NOT the venue. you might do well because as we all know bands always bring the same amount of people that they promise (yeah right!) but most of the time they don't and if they do it is because of the above reason.

if instead venues booked bands based on quality music and reputation, so that punters know that they can go any night of the week and expect good music, you get a following FOR THE VENUE. you'll hopefully get people who stay the whole night and drink and eat a lot instead of a whole bunch of people who just stick around for their best friends band and piss off afterwoods.

having said this, a pub relies on gambling, food and alcohol to make money. i can't imagine how hard it'd be to be a live music venue. as already pointed out, the best live music venues are the ones that are successful without live music anyway and it is just an add on.

and i think the sando was great but i honestly think there are plenty of venues to see live music in sydney. almost too many. the 'crisis' shit isn't true. the crisis is there aren't enough people that go see live music (that isn't their friends band and isn't a touring national or international act) to meet the over supply of a billion bands that want to play a gig.

and a band needs fans who are A) alcoholics B) addicted to pokies or C) preferably both

rambling. i gotz it.

Well said.

Fuck Sydney. Shut the whole place down.

Oxford Arts and the Beresford are my current favourites, not that I venture there too regularly and I usually go home early around 1:00am, but they get some quality acts there. Just they are hung ho with the cameras, always taking photos of the crowd...annoying and potentially humiliating, I like to have a dance without that...especially since most of the crowd are kinda younger than me.

Regarding the Sando Pay to Play system:
We had a show booked there before it came in to place. Two weeks before the gig we were sent a letter explaining that this new system was taking place immediately. The letter was harshly worded, quite emotive and frankly offensive to bands like us who are travelling 800kms to play and doing everything we can to make the show cover it's costs.
I told them it was unprofessional and not honouring the original agreement. We had honoured it so far and so should they. They said they would not. I said fine we'll take the show elsewhere to which they tried to convince us to keep the show on and said they are certain the night will do well. I said if you're certain then don't impose this system on us. They said nup, we played Wombarra instead and had a kiler show with the same lineup.

I understand venues need punters in the door to operate. But further punishing bands for a gig that does not do well is a stupid system. How about rewarding them for shows that do well instead?

what venue crisis? we have better venues than melbourne. ugh fuck this, so boring

The heart of live music has moved from newtown. I guess a lot if people feel that kiss and then if course there was the hopetoun.

Scuse the typos kiss = loss

I've always hated newtown. never liked the sando. seems to me to be the best place to go these days though. sando, not necessarily newtown.

my opinions are probably wrong.

what venue crisis?

Exactly. The Sando closed because it wasn't solvent. How does this represent a venue cirsis? Unless a venue closes due to a specific threat posed by draconian liquor licensing legislation then it is a non issue.

If would like to see more pubs would cater to the MMORPG crowd, surely this would help subsidize band rooms and the like.

Unless a venue closes due to a specific threat posed by draconian liquor licensing legislation then it is a non issue.

So economic and social factors are incapable of causing a crisis? What a relief.

Hey Firewitch , great idea about rewarding bands that do well. cause i'm older than dirt i remember when some venues would give you a cut of the bar once you hit a certain dollar amount or had x amount of punters in the room. If your crowd were big drinkers even 5% of the bar could mean a couple of hundred dollars on top of your door cut, and this was 20 years ago and pre pokies though.

Hear hear, talk about a ''Labor Loves Live Music'' campaign:

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/labor-is-listening-to-music-venues-20120710-21txx.html

Hear hear, talk about a ''Labor Loves Live Music'' campaign:

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/labor-is-listening-to-music-venues-20120710-21txx.html

don't trust em

Shame about the Sando. Good space for bands!

So economic and social factors are incapable of causing a crisis? What a relief.

Economic factors are not specific to live music venues. If small business is taking a hit it is a problem that exists independently of live music venue concerns. And what are these 'social factors' that are threatening live music?

I haven't been to the Sando since the 90's on account of moving to Adelaide but still remember some good gigs there - Sea Scouts, 2 Litre Dolby & Sonic Emotion Explosion in Jan '98, Tren Brothers & Cat Power in Dec '97, great Kim Salmon solo set in Dec '96.

Completely different vibe, completely different patron. No where near as good, not as bohemian as it used to be.

There is no electricity in the air anymore...it's dissipated in great amounts.

Are there other venues around Newtown still? Back then I was also at Feedback quite a bit, and for a little while there was The Globe which was short lived but had some top gigs.

Feedback was great, now it lies abandoned, there is the Vanguard, The Green Room, Notes and The Enmore Theatre, there may be other smaller venues. I think the Rose of Australia no longer operates as a venue. Newtown has lost a lot of it's culture.

Fuck ya's all. I'm off to the Sando now...

I played a few shows at the sando, was a nice venue but no one ever came. Don't think it was our fault per se, people don't tend to like going to the sando. Also what's the deal with there always being a band playing downstairs? You're not going to get any casual punters paying 10 bucks when you can just see a bunch of quite competent musicians playing for free.... Then it means you have to promote the shit out of your show, which costs a whole stack of money, the sando don't do anything in terms of p.r. except one ad in the street press which lists like 10 or 15 shows in black and white. So, yeah it's not the band's fault, it's not even really the venue's fault. That guys a wanker to blame bands when it's obviously a problem being experienced in venues and non venue bars alike. It's hard making money out of pubs when everyone is tightening their spending, also it costs a fortune to run a pub to begin with. It sucks that the sando is fucked but i don't have any sympathy for the bloke cause of his attitude.

Big Bad Bo said 1 day ago:

Hey Firewitch , great idea about rewarding bands that do well. cause i'm older than dirt i remember when some venues would give you a cut of the bar once you hit a certain dollar amount or had x amount of punters in the room. If your crowd were big drinkers even 5% of the bar could mean a couple of hundred dollars on top of your door cut, and this was 20 years ago and pre pokies though.

i remember when hcgs used to play the hoey and Paul would often give us a couple of cases and a bottle of whiskey because they did really well over the bar when we'd play there

i fkn loved that, it's not huge, but it is nice to be rewarded and appreciated

I feel empathy for the owner and his family from a financial loss point of view - but yeah - really don't feel the ''loss'' of an important Newtown cultural institution. The Sando hasn't been that for so many years - and you can't help but feel the venue owners didn't put that much effort into building and ''owning'' an important music scene. It seemed to be ''we'll pretty much take any genre, any quality and your friends better bloody drink up''. I accept running a pub must be super difficult, but you can't say that some don't do it far better than others, so surely competence plays a big role.

In any case, it's not closing right, just in receivership and will carry on biz as usual right?

The rot set in when they got rid of the hot chip vending machine.

they just didnt know how to run a music venue that size, pretty obvious really. they relied way too much on the bands to do jobs that they should have had dedicated staff to do.

Yep mule, i sense it was a case of let's buy this legendary newtown music pub 7 years ago, and it's reputation / history should see us into retirement nicely - the scene will take care of itself. Ooops!

I think the model of a ''live music pub'' is pretty much redundant, at least in Newtown anyhow. That's not to say that venues that have live music don't work in Newtown but they tend to be spaces that have lower overheads and don't have to be selling booze for the 95% of the week that the doors are open while music isn't playing. I don’t think this really has much to do with the owners knowing how to promote their venue, or whether they relied on the bands too much to do that. I’ve been to some packed out shows there where the line to the bar was 5 deep. It’s just that this isn’t enough to keep the doors open when you’ve made a big investment in infrastructure that isn’t being used the majority of the time you’re trading...

yeah i agree, but it's up to them to be creative and keep things afloat, you can't just have a cry and blame the bands for not giving you a comfortable retirement.

the landsdowne seems to do a pretty good job as a live music pub.

Yeah, but the Landsdowne is a bit different though. There’s no door charge so there's lots of walk-ins (and walk outs if the bands are crap) but most importantly they aren't running a separate room dedicated to bands, which means the space has some earning capacity when bands aren't playing.

yep

I could probably copy & paste my Gaelic Club comments here. But here goes...

Sando doesn't seem to have much of a genuine connection to any kind of scene which leads to weird awkward bookings that aren't consistent. I agree with Macgyver that it's important to create trust that the venue has some idea what it's doing and that you can cruise down most nights and see something good - if not good, something that's a certain kind of interesting so you'll suspend disbelief and give it a shot. If they had no idea what bands to book, why not find someone who did? Why not spend some time a few doors down in Repressed Records, chatting to those guys? Using live music, first, as a means to make money and, second, as a means to support the music you rate is back to front. It's like monetising an online business - start by building your audience, then work out how to make money out of it. Not the other way around.

Also - some sort of vibe doesn't hurt and doesn't have to be expensive. Those downlights and that cheap function furniture upstairs was pretty dire. Go to Vinnies and get some lamps, an old couch. Serve at least one half-decent wine. They were doing a pretty good job of tapping into the comebacks of 90s Syd pub punk rock bands, like Hard Ons, Further, etc. But they've gotta realise that this means their audience is in their 30s and 40s and might appreciate a modicum of comfort. (They do serve Whale Ale which is good - better than the Annandale which is a strongbow and tooheys new kinda bar.)

Also..... the new room was cool and good on them for building it, but it had air con issues (as in, people flaking out from heat-stroke, though maybe they got that sorted?) and it was hard to get in and out. There'd be heaps of room up the front (as usual) and a bottleneck at that little door. It was also never clear to punters WHICH room any said night would be in. You wouldn't know until you arrived if you were in the little room or the big, newer room. New room also had sound issues. All that said,.. the older sound guy Richard who does/did the sound was always awesome. Nice guy, fucking good at his job.

I really hope the annandale/Sando, etc, read this thread and others like it because it's clearly the words of people who actually get out to see live music. Often the people who get the most upset when these venues close are the people who haven't seen live music in years so it's a sentimental thing, like a little bit of their youth is slipping away because back in the day they loved the Sando, or whatever. So those people are no use to the Annandale/Hopetoun/Sando anyway, except for some hollow words of ''We can't let this happen!''. Overall, I don't mind the Sando and I mean all of this constructively.

Often the people who get the most upset when these venues close are the people who haven't seen live music in years so it's a sentimental thing, like a little bit of their youth is slipping away because back in the day they loved the Sando, or whatever.

Yep spot on HennessyKate and you put a lot of that better than I did. I guess the vibe, furniture, drinks, feel of the place and not using a fwd thinking booker is all what I was getting at with relation to ''competence'' in running the place.

Agreed on the wonderful Whale Ale! And def more interested in giving constructive feedback, not putting the boot in while the well-intentioned people are already down.

let's just hope justin doesn't get his filthy hands on the sando

It's fucked.

Are any venues in Sydney doing Espy-style free gigs anymore, apart from Wednesdays at the Beach Rd Hotel?

Seems like the OAF and Annandale are the only decent rooms below 400 capacity?

What a fucking outrage. Latch onto another band? Bands aren't fucking businesses and i'm sick of these sneering corporate types suggesting otherwise. A bands only responsibility is to make fucking good music.A good band doesn't sit around dreaming up schemes to make venue owners rich.

Lansdowne, The Mac, The Townie, The Green Room, The Union, The Hollywood...plenty of free music in Sydney.

not to mention the sando, which have a free band downstairs pretty much every night there is a band upstairs...

this article/comments shitfight on fasterlouder is probably worth a look.

who calls it a fucking ''green room''??

i saw a response to this from the annandale, on their wall some lady wrote the following, i tend to agree with the sentiment

''''What's irritating about the Maclean article isn't so much that he slags the Sando, but more because the latter half of his article demonstrates the growing sense of entitlement amongst many Australian musicians at the moment. The guy is lucky enough to have a decent following in music (and on Twitter), presents for JJJ, wins a role in 'The Great Gatsby', and he's whinging about green rooms and the amount of money other people spend on promoting his shows?? He also blames pokies, aesthetically unpleasing venues and Cold Chisel fans for whatever grievances he feels he has suffered. I like the idea of supporting acts who make music because they love doing it and expect nothing in return, but for every talented, hard-working, realistic, self-aware act like this, there seems to be just as many acts who are so besotted with their own sense of artistic genius that they expect to be rewarded and supported for pursuing their dreams. As a result, the acts with this attitude usually produce self-indulgent, unoriginal swill written up their own ass anyway.''

Yeah it was pretty poor form on behalf of Maclean, you have a responsibility when you get to his moderate level of success. the weird thing is that there is a green room, and they do provide you with a case or two in an ice bucket.

...there are certainly downfalls to the sando, but i don't think it is as bad as Maclean makes it out to be