Bootleg concerts

I was at a POL show the other day, and the venue owner was offline and it seems somebody had set the stream to a radio station after the previous crappy alleged jazz bands performance. Effectively leaving POL to stand on the stage with his… guitar in hand. No stream, now sound, no music = NO FUN.

We were left with two options. Pack it in and chalk it up to the multitude of pratfalls Second Life provides, or go somewhere else and have the concert without the sanction (basically the stream) of the Venue.

POL decided to go BOOTLEG and held the show at Wam TV a parcel he owns and can change the stream to whatever he wants. It seems like just about everybody at the official show made the jump to the new venue and the show went off without a hitch. I even played a short pick up set after POL was done.

During my stay on the SLMC forum I’ve heard many Venue owner whine about the difficulty of hosting a show. They have to hire staff, put out notices to various music groups and post to the events listing, and then deal with getting people on and off the stage.

While this seems to be the paradigm most shows run under, they seem to be somewhat superfluous when the artist has an actual fan base.

Please note I’m not disrespecting venue owners, because I’m sure when hosting a mega show with a bunch of so-called artist of various experiences, it’s probably a good thing to have someone on hand to help herd the cats. Get people on and off stage, make sure they have the stream info, and god forbid, if there is a last minuet cancellation, shuffle the deck a bit.

But when was the last time you sat through a whole mega show? I don’t think I’ve ever done it. I tend to sit through about 30 minuets of the act before me, because I show up early in order to avoid last moment TP issues. Then I hear about three songs of the next act while I answer my post show IM’s. In most cases the acts are horrible at both ends, but that is what happens when you book anybody and stack them up for an eight-hour mega show.

I know this if off topic, but just a though. If anybody were paying attention would any of these Karaoke fucktards get booked?

I’ve actually played a Bootleg concert once myself, and it seemed to work out just fine. I was schedule to play “Cheers”, and the Sim was crashed. Sent a notice to my group that I was moving the show to Vincent’s and had a well attended show.

I do have permission from a few venue owners to hold bootleg concerts on off hours and I might just take them up on this. It could become a more music driven kind of concert. No Karaoke fucktards, no bullshit, no host spamming “TIP THE ARTIST”. Just good music.

What an anarchistic idea. Good music in Second Life.