You call the venue, explain your band, style, number of previous gigs, venues you've played, bands you've played with. Sometimes you'll need to send in a demo, mostly as a way of filtering out the schoolkid bands who can't actually play. It's rare to be rejected a gig because your songs are crap, as long as you play OK together.
Assuming you're given a gig, probably a Wednesday night as a first go at a venue, you usually have to bring two other bands with you to make it a full night. Rarely do the venues organise the actual bands that are playing. You'll also have to do posters and put them up around town, inform the street press of your gig date and venue. You'll most likely have to provide a door person (that is, someone to take money) and your own mixer.
On the actual night you'll have to turn up a couple of hour early for soundcheck*. You may or may not be provided with a rider (that is, free beer). Typically even the smaller venues will give a band at least one free beer per band member. On average it's about two beers. Times for the three bands are usually 9:30, 10:30 and 11:30, each playing for around 45 minutes with a rushed 15 minute change over.
Almost no venue you're likely to play will have a band room to put your gear. Gear goes on the stage, in front of the stage, beside the stage or wherever you can find to put it. Three bands worth of gear is a lot of instruments. Some of these venues are not very big. A lot of bands share drumkits and amps to save time setting up.
Most indie bands run nights with a $6 entry. Typically $2 for the venue, $2 for the "headliner" and $1 each for the two supports. This varies. Some venues take all the money from the first X people through the door. Some venues (rarely) are happy to just take the money from the bar.
A venue will unlikely let you do another gig if no-one turns up. This despite the fact your first gig is likely to be a Wednesday night when almost no-one will turn up.
So what does the venue provide if you provide the mixer, the door person, the advertising and the crowd? They provide the venue, and the equipment (that is; mixing desk, speakers, microphones and foldback speakers). A lot of venues have regular ads in street press and you'll get your band's name in the list.
A good night for an indie band is around 100 to 200 people. This number of people on any night other than a Friday or Saturday night at a city venue is rare. You'll more likely get 30 to 50 people, and that's if at least two out of three of your bands for the night have fans. Even big indie bands have crap nights. I've seen Pre_Shrunk gigs (a popular band with radio play and multiple albums) with less than 100 people at their gigs.
So lets say it's a great night (200 people) and you're the headliner. That's $400. Except you have to pay the mixer $50. And you put a quarter page ad in Beat magazine, that cost you $200+. And you all bought new strings ($25 each guitar, $60 each bass). And you practiced at least three times before the gig (about 6 hours of time, ignoring travelling).
The person I was speaking to was a little shocked. "Why do you do it?".
Because it's fun.
Walken play @ The Armadale Hotel tonight at 9:30pm. We'll make $2 a person, after the first 25 people. We'll get 2 beers each.
* What do band do during soundcheck? Their mixer sets up microphones in front of amps and on drums and for vocals. The band then plays for each microphone and the mixer finds where they all are on the desk and applies any standard filters and effects for each one. Then the band stands up there and gets their foldback right. Foldback is what the band is hearing. It may be loud out the front but the PA speakers point to the crowd, not the band. Typically, without foldback, the band will only hear their own amp (if they're lucky) and the drums. The drummer will hear nothing but drums. Setting up foldback is a pain in the arse.
Dreamcatcher was going so well for about the first half an hour too. Right up until the military (and Morgan Freeman) are introduced. About where the book gets a bit crap too. Fortunately the book digs itself out of it's hole. The movie continues it's slide, getting stupider and stupider until the final credits. I can only blame the test audiences as the original ending is provided on the DVD and it is terrible, but it's the last hour of plot changes that cause it.
But even Dreamcatcher pales in comparison to the worst movie I've seen in the last 12 months, and I've seen Python II. Teenage Caveman, from the director of Kids and "effects genius Stan Winston" (T2, T3, Edward Scissorhands, AI). I'll admit from the beginning it's a remake of an equally bad (from reports) Teenage Cave Man from 1958. However I suspect the similarities are very small.
It's the future, about 100 years. Our heros are teenagers who don't like being pushed around by their cave leader / cult leader. A leader who tells them to ignore the past and only read useful books and to keep thier lust at bay, but who keeps old Penhouses in his quarters and regularly "chooses" women from the clan to accept this godliness. It sounds like a dodgy porn movie and if it wasn't for the last half hour or so and some not so clever camera angles it would be. The kids escape, find an old city, get caught in a storm and are saved by a couple who have mastered the technology of the "ancients". They dazzle the teenagers with TV, nice food, 80's clothes and after about twenty seconds, drinks and drugs. And not long after, sex. Like any good catholic school kid, once they're told they're allowed to enjoy it, they all go sex mad. And thus we're presented with a twenty minute to half hour group sex scene, from which two of the teenagers decide they're not interested.
Apparently the couple that saved the kids are genetic mutants who can live forever and cannot repoduce but can pass on their "virus" to regular humans, assuming they don't explode, which a couple of our heroes do in the only good effect in the whole movie.
A whole bunch of "join us" and "escape!" and "argh!" and "fight" and "in fight!" happens and the movie ends. It's shit.
It's only saving grace could be that the occasional kid might see it believe it's possible that having unprotected sex with strangers will lead you to explode in a shower of blood and guts. I suppose this is a good thing.
IMDB seems to almost hide the fact Stan Winston was involved but it's all over the DVD we borrowed, including some nice happy smiling pictures in the DVD menu. I can only assume they got him in for about five seconds to point at a picture and say "this is terrible, piss off" and his poor name has been attached ever since.
Do not see either of these movies, ever.