Hi guys - iTunes seems to be having a problem downloading the podcast. May need looking at!
Cheers

I've downloaded another podcast from elsewhere OK, but I get the following error with the latest word podcast...

Should be working now.

anyway, technical matters aside, that was very interesting. Your recommendations for making venues more pleasant places for the punter are 100% approved by me.

It's fair point that us punters do bear some repsponsibilty for complaining more if gig venue offer bad service. But DH is right who do complain to and what sort of redress would you get. At most venues if you asked to sees one you would be met by an unhelpful steward/bouncer the implication being if you make too much fuss you could be simply asked to leave. If you do get to talk to someone it will be part time student who will not be empowered to act on anything. But I wll try to complain more I do with the most other things from broadband to air flights.

This being said the media need to keep their end up I can't remember ever seeing a question about how stars feel their fans are treated ever. It may be that the answers are rotten so don't get printed but then 90% of what Bobby Gillespie says is rotten! So why no mention of the punters other than glib "we owe it all to the fans" platitudes.

Oh and no i don't want a loyalty card has anyone got one that's worth the hassle of the constant emails and marketing bunmf. Why can't i just go to gig without giving everyone involved my email address?

Two Norn-Irish guests running, eh? Hmm. This can only mean one thing. Yes, next week Van the Man himself kicks off his loafers, removes his shades, blinks, flashes his designer choppers and regales us with some of his best-loved stories ("There's thus transvistate walken dine Saypress Avenyee in hay-heeled sheez...")

Best hide the office vodka bottle, though, or it could end in tears.

I think you chaps made some valid points re venue loyalty but you were looking at it from a very London-centric point of view. In the "provinces" people are so limited as to who they can see (especially non British artists) that there will be a substantial number who will visit their local pleasuredome to see whoever happens to be playing just for the novelty value if nothing else. I don't think this has changed much since my "heyday" in the late seventies/early eighties when we would turn up to see anyone who played Glasgow Apollo. This has had a direct effect on my distinctly eclectic musical tastes as I was lucky enough to see acts as diverse as, for example, Earth Wind and Fire, Rainbow and the Jam all at the same place.

So I say pick a venue and go to see the next half dozen acts to play there (finances permitting) as it might just open your musical mind.

- really enjoyed it.
I guess a crumb of comfort for any Maximo Park-sized act could be that this time last year you could've used Elbow as your example.

Genuinely fascinating. I can't think of anywhere else that you'd get 45 minutes like that.

Manchester has a great example of how wrong-headed rock venue design has become. The Academy (now Academy 1) was never a great venue but you could always see the band, and it had a separate back bar that was pleasant to talk in when, say, sterling support from The Datsuns became too much for your delicate constitution.

It even had picnic tables, a nod to civility that was appreciated. So long as you didn't try to buy a drink amid the six-deep inter-band bar scrum, it was perfectly bearable.

Following an expensive remodeling, it is now one cavernous space with the bar chopped into the wall on one side. You WILL listen to The Datsuns. You certainly won't sit down. You won't see anything, because people walking to the bar will constantly cross your field of vision. The talkers who might have congregated in the convivial area are now expected to mix with the general population.

There was obviously more bunce to be had from a big box that would fit another 500 or so people but if I wanted to be treated like cattle, I'd swaddle myself in hide and hunker down in a barn.

PS Every time Eamonn said "feel the pinch" I thought he was saying "feed the pigs"!

That's all I wanted to say, really. It passed a drive from home to Bristol very nicely. Thank you.

.. as I've been busy catching up on the latest Mad Man and Theme Time Radio Hour episodes, in-between reading The WORD and watching the football and trying to fit in some "real life", but fair play to Eamonn for the blog responses.

I complained (via email) after my front row seat for the Brian Wilson SMiLE show turned out to be a restricted view because of the gigantic monitors attached to his keyboards that he never plays (he has trouble remembering the words these days).

I was given an apology and awarded a pair of excellent seats to a show of my choice at the RFH.

These days I find I'm far more interested in reading, and now listening, this behind the scenes stuff than I am about 'artists' from whatever area wittering on about their art. This was fascinating stuff and these are always the articles I turn to first in the magazine.
More please, The Word.

I'd pay good money to see that one . . .

Eamonn was great, and marvellous that he has surfed in here to join with the comments

Eamonn was a good listen, but (and I know this sounds like sucking up) David Hepworth is actually a bloody good interviewer. Well done.

i would love to download this podcast. But when I check the relevant page on iTunes it's not there - the Richard Thompson edition is the most recent addition to this page.

Could it be that the new podcast has been successfully uploaded to UK iTunes only?

I am in Ireland and get a strange pan-European version of the iTunes (Buraka Som Sistema's latest album anyone?)

The problem is only with the backstage podcast. The new Word podcast 87 shows up no problem at all on its page.

There are musicians who are making (I assume because they've been doing it for years) an adequate living. I've written before about Show of Hands but others like Fairport Convention or Kate Rusby charge reasonable amounts (£12-£20) and presumably make enough to keep doing what they love doing. And they can do this at smaller venues where everybody gets a good view and the sound is good.

I'm fortunate enough to live near the Brook in Southampton which has all I need for live music - friendly staff, reasonably priced beer (including real ale), seats if you want them and get there early enough and a variety of performers (if a bit heavy on the tribute bands). I've recently seen both Fairport and Show of Hands there and both were excellent evenings out with no hassle or huge expense.

The fact is, if bands are in it just to earn a decent living and to make music, they can do it. It's when they're trying to make as much as possible for as little effort (huge arenas) that they come unstuck.

Tremendous podcast this week - rammed with stuff. Eamonn, thanks for answering all the questions I was going to ask about your fantastic four-pronged accent. I feel I will be a disappointment on next week's now with my boring East Midlands-gone-to-that-there-London tones. I don't know half as much about the inner workings of the modern record industry either! I can do birds, if anybody's interested. (No squirrel talk, I vow here and now.)

And thanks to everyone else for your very kind comments. Glad you enjoyed it and, more than that, were able to navigate the dirt track that is my accent.

I would like to add my tuppence worth concerning how we gig goers are treated. This is a London complaint. Is it me or is it more often than not that bigger name acts think that it's ok to charge Londoners far more than the rest of the country to see the same show/tour but to add further insult they think that we should stay in all weekend and then turn up on a bloody monday or mid week night to have the pleasure. Does the Albert Hall do a Monday night special offer for touring bands? I'll quite often give it a miss if it's not thurs/fri/sat. Before you say it, yes it is because I generally have to get my arse out of bed to go to work five days a week - How else would I be able to pay for the ticket.
I hope you are listening Nick lowe & all the rest of you...................

Apologies for stupidly mixing up this Word podcast 87 with the backstage one.

It was great to hear Eamonn cast light on this secretive part of the music business.

I wonder if the downturn will help the music fans who get together to convince an act to do a date for them. This would take out some of the uncertainty of selling tickets and may even give the fans some limited say in what the band might play.

For future podcasts, Iwould love to hear interviews with other experts in such areas as publishing, production or copyright.

The APM Sound Opinion podcast, as recommended on these boards, had a great one recently on rock plagiarism with a discussion on the Coldplay/Joe Satriani lawsuit over Viva La Vida.

I realise you did cover a lot of ground, but I was surprised there was no mention of Van Morrison and his £200 tickets for the Albert Hall. These aren't just a few at the front, it's the whole arena and stalls area.
I'd like to think in these straitened times very few tickets would be sold, but I suspect he'll do quite well.
Does anyone know what price he charged in the USA when the live Astral Weeks was recorded?
Anyway the Parkers won't be there.

..I suppose the recently announced dates by CSN weren't too badly priced, but I still thought: "Bollocks - I'm not paying that."

...kept me informed and entertained from home to Gatwick Airport.

One thing about gigs though, I do agree that the punter gets a pretty raw deal some of the time. But, also some pleasant surprises. I went to see Neko Case at the Bush Hall (Shepherds Bush) with a couple of mates, and the venue is a surprise and a delight. Very intimate, but like a baroque banquet room or an ante-room in Versailles, it sports chandeliers, is carpeted and - a nice touch this - has domestic radiators like those you get in 1970's semi. Probably about 200 people (?) and it was packed. A bit hot, but hey, most of us there could do with losing a few pounds. Beer was reasonably priced for London, and the vibe was friendly.

Neko was great by the way.

so a bit late to the conversation. As good as ever, thank you.

Something I don't understand is why bands (or festivals) don't bypass ticket agencies and just place tranches of tickets on ebay. More are released the nearer the show gets. That way, they guarantee a sell out, get the maximum possible revenue and would reduce losses on re-sales by releasing a few tickets a week before the gig. I'm not suggesting I, as a punter, would benefit but the existing model doesn't seem to be working for the bands, based on the whinging their managements have been making.

...fans aren't exactly rushing to spend £200 on tickets for Astral Weeks Live. Apparently, it's possible to get four in a row for both nights. The article says this is the credit crunch yadda yadda, but might people also be reluctant to shell out £200 on an artist who only turns up and plays when he feels like it?

Tim Harford ("The Undercover Economist") from the FT is worth reading on the subject of high concert prices. He suggests that the problem is that gigs may actually be under-priced...

http://timharford.com/2008/03/eternal-enigma/

As someone in his mid-20s who used to buy albums for £15+ obsessively 5-10 years ago, but now rarely buy new music, I wanted to say something about the other media that the music industry is competing against.

Video games have moved on immeasurably over the past decade* both in terms of their over all presentation and their refinement in the various genres. They are expected to contain at least a dozen hours of entertainment, often including complex stories and soundtracks to match. They are also expected to show a marked improvement from year to year in every facet of their development. You could say the same for film and television in terms of added content when released as DVD box sets with commentaries, behind the scenes documentaries and interviews etc.

I don't feel that album releases have moved on in the same way. I realise it would be ridiculous to expect a marked improvement over time as bands come and go, but the competition they're up against certainly has continued to gain in value and complexity so bands will have to come up with something.

For a more direct comparison, comedians who would have once released an lp or video with a single performance, would now usually add in as many extras as can fit on the DVD. (Ross Noble being an extreme example). If bands could start including DVDs with interviews and a live show or two as standard they could invoke a little more interaction with their fans (if it's at all economically viable).

I know this was touched upon on the podcast and very sorry for the length, I just feel that there is such a huge gulf in the value for money between a game or DVD over the average CD it was worth mentioning.

(*This is a link to the trailer for a recent game, just as an example - http://www.miniurl.com/7441)

The theatre: now that's an expensive night out. And they don't do encores. Or put on a slightly shorter "support" play before the headliner.

And it's full of c***s.