thereptilians

From my blog on myspace, edited for content:

Man, I don't know what's going on lately, but I've been compelled to write.

Maybe that's not correct. I've been compelled to complain a lot. But dang, you can't even cruise the web these days without an all out onslaught of Sarah Palin and John McCain's ugly stinking mugs, so I think each and every one of us has some reason to be pissed.

Today my complaining will focus on the ISU Marketing Association, or club, or whatever the hell these people call themselves. Whatever the precise name of their little group might be, the people I am referring to are those who throw the semi-annual Pokapalooza/Ifapalooza concert events at Idaho State University. They've been doing these events for, oh I don't know, five years or so. Both of the bands I'm in have played at these events, though not for some considerable amount of time. 

There are numerous reasons that we've chosen to refrain from taking part in the past few events, and I'm sure that those of you in local bands, or friends with local bands are familiar with these things. The main reason we've stayed away from the event is that it had really become something that wasn't fun to do. When you're thrown into a competition with a bunch of your friends, it just pretty much sucks. Most all of the local bands in SE Idaho are very good friends with one another. The comraderie amongst local musicians in this area is freaking amazing. We don't have the little clicks like they do in Boise, and it's very rare to see any smack-talking going on amongst the bands here. And yeah, I know, when there's smack-talking going on, it's usually me! Ha ha, anyhow, it's really lame competing with your friends, even when you try to ignore that fact and just have a fun show. But, aside from the fact that Battle of the Band scenarios are completely lame, there's the obvious fact to anyone who has attended recent Pokapalooza events that with each new event, there has been significantly less people attending the event.

Here's what I think. No, here's what I KNOW. The crowd that attends Pokapalooza does not give a poo whatsoever about who WINS. They don't go to see the competition. They go to see GOOD BANDS that they WANT TO SEE PLAY.  Ask anyone who has been there at the end of the night for the judging results. The only people left are the band members and the friends who are waiting to go party with them afterward. They just want to have fun, and see a good show!

So, with the fact that the crowds are smaller than ever, very few of the bigger local bands are playing, and that no one really gives a crap for the format in which the event is played out, why the hell is ISU Marketing continuing to make the same mistakes that are causing Pokapalooza to fail more and more each year?

Short easy answer: Because they are greedy buttholes, and the event isn't about teaching them marketing skills, it's about quickly making as much money as possible so that they can go on vacation.

In order to get a slot at Pokapalooza, it no longer takes any skill or talent. All you have to do is go pay the mandatory $175.00 fee to ISU Marketing, and pick your slot. Now, yes, this gives up and coming bands, or bands who have never played a show an easy opportunity to get on a show that could have a very large crowd. However, being that most of the bands that people want to see have been out playing for a few years, and occasionally GET PAID TO PLAY, a lot of the bigger local artists don't feel that they should have to pay to get onto a bill. I agree with this. 

Now, YES, you can make your money back by selling tickets. The way the scheme works, is that ISU Marketing is basically selling you 20 or so tickets for $175, that you can then re-sell to make your money back. So, rather than have to do any MARKETING of their own, they hire 10 or 12 bands to be ticket salesmen for them, so that before tickets have even gone on sale to the public, they are guaranteeing that they are in the black financially. So, regardless of whether we can sell the tickets and make our money back, they are good to go. Wondering why you don't see that many bands from Idaho Falls on the bill? Well, it's actually kind of difficult to get people to drive an hour to see maybe one or two good local bands, and charge them full price for a ticket on top of that. Why drive to Poky and pay $10 for a show, when you can see the bigger locals in your own town, and very likely for much less?

So, if the professor in charge of this group is trying to teach them marketing skills, whoever that person is has failed miserably. If this is a marketing exercise in concert promotion, isn't your ultimate goal to SEE HOW MANY PEOPLE YOU CAN GET TO COME TO THE SHOW? These people don't give a crap how many people show up, because from the minute they sign up the bands, they have paid for everything, and have a good chunk of cash toward their annual vacation now in place. Then, with all of the rest of the money from ticket sales, sponsor donations, and Pokapalooza t-shirt sales, they fly themselves to Hawaii, or wherever their money grubbing behinds feel like going that year. Man, that professor must love us local bands.

SO, now you're saying, "HEY, THEY GIVE OUT CASH PRIZES, AND SOMEONE HAS TO PAY FOR THAT!"  Well, if they were doing a real marketing exercise, and doing a battle of the bands is what they want to do, I guess they need to figure out a marketing plan with a MAIN GOAL OF DRAWING AS MANY PEOPLE TO THE CONCERT AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE.

Now, I think that they've obviously discovered that the current format for Pokapalooza isn't working. However, they really don't care, because learning how to promote a concert successfully is not their goal. It's just big dollar signs. And like I said above, what happens after they've signed up the bands is irrelevant. They are already in the black. Their marketing experiment is over.

I've been doing concert promotion for over 10 years now, and man, if I had only known that the way to having a successful show is to simply charge the bands a large fee, make them sell tickets for you, and take the loss themselves if they can't sell them! YAY FOR CAPATALISM! These dickheads have no clue about concert promotion.

They don't have to pay for a venue.  Their only costs are security (This one is pretty much up in the air, as numerous sources have indicated that Public Safety is not paid a fee to cover concert events at ISU), a sound man, maybe one stage hand, the cost for purchasing the t-shirts that they're going to profit off of, marketing, (Which they do about as half assed as could ever be imagined. More later on that.) and then the PRIZE money.  But, "IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE THE SHOW HAPPEN WITHOUT THE BANDS PAYING."

Well, when the show was marketed well in the past, I've seen crowds of 600+ there, so right there at $10 a pop, they've made $6000.00, not including t-shirt sales at $15 a piece. So, if they pay a soundman a few hundred, another few hundred out to security and stage hands, and $800 in prize money, why is it mandatory to charge the bands to play?  Because they thus don't have to do any work whatsoever. They've ensured their precious vacation, and can sit back and watch the money flow in. 

So, regardless of the fact that they could easily do a concert without making the bands pay and do all of their work for them, I realized that with some simple changes, they could still throw a very successful event, have their precious vacation, get some good bands on the bill, and not charge those bands to play.

After performing with The Reptilians at Blakefest I, I was approached by a person from ISU Marketing who was looking for feedback on Pokapalooza, since their crowds were dwindling and the lineup has pretty much sucked due to few of the bigger locals playing. So, I sat and talked with him for about half an hour and outlined a way to try doing it different, based on my past experience.

I told him first to scrap the whole battle of the bands thing. None of the bands care for that type of format, and the crowd also could clearly care less. Prize money is sure nice, but we'd all rather play a FUN show with good bands to a big crowd, and make money selling merch than battle for some prizes.  So, right there, they are saving $800, or maybe it's $600 now. I know that the prizes have dwindled along with the crowds. This also eliminates any fees that they were going to have to pay for judges.

Then, rather than just anyone being able to sign up and play, they could: 1. Have bands interested in playing send in demos, and then amongst themselves decide what bands they think would bring in the best crowd. (hint: Most of the bands that are really good have been playing for a while, so likely also have recordings.) 2. Give the DJs at KBear a call, and ask for some input. All of the DJs there are familiar with the local music scene, who is popular, etc. It wouldn't be hard at all for then to make a decision on a really good lineup if they did those 2 simple things. 

A GOOD LINEUP = A GOOD CROWD.

Now, rather than spending money on shirts that few people are going to buy, take all of that money, and use it to make flyers or advertisements. I didn't see a single flyer for the last Pokapalooza, and wouldn't have ever even known it was happenening had I not been living with Dan from Neckbrace at the time. The only flyers that were seen by anyone that I know of were seen in the ISU Business school building. Now if they are too lazy to even walk across campus to put flyers in the Student Union Building where they might actually get seen, I don't know how they expect to bring anybody in...OH YEAH! THE BANDS HAVE ALREADY PAID FOR THE SHOW, SO WHO CARES ABOUT MARKETING OR ATTENDANCE!!!

Anyhow, if they simply did what the purpose of the exercise was, and attempted to MARKET THE SHOW, they would get the crowd they're looking for.

So, set up a show with maybe 6 of the biggest local bands. The bands could also have longer sets if this was done, thus making for a much smoother show. One-third of the time that the crowd spends at Pokapalooza is spent waiting for one band to take down their stuff and another band to set theirs up. There are way too many bands for the timeframe. If this was an outdoor, all-day event where that many bands could play with decent set lengths, it would be different. People don't want to spend one-third of their time at a concert doing nothing. Then, make a nice flyer with big logos, exclaiming something to the effect of "THE BIGGEST BANDS IN IDAHO". They're the marketing geniuses, so I'll leave it up to them to come up with the hype. Give big stacks of flyers to the bands to go hang up and hand out. Bands WILL DO THIS. We do it all the time, because: PROMOTERS ARE LAZY.  That's just something we've learned to deal with. But don't make us do your job for you by charging us for tickets that we have to sell so that we don't go into the hole $175. We usually end up giving the tickets away because not all of us live in Pocatello and have jobs on top that, as well as just trying to get prepared for the performance. Then, ISU MARKETING, GET OFF YOUR REARS AND GO DO SOME DANG PROMOTION. We used to jam pack the Roche Motel in Pocatello by simply going out to the high school parking lots and flyering cars.  Don't be afraid of the little kids guys, THEY'RE THE ONES PAYING FOR YOUR STINKING VACATION. LET THEM KNOW THAT THERE IS A KILLER SHOW HAPPENING! Yeah, it's supposed to be school work right? Do your homework, and go put up some stinking flyers. Call the Journal, and tell them all about the event. THEY'LL TELL PEOPLE ABOUT IT! And the end result? A bunch of people show up, you sell tons of tickets, everyone has fun, and you go on your little vacation, courtesy of all of the bands playing and the kids who buy tickets to the show.

I just received a phone call indicating that they're doing the show the same exact way that they always do, so I guess it's time to dig up $175.00 eh? Poo. My bandmates really want to actually do that as well. Vomit. So, you might see us there. I'll have some choice words on stage. :)

Greedy jerks.

Viktor Wilt - The Reptilians/Dr. Seuss is Dead

 

This is a picture of my oldest daughter Taryn Anderson, taken by her grandmother outside of her home in Pocatello.

Here is the band's cat Dim, guarding the entrance to the jam room. Don't mess with the cat.

Idaho-based progressive, apple-core, post-metallers The Reptilians have just released two full length albums, "Welcome to Dugway!", and "XAPPLEXCOREX", for free download courtesy of their label, Spacnum Records.

Rather than releasing the albums in the traditional print and package medium, the band has decided to release the albums via the infamous bittorrent website, The Pirate Bay.

The Pirate Bay has made headlines for years due to legal battles involving the distribution of copyrighted material.  Though many view bittorrent downloading as controversial, Victor Wilt explained the band's support of the technology.

"If you browse various news sources on the internet regarding bittorrent technology, all that seems to be discussed are the negative aspects. Yes, many artists are currently suffering due to their material being distributed without their authorization. However, bittorrent is currently utilized by milliions of users every day, with many people discovering music they'd otherwise never have had a chance to hear. We've had hundreds of people download the albums already, from countries all over the globe. I think that the exposure possibilities granted to musicians through file sharing are endless." Wilt said.

Simply log on to www.thepiratebay.org and do a search for "The Reptilians", or click the following link to go directly to the download page.

http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3886611/The_Reptilians_-_2007_-_Welcome_to_Dugway_

Idaho-based progressive, apple-core, post-metallers The Reptilians have just released two full length albums, "Welcome to Dugway!", and "XAPPLEXCOREX", for free download courtesy of their label, Spacnum Records.

Rather than releasing the albums in the traditional print and package medium, the band has decided to release the albums via the infamous bittorrent website, The Pirate Bay.

The Pirate Bay has made headlines for years due to legal battles involving the distribution of copyrighted material.  Though many view bittorrent downloading as controversial, Victor Wilt explained the band's support of the technology.

"If you browse various news sources on the internet regarding bittorrent technology, all that seems to be discussed are the negative aspects. Yes, many artists are currently suffering due to their material being distributed without their authorization. However, bittorrent is currently utilized by milliions of users every day, with many people discovering music they'd otherwise never have had a chance to hear. We've had hundreds of people download the albums already, from countries all over the globe. I think that the exposure possibilities granted to musicians through file sharing are endless." Wilt said.

Simply log on to www.thepiratebay.org and do a search for "The Reptilians", or click the following link to go directly to the download page.

http://thepiratebay.org/tor...