06/10/2024
Fifteen years ago today we put on this wee gathering.
This Is Our Battlefield
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Hello. We're a DIY gigs collective in Glasgow, Scotland. Occasionally asked questions! So who are you? Tom used to get involved but not so much any more. Yeah? Why?
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Occasionally asked questions! So who are you? We're This Is Our Battlefield, a Glasgow DIY gigs collective. The particular numpties involved are Sarah, Toe, Kenny and Nick. Tom used to get involved but not so much any more. We miss him. What's the name all about? It's part of something Guy Picciotto (Rites of Spring, Fugazi) once said (the full quote's above); we had no idea what to call ourselves and we liked it. Tom was so inspired he almost shed a little tear. Tell us about these gigs, then. Basically, we just want to put on some good bands, get some people along and have fun. But we want to make sure we do it fairly at all times; and fairly not just to the people that come to our gigs by keeping prices low, but also to the bands we get to play. How do you do that? We pay them as much as we can. This whole thing is not for profit, so we can afford to, even with low door tax. At each gig the first thing we need to do is pay for the venue (unless it's somewhere awesome and free like the Note), and if there's a touring band playing we'll need to make sure they can afford to get to their next gig and eat and whatnot, but after that we'll split up the cash between the other bands. So you don't take any money at all? Well, we cover our costs: posters and flyers, food for the touring bands, that sort of thing. But that's it. We even pay in to each gig ourselves. Yeah? Why? We enjoy ourselves at these gigs as much as anyone, so it's only fair, really. But more importantly Mike Watt of the Minutemen had a famous door policy: if you're not playing, you're paying. We try and stick to that - no guestlist means less bu****it going on with cowboys at the door - and we're not playing, so we pay up. (PS. we absolutely, 100% don't do guestlists.) What about merch guys / girls with touring bands, the sound guy, the bar sta... - Yeah, alright. We're not daft. Do you get bands to sell tickets? We've only ever done one ticketed gig (the alldayer, to reassure people travelling from Dundee that they'd get in), and despite a hundred people turning up we only sold something like three tickets in advance. We don't have a particular ideological objection to tickets, but we don't find we often have any use for them. You're not pay to play then? Definitely not. p2p is not cool, and anyway, if we're not making any money from it, what would be the point? True. How do you choose what bands play? We get emails from various tour bookers letting us know who's touring, but far more often there's someone we really like and we just chance our arm and email them or whatever. What about supports? Obviously we try and put together a gig where the line up makes sense - we're probably not going to put on a black metal band with some solo acoustic dude or anything. We probably won't put on a black metal band at all, mind you, that's maybe not our kind of thing. What is your kind of thing? A pretty broad spectrum, really - we've put on all sorts from metalcore to post-rock, and confused ourselves no end with lovely folky stuff at Hangover Club!, but mostly we do punk / hardcore / screamo / emo sort of stuff. Will you put my band on? Maybe. Usually we'll have someone in mind but there's no harm in asking; stranger things have happened. (But assume we'll probably say no because we've already got someone - don't hang your hopes on it. Also, we do try to get back to everyone but that's not always possible, so if we don't reply to you, we're sorry, it's nothing personal, we just get a lot of messages.) But we've toured and / or played with a series of mediocre but semi-popular bands! This is of absolutely no interest to us whatsoever. If we like you, we like you, if we don't, we don't. I'm one of those many agents trying to flog currently fashionable bands with no substance and a huge guarantee, should I contact you? No, thanks. I'm that crazy agent that represents the likes of Paul Daniels, Gina G and Pat Sharpe that keeps on emailing, should I still contact you? Yeah, keep those ones coming, we like them a lot. How do you promote your gigs? Online, of course - here on Facebook, and various forums that we post on (we try to avoid spamming sites we dont generally use ourselves), on myspace (kinda, it's terrible now), on last.fm, and obviously out and about at gigs and such. Did you bastards take my poster down to put yours up? No, we didn't. We're quite keen on our posters staying up ourselves so we're not going to mess with anyone elses. Is this FAQ not a bit over the top? Yeah, maybe. I mean, if you're at all involved in the DIY scene then none of this will be anything especially new or revolutionary to you, we realise that. It's all pretty standard DIY practice. But we do want to make our gigs as open and accessible as possible so I suppose this is maybe a good way to introduce the idea to newer people. Also, it's a handy quick reference for bands to check us out when we're offering them gigs. I like the concept behind it, but I can't be doing with the loud screamy bands you put on. That's a pity. Give them another chance, they're all great, we promise. Plus, we totally don't just do loud stuff - the periodic Hangover Club! gigs in particular. But there are loads of awesome DIY people in Glasgow you should definitely check out, like Wolf Among Wolves, Hansei, Unthank, Cry Parrot, Drive Carefully, Hard Work, The Organisation, the Croc-y people, Winning S***m Party and loads of others.
