Raising money with the power of music!

Oxjam @ Bumper!

 

Raising money with music.

 

Before I begin I would just like to ask a question to you all, just to give you something to think about. If you were a venue manager and a charity event was being run in your venue, if it ran over a little longer then planned but you still had a packed bar with paying customers would you shout at the organisers and then unplug the PA mid way through a set? Bumper did just this last week @ Oxjam.

Helena Haigh and Sinead O’Regan worked very hard to organise a fantastic night of live music with bands that they knew people would want to hear, one of which of Dire Wolfe who headlined the night. Most people, as at word of mouth a few weeks ago, turned up to see Dire Wolfe.

            Kick off was meant to be at 8pm sharp with a tight change over schedule in-between the acts due to venue hire guidelines to finish by 11pm. By the time 8pm rolled around very minimal people had turned up so an conscious decision was made to push the show back half an hour meaning if all run smoothly the end would be half an hour late. Due to it being a charity gig the assumption was made that this would be ok but how wrong that decision was!

            Base naked played first, followed by a band from Leeds called Ten Floors, My favourite boys of the moment, Minus IQ, played second to last and the headliners Dire Wolfe obviously played last!

            I had heard the others play before so I was mainly eager to hear Dire Wolfe. After having missed them at word of mouth it was my priority to have a real good listen to their set and see what everyone found so fantastic about them. To my disappointment this never happened.

            Before going on stage they were told by the venue manager they had 5 minutes to play their set … Ludicrous! When on stage you could see in the boy’s eyes that they were annoyed and ‘pissed off’ they had waited all night to play their set and ten’s of people had turned up and paid £5 just to see them play. You could tell they were not happy and were very annoyed that they would be letting the audience down. All of which affected their playing ability. They seemed rushed and they seemed to had lost all interest in playing. I found it very hard to give a fair review on Dire Wolfe due to the unusual circumstances so I guess I’ll just have to go see them again!

            The main issue was how badly the situation was handled and how unsympathetic the manager of Bumper was.

            If anything you would think that he/she would allow an extra 15 minutes at least due to it being a charity gig. There seemed to be no understanding of things over running and why they were pushed back. I didn’t and still don’t understand what the problem was. There was at least 50 people in the back room at bumper, all of which were students, up for and laugh and having a good drink which meant money was being taken by the bar. If treated properly the bands and the student based audience would have stayed afterwards to have a drink in the open section out the front and their turnover for the night would have probably been higher, much higher, then that of a normal Thursday night.

            The way it was handled was, in my eyes, appalling. Both the organisers, Helena and Sinead, were shouted at as if they were young children at school being told of by their teacher for doing something wrong and when listening in on the original conversation that took place with one of the bar staff (I know, ear wigging isn’t clever) Helena was calm, polite and almost pleading with them to allow her to let the headliners play a full set. Nothing seemed to work and after failing to negotiate with the venue manager to give them another 10 or 15 minutes the manager stormed over to the PA and unplugged the amps risking blowing the equipment due to improper use. All I can hope is that I hope he/she is pleased with the way they spoilt a pretty great evening and I hope they noticed how many people left their venue on purpose, boycotting bumper totally and how long the boycott will last is totally down to you guys. All I will say is that is was a total shame the night couldn’t end on a high because it was a fantastic night and actually the space and stage was perfect for what the event was.