How to pitch your band

STEPH FROM PERTH

Ask any scene folk how their day is going and you’re generally greeted with a short sentence that usually contains the word “busy”, “crazy” or some huge sigh suggesting one or the other or both. 365 stupidly full on days a year minus public holidays and the odd occasion where you manage to take a holiday and ensure you’re visiting somewhere that has little to no phone reception and absolutely minimal wireless capabilities. Because, shit, it’s a largely overworked, underpaid passion we’re dealing with here.

When you throw in the odd email that one gets from an unknown talent – and I use the term ‘talent’ loosely - into a regular day spent responding to the barrage of emails, calls, obligations, problems and so forth, it’s usually the last thing you want to deal with. Particularly as, usually, said band feels the need to express just how professional, dedicated, ambitious and amazingly unique they are. PROBLEM – every fucking band thinks the same thing.

So here are my top tips to get yourself noticed when pitching your band for management/bookings/supports/etc etc:

DON’T WRITE A FUCKING ESSAY
Keep it to the point – no one has time to read your psycho babble and most people want to be able to answer something as succinctly as possible so they can delete it and move onto the next new message that’s just been received in their inbox. Bottom line – no one cares if you played at some small venue last week or that you’ve written 3 new songs since February or that the demos on your myspace are only 49.5% mixed and that you’re planning on using these rad new plug ins with some no name producer that was recommended to you by a friend of a friend who knows someone in the “industry” to get it sounding super pro and slick and that you should have them ready in the next 65 hours or so and to be patient because better product is on its way and once it’s heard there’ll be a much clearer picture of the sound and how uniquely awesome it is in comparison to everything else that’s out there at the moment.............................

PERSONALITY GOES A LONG WAY
I got an e-mail the other day from a singer/songwriter wanting to enquire about management and the e-mail literally went from introduction to “I’m sure you get these all the time – my music style is pretty folky, I love writing songs, I’ve supported *insert a couple of impressive names here*, blah blah blah blah… you get the idea” to which I instantly went to this person’s myspace to check it out. We are all humans here, not robots deciphering characters on an email client. This person treated the recipient with some respect and conveyed a bit of humour, and such a simple tactic alone can get people to take notice. Be careful not to sound like a wanker, though – there is a fine line.

YOU ARE NOT UNIQUE
If you use that word in your pitch, the band police will be around to your house to beat the living snot out of you.

JUST WANTED TO CHECK YOU GOT MY E-MAIL, I’VE HAD SOME PROBLEMS WITH MY COMPUTER RECENTLY…
No you haven’t, you just don’t have the balls to ask me straight whether I read your first email and like what I heard and are instead using this tacky excuse to try and suss it out. Now, a follow-up e-mail or phone call is cool, it shows you’re serious, however, when you start to get into nagging territory – I recently had no less than six requests from the same band about a support, each time telling me how perfect they were for it – you are quickly fucking things up for your band. This reminds me of a Family Guy episode where Stewie is playing Pictionary and his team mate goes “A Jackal. Jackal! It’s a jackal! It looks like a Jackal. Jackal? Jackal? It’s a Jackal. Jackal?” Time runs out, to which Stewie smacks the table and yells “If it wasn’t right the first time you said it, why the hell would it be right the next ten times??”