Starting an indiepop club night - advice please!

[linus]

now that you're getting stephen pastel and norman blake turning up to shake a tailfeather

[cupcake_love]

as i've never had an indiepop-club or any sort of that thing, obviously i wouldn't be the right person to ask, but in spite of that, if you did - as me that is - i would say that flyers do matter! or even better, posters! or well, depending on location maybe, but anyway. i myself am not a part of the in-crowd and used to not know (not even on fb, so there you go) no other indiepop kids, until very recently, and it was nearly impossible to find out about anything, honestly. i always made it to those shows and clubs thanks to posters and flyers, thank you very much.

[Dan Pop-o-matic]

Thanks everyone.

I probably should get some made up this weekend. Of course, I don't if there are any similar popshows or clubs to Pop-o-matic! The playlist is looking a bit random...

[alongwaltz]

So we're attempting a one-off club night out in the suburbs of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. If it goes well it will hopefully become a regular occurrence.


Positives
We're an all-ages arts group that's been putting on events around town since July '09. We've ran 20 concerts, 4 craft fairs, 3 buskerfests, and a bunch of public games and other things. So we've already got a decent following and are well-known in the music scene.

We've hosted bands like Persian Rugs, Hooded Fang, and The Elwins so, even though there's really no straighforward indiepop fans around here, there are people who enjoy the sounds of it when they hear it and there's still loads of folks who are fans of B&S and The Smiths.

There's five of us on the team and our club night's going to be in February when it's snowy and cold and miserable and people are craving for something to do.


Negatives
People don't dance around here. At least I've never seen them. Then again, there's not exactly many opportunities for them to.

This town is almost-entirely punk, hard rock, folk, and country. The only proper venues for live music around here are bars and pubs with either no room for dancing or an atmosphere not at all conducive to The Field Mice.

We only do all-ages events anyway.


Proposed Solutions & Questions
Most of our concerts are held at either a friend's yoga studio or another friend's café. We're leaning toward the café because it's more accessible (located downtown) and they already sell coffee, tea, juice, soda, smoothies, and food.

Should we get a temporary liquor license for the night? I feel like since nobody dances around here anyway, it would be highly-beneficial to have alcohol for the over-19 crowd.

What kind of setup should we have to play music? For simplicity's sake we were just going to plug a laptop into a mixer and a couple speakers and DJ through iTunes.

We're thinking of dimming the lights and getting some colored lights (reds, yellows, blues). We'll likely put up balloons and streamers and other decorations. We're going to charge $2 or $3 at the door to help cover costs. We're probably going to get a friend's pop band to play a special half-hour live set as an extra draw in addition to the 3 hours of DJing. We're going to have three DJ's playing separate sets: myself, one of the members of the aforementioned band, and another local musician. We'll flyer and poster and create a Facebook event page and promote on our website.

Any other suggestions, input, things we should consider? I've never even been to a pop club night before.

[ShaunBrilldream]

Um, Shrewsbury is going to have it's first ever indiepop night. I finally, finally found someone local to do it with (*insert Kenneth Williams pic*), a Mr.John Kertland who a lot of you seem to know if facebook would be believed. We've got a good venue (which is the hardest part isn't it?) and just finalising a date for early new year.

My main questions to you lot who have being this for yonks are:

promotion (bar facebook)-Do posters in chippys/flyers make a difference?

And how flexible do regulars club nighters keep their sets? Salop is hardly an indiepop mecca, so throwing the odd Lemonheads track to keep people happy isn't selling my soul to the devil is it?

PS-I'm very, very excited.

[roundbitsofplastic]

I'm well up for a trip to Salop!

I've always done flyers, but never bothered with kebab shops. Mind, I've never had a successful night. Ummm, ask someone else.

You should play anything you like. So long as you like it, no one can tell you you're doing things wrong. If other people like it too then I'm pretty sure that's what fun evening are meant to be like.

[crystalball]

Good luck Shaun! Trust your taste. I do! Dunno about promotion though. I really don't know. I'm finding it harder and harder to get anyone excited about the stuff I do or want to do and online promotion is a bit like banging your head against a brick wall because there's just so much going on. I love posters and flyers though - you just never know where the next popkid might be hiding. Probably in the chippy. It certainly won't be on bloody Facebook with its gazillion restrictions and clutter.

Let us know the dates, anyway. Shrewsbury!

[Carys]

I'm finding it harder and harder to get anyone excited about the stuff I do or want to do

I'M EXCITED!

[Trev]

I like flyers and posters but I am not sure they are massively effective. But if you can do them cheap, do them, they're not gonna make less people come along.

I think promoting is a thankless task to be honest, especially at this DIY level. There are only so many people that will come and see the bands I am interested in and can afford to put on.

But yeah, like M says, trust your tastes. I think Lostmusic lost it's way because there were 2 or 3 inputs with slightly different tastes. Since I've been doing Odd Box I have always booked stuff that I think has the potential to be good. Some haven't worked out, some have.

I know this is more band centric than club centric. My experience with clubs is well patchy and I am not sure how these take off. HDIF seems to have the model right. Get a massive mailing by 'encouraging (i.e. cheaper entry) ' people to become members then you can mainline to interested people every time you have a club night on. Personally I find the membership stuff pretty meh. But maybe that's just me.

[crystalball]

I'm finding it harder and harder to get anyone excited about the stuff I do or want to do

I'M EXCITED!

Woo! Me too!

It's hard not to be when there is so much good stuff around and an indiepop night in Shrewsbury. I'm sure everyone's going to catch up eventually. It never stops.

[ShaunBrilldream]

Wowzers trousers, thanks for your input friends. I'm definitely going for a poster/flyer route because they are just so lovely aren't they? I think online promotion is pretty good for poking local chums.

I think the way i'm going to plan the play list is set the date, then forget about about until a couple of weeks before the night. I have a terrible tendency to over think stuff, and that's when it stops being fun. It's crucial that it's as much fun as hard work, right?

The venue is like a little dream come true. It's big without being huge, a minute away from the train station and has all the equipment there already. We are truly charmed. I think that first nights (as I'm sure Pete has pointed out elsewhere) tend to be packed as all your mates pop up. If it works, I may move it to a cosier venue for the next one. But I'm getting waaaay ahead of myself.

Thanks again pilgrims!

[roundbitsofplastic]

The venue is like a little dream come true. It's big without being huge, a minute away from the train station and has all the equipment there already.

Last train back to Brum on a Saturday is half 10. I will find a way!

[a layer of chips]

I also want to do this in Nottingham next year. I'm off to look at a place tomorrow.

Good luck with it Shaun! Let us know when the first one is.

[ShaunBrilldream]

Woooo! All this is giving the winter blues a right kicking (sorry about the violent imagery. I've just watched that Trump doc).

This seems weird writing this so far in advance, but I'm sure we can find you somewhere to sleep Ray.

Cool Sam, let us know how the place looks.

[leon]

I also want to do this in Nottingham next year

Same goes for me and my friend Richard (Louise's boyfriend), we hope to set something up next year, possibly in Hebden when all the venues have recovered from the floods.

Good luck Shaun, my advice on the playlist for what its worth is just play what you love. Thats what I do at No Hands, I can't see the point of doing a night and playing stuff you don't love. That sounds like work to me.

[crystalball]

Is Shrewsbury a nice place to visit for a day? We could have our Anorak day out there in the spring to coincide with your night, Shaun. Like a medium-sized, loving Anorak hugmob.

[lynsosaurus]

Good luck with it! I'm not sure I'm the best person to offer advice at the moment since we packed our night in, but my main piece of advice would be to not compromise too much on what you want to do. I think if you want to chuck in some less obscure stuff, then you should totally do that by all means, but if you start to go down the road of playing stuff just to keep punters happy it's going to be waaaay less fun for you to do.

It helps to be realistic, too, about getting the right environment. It sounds like you've got an ideal venue for it! Having something that isn't too big and/or has a lot of seating is a good bet in my book, because (especially early on) folk tend to hang about more and dance later when they're a bit more pissed/know the songs a bit better and I think a nice non-dancing environment is good for encouraging folk to do that (I might be biased because I am OLD and LAZY, but I feel that was something our night lacked). I think, to an extent, our club night became a bit too 'big' for what we wanted to do - it got really busy and there were more and more people asking for stuff each month, and I ended up playing a lot of stuff I didn't necessarily want to, which ended up changing the night into something I wasn't as passionate about, to the point where it became a chore rather than something I loved doing. I reckon Colin would tell you the same thing.

In summary: I suggest playing exactly the music you want to play, don't worry about whether you're "selling your soul" or anything if you don't want to be an indiepop purist (this coming from someone who frequently played Girls Aloud...), and don't compromise TOO much on your ideas to please others.

[a layer of chips]

Did you get asked to play Idlewild?

[lynsosaurus]

Yes. I declined.

You would not BELIEVE how many people come to an indiepop night and ask for The Killers.

[knibbles]

Is Shrewsbury a nice place to visit for a day? We could have our Anorak day out there in the spring to coincide with your night, Shaun. Like a medium-sized, loving Anorak hugmob.

I really like this idea.

Good luck, Shaun!