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Am I being unreasonable? (pulling out of a gig-centric)
OK here's the story.
A friend of a friend of our guitarist asks us if we would like to play a show at a pub in south London. We have a gap in our tour schedule that day which I was intending to keep free so we could have a day of rest before we played 11 shows in 12 days travelling round the country sleeping on floors, but as it is reasonably close, we know (sort of) the girl putting the show on, and it is a charity fundraiser, we accept the gig.
Over the coming week or two, we find out that our costs are not going to be covered, she wants us to go on first at 7:30pm, that the other bands have very little in common with us sound-wise, and it is more like an "event" for friends and family than a gig.
I suggest to her that maybe it would be mutually beneficial if we politely back out because firstly it is unlikely we could get many people down so early on a weeknight, secondly, that I wouldn't want to, and more importantly couldn't afford to lose money on the show, and thirdly that there would be little benefit in us playing when there isn't likely to be many other people there so early, and those that are there would probably not only not be interested in listening to us, but would probably dislike us due to the fact we're rather noisy. I also, perhaps unneccessarily, explain to her we've been tipped by the NME as one of the most promising small bands in the country and we are mainly headlining shows on our tour, and getting paid at least our travel costs, sometimes a bit more, so there appeared, including the other factors, little benefit to us in playing, and the only reason we were still considering playing was because it was for charity.
I have just received a message from her telling me that we aren't right for the event as "the sentiments expressed don't fit the event", she "wants bands who enjoy playing, however many they play to", and "it should have been a charitable gesture, it wasn't designed to act as promotion for the band".
Which I thought was rather unfair to say the least. My defence :
1) The way my band is structured I have to cover costs myself. I explained this to her before her last message. So I would lose at least £30 in travel costs for the show. She wouldn't expect me to pay £30 to her charity if I didn't have a band, so why should she expect me to pay it on top of helping her by performing that night!? This cost would probably mean we'd make a net loss on our tour.
2) She tried to justify putting us on first by saying "the other bands couldn't get there that early". Adding a bit about the fact that there was no favourtism in the running order. But hypothetically if we couldn't make it that early, what would she have done? Kicked one of the other bands off the bill ... or us? I'm pretty sure it would have been us. Also when I asked why we had to go on so early considering there were 4 bands and it went on until 11:00, she ignored the question. We could have gone on at 8:15 (meaning we could have got more people down, and there would have been more people there to watch us), and everyone still finished with comfortable changeovers by 11:00.
3) I'm in a band for the main reason that I enjoy doing it, of course I am, but there has to be some level of benefit to bands in doing any gig, be it charity based, or whatever. And in this case it actually seemed detrimental to us to play the show. I've worked virtually on my own for nearly four years to keep my band afloat, it has almost been like a full time job which I have made virtually nothing from so far.
I could go on and on with other reasons, but I just want to know, am I actually being unreasonable in any way here?
As far as I can see the only mistake I made was in accepting the show in the first place when I had doubts over whether we'd be right for the show. But I figured as it was such a small scale event, given our current position, we'd get the main slot, and a good crowd. But somehow I've been made out to be some money grabbing, heartless bastard just because I didn't want to go on so early, at an event where we would have been out of place, and we would have lost money.
Am I being unreasonable?