The first show I ever booked was a Tuesday night at a café in Tilburg in October. Three bands, no soundman, a borrowed PA from a friend's church basement. I was 17.
I had a list of phone numbers I'd copied from a fanzine. I called the café in the afternoon, pretending to be older than I was. The owner said yes. I think he just wanted somebody in the room on a Tuesday.
Twelve people came. Eight of them were friends of the bands. The bartender made a face when the second band turned up to ten. We split the door. Each band got fourteen guilders. I drove home at one in the morning thinking I had figured something out.
I had not figured anything out. The next show I tried to book, same café, two months later, fell through because I'd booked four bands and the second one cancelled the day before, which I didn't know how to recover from. Ten people came. Three of them left after the first band.
What I learned, slowly: the first show is mostly luck. The second show is where the work starts. By show ten you have a vague sense of who comes back. By show twenty you know what the room can hold and how loud it can get before the neighbours call the bartender.
The people who book good shows aren't the ones with taste. They're the ones who keep going after the bad ones.
Love,
Marten