Part eight of a
series of posts reflecting on almost a decade of DIY culture - focusing this
time on door prices. For an introduction to this series, click here.
Thirteen:
2008: Back when I first started going to shows, there used to be two
door prices. One was for those people in work, and the other was usually a
pound or so lower and for those people who were unemployed. It was a system
that worked on trust and honesty. I don’t know if it was successful – I haven’t
seen any one do it at show for a while and I used to get sick of asking if
people were waged or unwaged – but I like the idea that as punks, we try to
support each other in hard times and try to give subsidies to those who
otherwise might be put off coming. Naive? Perhaps. Other ideas for creative
door tax include – raising the price by fifty pence and giving this extra money
to a charity. Offering discounts to people who donate tins of food for the homeless
(both the STE and Andy Fairfight have done this in the past to great success).
2017: This post
is an edited group discussion inspired by fragment #13. Ben plays bass in Latchstring and books DIY
shows as part of the A Public Disservice Announcement collective. Geraldine was
involved in booking punk shows as part of the STE collective (and its
afterlife). Jordan co-runs Circle
House Records, books shows as part of DIY Exeter and plays as Phaedra’s’
Love. Kristianne is a
spoken word artist who also runs the bi-annual event DIY Southampton at
Planet Sounds. Enjoy.
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Jordan: There’s a lot more divisions in a
society which stops one having that disposable income in order to go to a gig than
waged or unwaged. I don’t know if that’s an age thing because a lot of scenes I
actually play to are university based. So when I first read this, it wasn’t
something that seemed wholly relevant to me. And I recognise that is completely
privileged saying that but instead of the things like putting the price down by
a pound, I like donation shows and it’s based on honesty, people just put in
what they can. And even in a more honest setting, when you have the tin of
money there, you can put in a fiver and you take out a pound without someone
watching you like a hawk. Cos asking people if they’re waged or unwaged, that
can seem a little bit intrusive to some people who might find that really
sensitive to be asked that. And that’s why maybe that honesty thing is really
great. Or instead of having like I said the two pound suggested donation, we
put on a queer punk fest in Exeter earlier this year and we had suggested
donation £3, £5 , £7 and underneath it no one turned away for lack of funds.
Ben: I’ve not got many
nice things to say about Barrow in Furness, but a lot of the hair dressers have
got an unemployed rate for hair cuts for people who are going for job
interviews. They have an unemployed rate and everyone else rate and I see that
as quite a similar thing. I largely agree about the honesty situation –I feel
deeply uncomfortable asking anyone “waged or unwaged?” I don’t think anyone
should feel awful because their unemployed but you can’t help it if someone
does because people are taught that they should feel bad about that. I do think
out of all of this there’s loads of permeations as to how it can be done well
or badly, that no one turned away for lack of funds is pretty much the prime
thing that – it would be odd if I found anyone that disagreed with it. My thing
I’m concerned about is how to implement it well and in a way that’s relevant.
Geraldine: The whole
waged unwaged thing goes back thirty years to the mid to late 80’s. Thatcher’s
Britain - when I suppose generally a lot more people coming to shows were unemployed. That’s where it stems from, the politics of the
time.
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G: It did get to a
point where people would ask to be let in for free and then go and buy six
pints at the bar. That didn’t go down well. So that was kind of managed, as it
were. Gigs that have been organised by people that I know, people that
genuinely qualify as unwaged were let in at a discounted rate or let in for
nothing on the grounds of you wouldn’t want people to miss out on seeing bands
who couldn’t afford it, but there’s a certain amount of human nature isn’t
there that if they don’t have to pay, some people won’t.
Kristianne: I really kind of feel like if you want to go
to the show, that’s your first thing, you know, so if it’s in a venue where
you’re gunna make sure you’ve got money for a couple of pints, you buy your
ticket and you make sure that those bands that are travelling get their petrol
and get fed and are able to get to wherever they need to go to because that’s
their job, you don’t turn up at Tesco’s and say I don’t work so I’ll just pay
for a little bit of the shopping – the
way I see it, it’s a luxury to be able to go out and see bands playing, it’s a
nice thing to do and when I haven’t got much money, I’ll go and I’ll have water
at the bar. That is just my opinion on it. And I know it’s not a popular one.
I’ve had times when I’ve had no work, when I was at university as a single
parent with a child and no family support. When I really wanted to go see a
band, I found the money to go and do it. If there is a good enough will there
is a way. And I really think the world is unfair, you know, and sometimes it’s
really hard to get a job. But there are so many things that we live within our
lives these days that we consider that we should be entitled to. You know, we
all have to have mobile phones, we all have to have, I don’t know, satellite TV
and I just think actually we don’t. And perhaps we shouldn’t.
B: When we were talking
about fragment 13, we were talking about the value that we ascribe to things
and that its totally fine to need a “luxury item” to get by – what if you were
to put a gig in that content? In terms of someone really needing that thing to
get by, like reading a book or listening to a record or getting some food they
need to make a really nice meal – just because someone is poor doesn’t mean
they don’t deserve a quality of life that involves enjoyment and I would say
that having two separate door prices would be a way of allowing that. I can
draw a parallel between those two things that we’ve discussed and I found it
interesting on the one hand you were very pro the former but saw it slightly
differently for the latter –
G: It’s two slightly
different things, isn’t it? You’re swapping something you don’t need any more
and you want somebody else to be able to use it rather than it going in the bin
because you don’t want it clogging up the house. But if you’ve got a touring
band, they need to get round the country and they need to get home –
K: And they need to be
fed and they need to pay for the maintenance of the vehicles touring with them.
But, and I do see where you’re coming from Ben, I totally feel that going to a
gig is a bigger luxury. We do need music and the arts to stay well. But when
you need something that much, you can find ways to participate in it, to get
access to it that don’t require other people having to stump up those costs for
you.
Phil: One way of thinking
about it might be that one of those things you desperately need to get by might
be a sense of community. Money that stops you going to a show is kind of a tax
on your ability to access that community, isn’t it? In some ways. I just
wondered if that kind of is worth thinking about in that sense. I’m thinking
when I used to go to shows regularly, I’d walk into the room and I’d know like
75% of the people there, but there would be no other context where I would have
that. If I couldn’t afford to pay to get in then I wouldn’t be able to access
that particular resource.
B: Particularly as you
get older, cos people don’t hang out as often any more cos they don’t make the
effort to do so. But if I need a big jolt of socialisation, which I need quite
a lot, I’ve learnt that the older I get, the more I notice that I don’t hang
out with friends as much, I would hate to be a lot less waged. And it wouldn’t
be the case that I didn’t get to see a band I wanted, it would be the case that
I don’t get to go and have a shared experience with a lot of people which I
needed.
G: If you’re saying £5
or £4 if you’re unwaged, is a pound really gunna make a difference to whoever’s
paying in? If you really wanted to go, are you gunna pay £4 but stay at home if
its £5? When it started, it was £5 waged, £3.50 unwaged, which made a bigger
difference 30 years ago than it does now.
K: Probably used to get
a pint and a bag of crisps for that! [laughs]
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G: I’ve been at
donation shows before where there’s been three of us there and we’ve put £10-15
in, and people are shocked. But I’d pay that £5 each for DIY on the door of a
show. If I was seeing 4 bands in a house, what’s the difference? Other people
just like put a pound in. If a pound is all you can afford, then fair enough
but if that gig had been in a pub and you’d have paid £5-6 to go to that gig in
the pub, then you could put more than a pound in.
K: I’ve been to shows
where people have collected next to nothing because they’re relying on their
mates that come to the show to put some money in and they’re all just more
interested in the fact they’re getting hammered on cheap beer. And I’ve done
the same as you, if I’m at a house show and I’m seeing 4, 5, 6 bands, I don’t
have a problem with paying £5-10 that night. I’ve seen people go “Woah, are you
sure you want to put all that in?” And I
go, “Yeah, it would cost me more if I was at a venue because I’d have to pay a
fee to get in on the door and to pay their stupid drinks prices!”
*
G: Food donations
doesn’t happen round here that often now, it did used to be more common and
Charlotte in High Wickham does it at the Phoenix and gets an awful lot of donations
there. I think the pub let her have the space for free but then obviously she
can’t charge on the door so she just does food donations. And the other place
I’ve seen it done recently is Wonk Fest. They do an all dayer thing up at the
Dome in Tufnell Park – there’s free food there all day for everyone that
attends and then there’s donations for a food bank. You do have to pay in as
well but there were like two massive wheelie bins full of food and they were
overflowing and there was just heaps of food, it was really successful up
there. So that’s really good. Adding 50p on, I mean, that’s fine long as you
trust the person whose gunna hand the money over. Cos there was a famous
benefit show where that didn’t happen in Southampton [laughs] that still gets
mentioned now! But yeah, so that’s fine long as people don’t take the piss.
Which is basically, what all of these things are, aren’t they? Don’t take the
piss.
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Jump to fragment (links added as fragments are posted): Intro // One // Two // Three // Four // Five // Six // Seven // Eight // Nine // Ten // Eleven // Twelve // Thirteen // Fourteen // Fifteen // Sixteen // Seventeen