Pics And Impressions From The Days Of Confusion Gig With Queensryche Options

[Cosmin Lupu]

Hey guys Thought I'd share some impressions from the gig we had with Queensryche:



Were you ever put in the situation in which the headliner wasted TOO much time with the soundcheck and the organizer didn't take the time to tell the opening acts that they should equally share the remaining concert time? That's exactly what happened this Sunday... Conclusion? The band before us played almost it's full set and we found out that we could only play 3 songs out of the 8 song playlist that we had which was fitting the time allotted. The performance went very good and we sold a lot of merch, but the uncoolness of the organizer went even further. He went to the PA mixing board and tried to level down the master gauge in MID PERFORMANCE Only in Romania

Truth is.. my friend Cezar was about to hit the man in the face when the Queensryche tour manager intervened and we had a talk with him. It seems that the guy had a lot of diplomacy in his arsenal and he managed to cool us down. We exchanged contacts and he said that they will try to make it up by inviting us along when they come to Europe close to Romania so that we may be their opening act again in better conditions.

Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to the organizer, as we will most likely bump into him again in many occasions. There are 5-6 of them in the whole country and they are all alike. They have no clue on what they are doing and they are only there for the money, which - not surprisingly - is not that big as a result of their lack of professionalism.

What would you do?

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[Bogdan Radovic]

Hey that is a very cool photo Cosmin!

How does it feel to be on the vocals now and having nothing in your hands besides a mic?

This has happened to us as well on a gig as opening act to Glenn Hughes. Everyone played more then they should so we ended up playing only 3 songs. We did give our best to rock the show and it was a very fun gig.

Here is a pic from it :



In this situations is best to stay cool and look at it from the bright side. It could have happened to any other band as well.
Truth is the same people organize all the gigs so it is never good to enter into a confrontation as it can lead to some shut doors (yet it is already hard for "young" bands to make it).

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[PosterBoy]

I know it's common practice for the opening acts to have the master level lower than the headliner, but not have it lowered during the set!

The time each opener got should have been more strictly enforced, usually it's specified in the contract isn't it?

Was this a pay to play situation Cosmin?

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[klasaine]

Trust me - not only Romania.
Hopefully Queensryche will keep their word.

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[Darius Wave]

Very popular...worldwide :/ We had lately a huge affair in Poland about one of the biggest Blues Festivals. As for the people who organize (mostly the open air events sponosred by the city Hall) I wonder how is it possible they didn't learn a few simple things since so many years passed. For example:

How can You tell the band that they are playing 1 hour gig, when it's written in the poster that You start Your performance at 8 p.m and another bands starts it's performance at 9 p.m. Of course there is another full band just before You at 7 p.m. Even very small bands (like one of my main bands - niebonie) needs at least 15 minutes to get their stuff on stage and make very basic connections..not mention any descent soundcheck - just plug in, check every mic is it working and start to play hoping the sound guy will fix everything on the very first song. As a result each band causes some delay and when it comes to the on playing just before the "main, evening star" , The Star says "We've gotta deal to play at 9 p.m and we don't care about Your organization issues". So the poor bands before is usually most hurted by a must of shortening their gig time to compensate all earlier delays :/

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[Cosmin Lupu]

I know it's common practice for the opening acts to have the master level lower than the headliner, but not have it lowered during the set!

The time each opener got should have been more strictly enforced, usually it's specified in the contract isn't it?

Was this a pay to play situation Cosmin?

It wasn't a pay to play situation - there's no such thing in here You get to play if you have good music and ESPECIALLY if you know the right people - but I think that it was specified in the contract that the organizer's obligations included offering the proper conditions for the band. And we were there for the sound check at the hour which was specified in the contract.

The bad thing tho, is that as I said, if we would've taken measures against him, we wouldn't be included in other big gigs... because there's him and 4-5 more others that organize big gigs here in Romania. Doesn't that make you want to punch a bag?

Hey that is a very cool photo Cosmin!

How does it feel to be on the vocals now and having nothing in your hands besides a mic?

This has happened to us as well on a gig as opening act to Glenn Hughes. Everyone played more then they should so we ended up playing only 3 songs. We did give our best to rock the show and it was a very fun gig.

Here is a pic from it :



In this situations is best to stay cool and look at it from the bright side. It could have happened to any other band as well.
Truth is the same people organize all the gigs so it is never good to enter into a confrontation as it can lead to some shut doors (yet it is already hard for "young" bands to make it).

Exactly mate... unfortunately, you are right...

Anyway, the gig was great as a performance, which lead to selling a lot of merch And frankly, if Queensryche stay true to their word, I'd actually be happy that this happened

Very popular...worldwide :/ We had lately a huge affair in Poland about one of the biggest Blues Festivals. As for the people who organize (mostly the open air events sponosred by the city Hall) I wonder how is it possible they didn't learn a few simple things since so many years passed. For example:

How can You tell the band that they are playing 1 hour gig, when it's written in the poster that You start Your performance at 8 p.m and another bands starts it's performance at 9 p.m. Of course there is another full band just before You at 7 p.m. Even very small bands (like one of my main bands - niebonie) needs at least 15 minutes to get their stuff on stage and make very basic connections..not mention any descent soundcheck - just plug in, check every mic is it working and start to play hoping the sound guy will fix everything on the very first song. As a result each band causes some delay and when it comes to the on playing just before the "main, evening star" , The Star says "We've gotta deal to play at 9 p.m and we don't care about Your organization issues". So the poor bands before is usually most hurted by a must of shortening their gig time to compensate all earlier delays :/

Exactly man - that's EXACTLY the scenario we had to confront The bad part is that the band before us took advantage of the situation, played their set and didn't give a darn thing about us. And as the Queensryche tour manager said: 'They should've played less then you, because technically, they were YOUR support, as you were ours.' When you aretoo much of a nice guy, people tend to take advantage. Be nice guys, guys, but defend what's yours!

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[Todd Simpson]

First off, HUGE CONGRATS On playing with QR!!!! That's worth quite a bit of pain an suffering right there Looks like a nice big stage, and selling lots of MERCH is always a good thing Iron maiden used to sell more merch than music and made a good living off of it for years in the early days

As for what to do, the QR guy with the diplomatic skills has probably got decades of experience dealing with upsetting crap like this and I think he did the best thing. Keep calm, drive on, and be nice. Cutting a set short sounds like a fair bargain for setting up another gig with QR They are a touring band so they need to keep folks on the bus route from wanting to kill them. I'm guessing the guy will keep his word.

Congrats again!
Todd

Hey guys Thought I'd share some impressions from the gig we had with Queensryche:



Were you ever put in the situation in which the headliner wasted TOO much time with the soundcheck and the organizer didn't take the time to tell the opening acts that they should equally share the remaining concert time? That's exactly what happened this Sunday... Conclusion? The band before us played almost it's full set and we found out that we could only play 3 songs out of the 8 song playlist that we had which was fitting the time allotted. The performance went very good and we sold a lot of merch, but the uncoolness of the organizer went even further. He went to the PA mixing board and tried to level down the master gauge in MID PERFORMANCE Only in Romania

Truth is.. my friend Cezar was about to hit the man in the face when the Queensryche tour manager intervened and we had a talk with him. It seems that the guy had a lot of diplomacy in his arsenal and he managed to cool us down. We exchanged contacts and he said that they will try to make it up by inviting us along when they come to Europe close to Romania so that we may be their opening act again in better conditions.

Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to the organizer, as we will most likely bump into him again in many occasions. There are 5-6 of them in the whole country and they are all alike. They have no clue on what they are doing and they are only there for the money, which - not surprisingly - is not that big as a result of their lack of professionalism.

What would you do?

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[Slavenko Erazer]

Cosmin Was this a Queensryche with Jeff Tate, or another QR , without him?

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[Ben Higgins]

I'm sorry to hear the gig was so problematic. That really sucks that nobody communicated the reduced time slot situation to the supporting acts. There's no excuse for bad communication.. all it takes is somebody to relay a message.

Hopefully more shows with QR will transpire !

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[Gabriel Leopardi]

I'm sorry about this bad experience mate. I have to say that these type of things also happens in Argentina. Shows organizers don't use to take care of the opening acts. This happened to my band once that we played on the beach, as the first bands started late and played more, they wanted us to play 3 songs. But we didn't... I think that we played around 6. One of the managers of the last band disconnected my pedal-board just before the last song was starting... I realized and connected it again.. We had travelled 6 hours to be there, we weren't going to play just 3 songs. It happened in 2009, here is a pic:



Another things that an organizer did us was to make us start playing when the people still wasn't entering to the place. We played the first the first minutes of the first songs for nobody... and then people could get into the venue. This is something that happens very often here.

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[vonhotch]

Congrats on the gig. It's a shame that this type of thing is so common.

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[Cosmin Lupu]

Cosmin Was this a Queensryche with Jeff Tate, or another QR , without him?

It was the QR with Todd LaTorre not the Jeff version

I'm sorry to hear the gig was so problematic. That really sucks that nobody communicated the reduced time slot situation to the supporting acts. There's no excuse for bad communication.. all it takes is somebody to relay a message.

Hopefully more shows with QR will transpire !

Aye mate - as I said, the organizers here are nothing but a bunch of amateurs ...

I'm sorry about this bad experience mate. I have to say that these type of things also happens in Argentina. Shows organizers don't use to take care of the opening acts. This happened to my band once that we played on the beach, as the first bands started late and played more, they wanted us to play 3 songs. But we didn't... I think that we played around 6. One of the managers of the last band disconnected my pedal-board just before the last song was starting... I realized and connected it again.. We had travelled 6 hours to be there, we weren't going to play just 3 songs. It happened in 2009, here is a pic:



Another things that an organizer did us was to make us start playing when the people still wasn't entering to the place. We played the first the first minutes of the first songs for nobody... and then people could get into the venue. This is something that happens very often here.

It's a shame that has to happen to you as well mate - out of what I can see, it's a common thing all over the world unfortunately, but we can use these shared experiences in this thread, to see how we can cope with such situations and make the most for our bands!

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[Darius Wave]

Seems like there's nothing that we could actually do...nothing more then remember who made this to us and try to avoid this person. Unfortunately people who live from playing usually don't have this comfort of being able to claim :/

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[Cosmin Lupu]

Seems like there's nothing that we could actually do...nothing more then remember who made this to us and try to avoid this person. Unfortunately people who live from playing usually don't have this comfort of being able to claim :/

Unfortunately, I can't avoid him... As I stated above, in Romania, there are 5-6 organizers AT MOST So, I guess I will just smile and wave

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