London Open Mics / Open Spots Page 5

"Why chastise that person just because he or she has a bringer policy? Is that the type of person you really want to wage a campaign against?"

It is wrong for promoters or any employer (and all promoters are employers and I have yet to see one that that tells open spots upfront that their participation holds no hope of future employment) to ask people you don't know to do unpaid manual labour for free.

This is my policy and that of the CRAPP. It is the single core value of it. A lot of time was spent debating the core value of the CRAPP and this is the single idea most people wished to subscribe to. It is not a hard concept to grasp. It is simple. Really either the whole concept is nonsense or it isn't. You either agree or disagree with the whole concept. There are no shades of grey ...although how people respond to the idea is down to themselves as individuals.

You can keep trying to pick holes in it to the crack of doom, but personally I do not believe anyone runs a gig to "put something back". I dont. People who object to the CRAPP witter endless about the selflessness of others but really there is nothing selfless about gigging or selfless about running a gig. By definition they are activities born of the human ego. If you are asking people to do unpaid labour for you they are doing the giving - not you. Yes, I believe it really is that black and white. The CRAPP is an organsiation outside social class it does not care what "type of person" it condemns ...it states what it thinks is right and what it thinks is wrong and is based on old fashioned socialist values of the kind that brought the NMW into existence in the first place. It is a single issue pressure group that believes a single creed. If you do not a agree with it you are welcome to laugh at it. I do not care. I am too old to worry about looking silly. Besides which it is a bit rich to say after arguing your fatuous points all day on here that you are "above" the nasty arguments that go on on places like Chortle.

You can spend as much time as you like trying to pick philosophical holes at the fringes of the CRAPP philosophy but the truth remains and will remain eternally that the CRAPP changed things. It changed the way people think and it succeeded at least in killing off the odious practice of people running bringers to which the paying "friends" must pay. This did not happen by accident. It happened by organisation. At the very best saying non-free entry bringers are okay would be legitimising a practice that is utimately bad and would be a stepping stone to pay to enter bringers. The world is not full of all these selfless people who would run bringers not for profit. And neither in my experience is the world full of people who are happy to bring mates to gigs as a condition of playing them whether they have to pay entry or not or their owners are "selfless" or not. The catechism of the CRAPP stays as it is I'm afraid. I'm too old to care if people think it is silly.

"I wouldn't think twice about making it a free bringer if it helped me get a decent crowd in. Budding comics always have the option to go elsewhere if they don't like it"

If everyone else ran bringers we would have to too - to compete. This is the truth of it. We do not operate in isolation to the rest of the circuit. Of course if everyone ran them it would be quickly unsustainable but who cares about that... The idea that open spots have a "choice" to go somewhere else is not true. If the majority of people ran this way, the majority of promoters would have to run bringers. Including me. This is the point. It's your world and your society but this premise is a fiction. Why should I offer them a "choice" that you deny them and why should I continue to offer no-strings gigs while no one else does?
I'd have to be a mug to do that.

A couple of things. First of all in his own low key way Bussell has just explained his business model. He plays the long game, he's a talent comedian, performer, impressario etc. Who by deferring his profits for a bit and running succesful comedy night for no money. Is able to perform with performers he'd usually have to wait years for, get more gigs etc. Thus investing his time and efforts in career development rather than short term profit.

It's playing the long game and I suspect it'll work.

Me personally I'm a writer who does standup. So I need to be seen to be doing it to make any sort of money selling gags to other standups. Similarly as a writer anything that gets my work out there performed by myself or some one else is all good. Love to get paid for standup, isn't going to happen anytime soon.

So there's 2 diferent models.

And for heaven's sake please stop talking about labouring! When I got started in homelesness work as a volunteer. I gave up my time for free (well and accomadation, £15 and 3 meals a day). In exchange for which I worked 70 hours a week doling out soup, cleaning toilets, having concealed cans of Tenants concuss me and getting called every variety of a f**king fat bastard in 20 diferent dialects.

On Kibbutz I picked watermelons, ran myself over, spent 2 days in alcohol induced coma and incinerated giant maggot infested turkeys.

That is bloody labouring for next to no money. Frankly you are running the risk of a zombie Karl Marx kicking your arse.

Oh and everyone in the world of standup knows. If you are not funny enough to entertain a paying crowd you won't get paid ever.

Just because you chose to do voluntary labour for free it doesn't give you the right to expect other people to give you their labour for free. Sorry but it is about labour. You can argue it's not much labour for 1 gig but if every promoter does it then the labour demands on new acts spiral exponentially as everyone becomes more and more demanding to compete with everyone else. Where it ends is bring two people each for £13 times 24 acts. We know this because we turned a blind eye for years. That is why the years of the blind eye are gone now.

Quote: Anthony Miller @ August 30 2011, 5:00 PM BST

"Why chastise that person just because he or she has a bringer policy? Is that the type of person you really want to wage a campaign against?"

It is wrong for promoters or any employer (and all promoters are employers and I have yet to see one that that tells open spots upfront that their participation holds no hope of future employment) to ask people you don't know to do unpaid manual labour for free.

This is my policy and that of the CRAPP. It is the single core value of it. A lot of time was spent debating the core value of the CRAPP and this is the single idea most people wished to subscribe to. It is not a hard concept to grasp. It is simple. Really either the whole concept is nonsense or it isn't. You either agree or disagree with the whole concept. There are no shades of grey ...although how people respond to the idea is down to themselves as individuals.

You can keep trying to pick holes in it to the crack of doom, but personally I do not believe anyone runs a gig to "put something back". I dont. People who object to the CRAPP witter endless about the selflessness of others but really there is nothing selfless about gigging or selfless about running a gig. By definition they are activities born of the human ego. If you are asking people to do unpaid labour for you they are doing the giving - not you. Yes, I believe it really is that black and white. The CRAPP is an organsiation outside social class it does not care what "type of person" it condemns ...it states what it thinks is right and what it thinks is wrong and is based on old fashioned socialist values of the kind that brought the NMW into existence in the first place. It is a single issue pressure group that believes a single creed. If you do not a agree with it you are welcome to laugh at it. I do not care. I am too old to worry about looking silly. Besides which it is a bit rich to say after arguing your fatuous points all day on here that you are "above" the nasty arguments that go on on places like Chortle.

You can spend as much time as you like trying to pick philosophical holes at the fringes of the CRAPP philosophy but the truth remains and will remain eternally that the CRAPP changed things. It changed the way people think and it succeeded at least in killing off the odious practice of people running bringers to which the paying "friends" must pay. This did not happen by accident. It happened by organisation. At the very best saying non-free entry bringers are okay would be legitimising a practice that is utimately bad and would be a stepping stone to pay to enter bringers. The world is not full of all these selfless people who would run bringers not for profit. And neither in my experience is the world full of people who are happy to bring mates to gigs as a condition of playing them whether they have to pay entry or not or their owners are "selfless" or not. The catechism of the CRAPP stays as it is I'm afraid. I'm too old to care if people think it is silly.

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I never said you were silly and I never said I was "above" anything. What I did was state my case and make a distinction between what I consider to be two separate entities - those who promote free bringers and those who promote paid bringers. I don't consider someone who promotes a non-monetised gig an "employer" and I don't consider a person who chooses to do an unpaid gig a "labourer". The comic is there out of choice doing something of their own free will.

Given that, of course I can only consider your manifesto a nonsense. So long as you're prepared to mount a witch hunt against a broad stroke of people with differing motivations purely because you don't believe in such a thing as selflessness (or simply that a promoter is running the gig for reasons other than financial gain), it stands to right that I'm not on board with your ideology. It's got nothing to do with me "laughing" at anything because I'm not out to mock you. I'm speaking to the debate, not to you as a person. If I've used you or your practices in my argument at all it's only to compare one of your views with something you've said that I think is at odds with your argument. I've not once leveled a personal sleight on you. I don't care how old you are, how long you've been doing this or what night you run - I just fundamentally disagree with you over the issue of free bringers.

"I don't consider someone who promotes a non-monetised gig an "employer" and I don't consider a person who chooses to do an unpaid gig a "labourer". "

I do not believe truly non-monetised gigs exist anywhere outside your imagination. And I have yet to see a gig advertised that made it clear it was not leading anywhere - if you did that you really would recruit the worst acts on the circuit. Open spots are labourers - the fact many of them are no good at what they do does not mean they should not be respected as such. It is the nature of the business that it is difficult to assess how funny people are without actually seeing their act. This is why open spots should exist. Some of them are gving labour for free - others are getting stage time to learn. It is a two way street but that doesn't mean they not working. It just means some of them are unable to construct anything of any great value. But the majority of them are not "graduates" who are "pissing about"... their ambition is to get paid and when promoters start telling them that "doing this gig will lead nowhere" then I'll start believeing in the truly "non-monetised gig".

It should be enough they give you their acts for free ... but somehow this is never enough, is it?

Quote: Anthony Miller @ August 30 2011, 5:35 PM BST

"I don't consider someone who promotes a non-monetised gig an "employer" and I don't consider a person who chooses to do an unpaid gig a "labourer". "

I do not believe truly non-monetised gigs exist anywhere outside your imagination. And I have yet to see a gig advertised that made it clear it was not leading anywhere - if you did that you really would recruit the worst acts on the circuit. Open spots are labourers - the fact many of them are no good at what they do does not mean they should not be respected as such. It is the nature of the business that it is difficult to assess how funny people are without actually seeing their act. This is why open spots should exist. Some of them are gving labour for free - others are getting stage time to learn. It is a two way street but that doesn't mean they not working. It just means some of them are unable to construct anything of any great value. But the majority of them are not "graduates" who are "pissing about"... their ambition is to get paid and when promoters start telling them that "doing this gig will lead nowhere" then I'll start believeing in the truly "non-monetised gig".

It should be enough they give you their labour for free ... but somehow this is never enough, is it?

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I'll ignore the part about non-monetised gigs being a figment of my imagination despite the fact that I regularly played them for going on 2 years.

That aside - are you saying that, according to your CRAPP doctrine, no comic, regardless of status or ability, should be permitted to work unpaid?

"That aside - are you saying that, according to your CRAPP doctrine, no comic, regardless of status or ability, should be permitted to work unpaid?"

No, it says that acts should not be LEANT ON to do unpaid manual labour.
If they WANT to help out their MATES they are free to do so.
The CRAPP doctrine could not be more unambiguous.

If all the people who work for you for free genuinely don't mind donating you their free time and labour and are all happy about it you have nothing to fear from the doctrine of the CRAPP.

Quote: Anthony Miller @ August 30 2011, 5:45 PM BST

"That aside - are you saying that, according to your CRAPP doctrine, no comic, regardless of status or ability, should be permitted to work unpaid?"

No, it says that acts should not be LEANT ON to do unpaid manual labour.
If they WANT to help out their MATES they are free to do so.
The CRAPP doctrine could not be more unambiguous.

If all the people who work for you for free genuinely don't mind donating you their free time and labour and are all happy about it you have nothing to fear from the doctrine of the CRAPP.

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I would suggest that the phrase "leant on" is perfectly ambiguous. I wouldn't define a request (and it is just that given that it's the act's right to say "no") to bring along a guest, a form of pressure. The act is therefore prsent and performing because they "WANT" to be there. So are we now agreed that free bringers can live in a world where they don't have to fear your CRAPP doctrine?

I would agree that a genuine upfront request of the kind "it would help us if you could bring mates" perhaps prefixed with "but we understand if you cant" may be perfectly acceptable ...but personally I wouldn't do it on the basis that being that honest is a bit like advertising you've got no punters. I did say this somewhere earlier. It's really about how people feel. As long as the acts don't feel pressurised to bring mates the CRAPP has no problem. If you want to suggest that it may help the gig if they bring mates we have no problem with that.

Quote: Anthony Miller @ August 30 2011, 5:56 PM BST

I would agree that a genuine upfront request of the kind "it would help us if you could bring mates" perhaps prefixed with "but we understand if you cant" may be perfectly acceptable ...but personally I wouldn't do it on the basis that being that honest is a bit like advertising you've got no punters. I did say this somewhere earlier. It's really about how people feel. As long as the acts don't feel pressurised to bring mates the CRAPP has no problem.

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Talking about "feelings" isn't much of a way to write a core manifesto though, is it? I'd suggest the line you've taken between black and white on this issue is a little grey.

Okay by "feel pressurised" we mean that they feel that if they do not bring mates they will either not be allowed on stage or not rebooked or be blacklisted for not complying with the request. Clear enough?

Ultimately yes, it is about feelings. If people feel happy to give you help for free we will not get involved ... but if multiple people make complaints that they have been leant on we are here to offer them moral support and let them know they are not alone ... does that make it clearer?

Quote: Anthony Miller @ August 30 2011, 6:01 PM BST

Okay by "feel pressurised" we mean that they feel that if they do not bring mates they will either not be allowed on stage or not rebooked or be blacklisted for not complying with the request. Clear enough?

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That certainly is clear. I disagree with it entirely (minus the rebooking/blacklisting part), but it is crystal. The way I see it, if someone is offered a free spot on the strict instruction that they have to bring along a guest yet they chance their arm on showing up without, I'd say it's the act who's at fault. There was a tacit agreement and they broke it. Too bad for them. Time to find a gig that isn't a bringer - there are plenty to choose from.

There are "plenty to choose from" for the time being until I have to start doing it too to compete. In the mean time we are here to tell them that it is not unprofessional in our view to "chance it" when people make silly requests of you. It is our view that they do not have the right to make that stipulation and that people are within their rights to hold it against you. You have tried everything to make your free bringers concept sound fluffy and honest but the words "strict instructions" tell one everything anyone really needs to know. If you are not paying people you do not have the right to go round issuing strict instructions all over the place.

Quote: Anthony Miller @ August 30 2011, 6:09 PM BST

There are "plenty to choose from" for the time being until I have to start doing it too to compete. In the mean time we are here to tell them that it is not unprofessional in our view to "chance it" when people make silly requests of you. It is our view that they do not have the right to make that stipulation and that people are within their rights to hold it against you.

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As far as I'm concerned, the person running a gig is in charge of it. They have the right to book who they want. So long as they aren't breaking any laws they're welcome to their night.

Are you advocating comics show up in revolt because they don't abide by a rule they've already agreed to? Aren't we only as good as our word? Who are you to define how just a rule is, especially when you're talking about rules that you define as robbing your custom? I could say it's because you feel professionally challenged that you've started this pressure group. I could say your rules are "silly" and borne out of spite. The point is, where does it end when people take it upon themselves to dictate what's acceptable and what's not?

And let's not forget, we're talking about the promoting of free comedy here, not an industrial revolution. When a free bringer asks acts to come with guests what possible motivation could they have outside of getting a decent-sized audience in? The kind of person I'm talking about doesn't stand to make any money whatsoever by imposing that rule. If somewhere down the line they decide to change their minds and start charging those mandatory guests, that's a whole other argument. That's a gig I'd want nothing to do with. Still, I wouldn't take it upon myself to tell those people what they're doing was wrong - that's for the individual to decide.

I don't think you have the right to ask people to do unpaid manual labour for you and I think they have a right not to comply with stupid demands that they bring your audience for you. I'm not telling them to ruin your gig or turn up and be nasty I'm just telling them if I was them I wouldn't be obligated to bring mates by a workplace bully who's so ungenerous as to offer gigs only on the stipulation you do unpaid manual labour for him. It is not okay for you to pressurise people into bringing your audience or not get a gig (in effect blacklisting those who have run out of mates). We're here to help them not take you too seriously.

I'm sorry but if you take the piss out of people and they go back on their "word" given under duress... you get what you deserve.
Still at least you are upfront at the time of booking which gives people the chance to boycot you if they want. I suppose that's something.
But it's interesting you won't actually name anyone who operates in this way.
Why's that? shame...?
The fact you have found legal loopholes in NMW law does not and will not make something ethical.

Personally as far as I'm concerned it's not a business agreement unless there's money changing hands so why should these people feel obligated to keep their word?

"Are you advocating comics show up in revolt because they don't abide by a rule they've already agreed to? Aren't we only as good as our word?"

You say the gig is not professional then appeal to their sense of professionalism ...kind of gives the game away?

Not to say I'm not pissed off when people don't show. If they have to drop out that's fine as long as I know before the gig and can rebook ...ideally at least 6 hours before the show. But come on their are limits on what you can reasonably demand of people?
I would never make bringing mates a stipulation for my gig - it is unethical.
I've explained why I think its unethical over and over.
If you don't get it still fine.
Can't hear must feel and all that.

No, I don't believe in non-monetised gigs. If they did exist how would anyone distinguish them...? The only people who know the budget of a gig are the promoter and the venue owner. And I don't believe anyone runs gigs in commercial premesis with no commercial ambitions - the fact they can't realise their ambitions doesn't make them innocent. If money didn't matter why use a pub at all, why not go round someone's house? It makes no sense.

Sorry but you gave the game away when you said you would run bringers if you could.
"if I were to run a proper open mic I wouldn't think twice about making it a free bringer if it helped me get a decent crowd in"