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aberdeen-music

Out of touch....


Ross

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Think i'm finally out of touch with venues in Aberdeen.

Where do touring rock/pop bands generally play in Aberdeen and how is it all advertised these days.

Lemon Tree - Doesn't seem to have anything booked in

Moshulu - Website down and is no longer listed on the barfly website main screen. Gig list out of date.

The Tunnels - Website out of date

Cafe Drummonds - No website online.

In the days when print media is dying and the recent Skins cover NME is down to 10,000 sales it seems odd that online advertising isn't utilised.

Is One Up and this website still the hub of the general music scene. Have the local papers finally started to regularly cover live shows and reduce advertising costs (i doubt). Aberdeen journals ad rates used to be the most expensive in Scotland per capita.

thanks y'all.

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The same venues are in use plus Snafu.

Drummonds and The Tunnels put on the majority of gigs.

At The Moorings we still only do paying gigs on Sat nights, but word seems to have gotten out and we're now attracting better known headline acts. Having free band accommodation on-site has helped.

This website is still the main Internet repository, followed by My Space.

The scene itself is very different from how it was 2003-2006. There has been a noticable change over the past 3 years, mostly due to people getting old and an influx of new blood. The town really misses a Drakes type place. Other than that the scene is alive and kicking, and at least as diverse as it ever was, and perhaps a little bit bigger.

Not sure how the other places advertise. For us it's a combination of posters, flyers, this site, and MySpace. It certainly works as we're usually close to capacity at the weekend. About once every couple of years we run an ad in Audience magazine (see below) and we also hit the student fayres.

EDIT: We have our own website now just waiting for the developer to link in the gig posters.

***

The poster situation is still shit. For four years we'd put up anyone's posters and it didn't harm our trade. We also kept them up until the gigs had passed. Only Drummond's used to reciprocate but that stopped when they changed hands. It's all pretty small minded when you consider that most places runs 2-5x as many gigs as we do, and that we were happily giving away more than half our wall space! Eventually we got hosed off at this cynical one-sided arrangement and drew the line, now we only take posters from independent promoters putting on DIY gigs.

***

Last year we undertook some soundproofing work, which we initially though would rob us of space, but when we opened up the wall we found a massive ruined fireplace behind it, after clearing the rubble and installing the soundproofing we were actually left with a little extra width, it's not much but the effect is very noticable and makes the place appear much bigger.

Capacity wise some places advertise anything up to double their legal operating capacity. Does this happen everywhere or is it a phenomenon peculiar to Aberdeen? We no longer quote a capacity figure, we just say "more than those other places hold" :)

***

Hope this information is useful to you.

moorings_ad_live_uk_flat_low_res.jpg

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Ross, Why do you ask?

Here are some sources:

Aberdeen Gig Listings on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads

The Kiosque, Arts, Music, Film, Aberdeen

the directory

There are plenty other on line listings

The Evening Express listings are pretty good these days. I know they try hard.

The Skinny is distributed in Aberdeen and includes listings

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