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News
News Item - October 28, 2006
Randolphe Entertainment Group becomes newest AnyGig.com
sponsor
AnyGig.com is pleased to announce our newest sponsor, Randolphe
Entertainment Group. Randolphe Entertainment Group is a boutique
agency that specializes in assisting musicians, independent
record labels, and music management companies creatively market
their music. Randolphe Entertainment is a National marketing
company with over 10 years of experience in music marketing.
Their main focus is in launching independent musicians on
to greater success. An artist can advance their career more
effectively by utilizing strategic marketing approaches to
increase exposure. They offer a number of creative and established
marketing resources to help accomplish this goal, including
Internet, grassroots, radio, event, and college promotional
marketing campaigns.
Through Randolphe Entertainment Group's generosity they will
be offering a 10% discount on ALL their services to AnyGig
members. For more information please check out their website
at http://www.randolphe.com/
or contact Serge Randolphe, Jr at Serge@randolphe.com
Contact info:
Randolphe Entertainment Group
738 Main Street, Suite 454
Waltham, MA 02451
781-983-4120
News Item - February 12, 2006
AnyGig.com Beta Edition Released
AnyGig.com is proud to announce that we have released our
newest version of the website called the "Beta Edition".
Much planning, thought, hardwork and creativity have gone
into this site and we hope that it is a useful tool in your
quest to get more gigs. It was our goal to give our members
a basic "toolset" in the Beta Edition so that they
can actively promote themselves via the power of the internet.
Every month we plan on releasing new tools on the site. Some
of the tools that are currently in the works are a member
forum, a search tool and a new and improved AnyGig Radio.
Also, starting in April, we will be releasing a weekly newsletter
as well as a weekly Podcast.
We have many exciting things in the works so please check
back often for site updates and special offers. We look forward
to an exciting 2006!
News Item May 20, 2005
AnyGig.com to sponsor "The Second Annual Morning Buzz
and Londonderry Raceway Race For Hunger" to be Held on
June 5th, 2005
Visit the Londonderry Raceway >> Click
here
Racers reved their engines at the Londonderry Raceway’s
Race for Hunger held June 6, 2004 and again for the Halloween
Howler in October. Five dollars from every spectator’s
ticket, racer’s fee, and pit pass went to the Food Bank.
The event was the first of its kind and was the brainchild
of the Rock 101 Morning Crew, track owners Jim and Nancy Lafford,
and Rigid mini-cup driver Don Bosteel.“It was [Bosteel’s]
idea that he brought to me during the winter and we spent
six months trying to put it together, “ said Jim Lafford.
Bosteel, who first got the idea for a charity event from his
cousin said, “I just knew that the Morning Buzz was
into racing and I listen to them all the time.”Bosteel,
who runs the bakery side of Sal’s Pizza, got Coca-Cola,
the C.S. Woods Company distributors, and Spasso Foods (which
donated the proceeds from all of its ice cream sales to the
Food Bank) involved in the cause.
As for the radio station’s participation, the chance
to drive race cars and help a charity at the same time was
a chance that the Morning Buzz crew simply could not pass
up. “We did a demolition derby, but we never had a chance
to race against each other,” Kretchmar said.The Buzz
cast has worked with the Food Bank for seven years, thus it
was natural to pick them as the organization that would be
tied in with the event. Furthermore, the Morning Buzz is also
promoting both Londonderry Raceway and the sport in general
on the show. “They’re big race nuts,” Lafford
said. “They’re really helping our cause.”Drivers
as young as five compete at the track, and the ages range
up into the sixties. Some of the cars are very fast too, as
twelve-year-olds often run laps in under thirteen seconds
at the quarter mile track. “Most of the young guns in
the Nextel Cup raced karts,” Lafford said. The Raceway
has also hosted a World Karting Association sectional event
and the track was billed as “The fastest quarter mile
in the east.
”*Don't miss live performances by Zion
& Mike Rivera
*Do your part, donate to the New
Hampshire Food Bank
Featured Article May 18, 2005
Get That Out of Your Mouth #14
Small Town Rock City by Chris Dahlen
Everyone in Portsmouth, New Hampshire remembers when the
Elvis Room closed. The rockers lost a stage where you could
catch anyone from the local punk bands to Elliot Smith; the
under-18'ers lost a room where they could smoke. The storefront
on Congress Street was replaced by a kitschy blues lounge
with life-size replicas of the Blues Brothers dancing in the
front window; when that closed, a semi-chi-chi Italian restaurant
opened in it's place. The Elvis Room died six years ago, and
Portsmouth hasn't had a rock club since.The town's rock scene
could go either way. On the pros, you've got a state university
just a few miles down the road, plus 20,000 citizens right
in town. The high rents in this coastal, gentrifying area
haven't driven out the indie bands, the singer-songwriters,
or even the horrifying noise scene that's honest to God pretty
fucking good. A low-wattage community radio station and UNH
college radio serve the area; bands from Boston and Portland,
Maine-- an hour in either direction-- swing through regularly;
and the area even supports a weekly arts newspaper. Just like
in hundreds of small American towns, it's a great scene, but
you have to work for it.Without a club of the Elvis Room's
size, capacity, and dank charm, the bands in town have had
to adapt. For example, every Halloween the Jumbo Circus Peanuts
hold down the VFW Hall, playing sloppy covers of funk and
Tijuana Brass hits while two bartenders try to serve a room-length
bar of drunks in costume.
The Stone Church, a legendary-- and just refurbished-- hippie
dive in Newmarket, where Trey Anastasio once cracked his head
on a ceiling beam, sometimes books indie rock, but their bread's
buttered with folk, jam band, and world/eclectic music-- the
only styles of popular music that reliably make money in New
Hampshire. And there's also "The Dirty Basement"
out in Madbury, which is nothing more or less than it's called.But
the workaday rock act has no beachhead-- so the bands became
inventive. The best venue in town looks touristy on the outside:
the Muddy River Smokehouse, with a restaurant upstairs and
a nondescript basement lounge with a "Budweiser: True
Music" banner behind the stage. Two and a half years
ago the Smokehouse's owner expanded the schedule for nightly
entertainment and hired Mike Marchand as Media Engineer. Marchand,
wiry, energetic, and Type A in organization skills, is the
kind of punk scene veteran who in another life should be running
GE; for Portsmouth, he's organized music nights of underground
rock, touring jam and reggae bands, and most intriguingly,
The Tong.The Tong started last spring as a weekly experimental
music night. It soon became the meeting ground for the craziest
noise and improv scene north of Providence-- from co-organizers
Jeremy LeClair and Nate Horton playing in the skronk sax-drums
duo Plasmids & Phages, to the organ-and-drums icepick
of Giant Bat, to makeshift bands like a vacuum cleaner and
upright bass duet. But the music was only part of the attraction.
Before a visiting show by Cerberus Shoal, the Tong crew wrapped
string back and forth around the room, turning a trip to the
head into an obstacle course; another time, they filled the
room with inflated garbage bags. The only idea they've rejected
came from a performer who wanted to blow flames across the
stage. "That was the one thing we had to tell him he
couldn't do," said Marchand. "I think we better
just leave fire out for a while."The Tong also makes
the audience participate-- like the time we had to stand in
a tarped-off enclosure right between two bands having a face-off,
or the times that we were invited on stage ourselves. Last
summer a "make your own instrument" event drew over
a dozen entries built out of bicycle wheels, fishing line,
water, and old stereos. And the local weekly paper, The Wire,
sponsored "51 Second Night": The Wire had scored
some one-minute radio spots and invited anyone in town to
get on stage and record a song to play during the ad. Nate
Rand did two takes of shredding electric guitar that stopped
on a dime, and Al Mead and LeClair played a vocals and sax
improv that recalled 20 birds squawking over the same piece
of bread. Most threatening of all, the bearded, owlish Alden
Ulery constructed a swollen drone of loops and live didgeridoo.
Alden confided that he had hoped to get the loops down to
57 octaves below middle C, a vibration that would have made
the entire room "shit their pants." But the equipment
didn't cooperate, and the audience was spared.
The indie singer-songwriter scene set up its best home at
an unlikely venue: the posh Red Door lounge. Most nights of
the week, Portsmouth's Red Door caters to a chic after-work
crowd with a menu of gourmet martinis and DJs who spin trance
and house. But they gave their deadest night of the week,
Monday, to a singer-songwriter series called Hush Hush Sweet
Harlot. Dressed in denim and hoodies, the indie fans show
up and occupy every leather stool, loveseat, and pillow-strewn
couch in the room to listen intently to acoustic music. The
club's dark-red walls and wooden beams start to look more
like a country inn than an urban lounge, and the crowd's so
still that you can almost hear the musicians think.Originally
MC'd by Syd Alexis of Hotel Alexis, it was taken over in January
by singer-songwriter Laurel Brauns, a New Hampshire native
who has released two striking albums that showcase a soaring
voice with claws like Kristin Hersh. Brauns has booked a full
night of entertainment every Monday, matching local performers
with acts from Boston, Portland, and beyond. On a recent night,
the Castanets came through town to play with Ponies in the
Surf-- who had driven down from Belfast, Maine in a snowstorm--
and Tigersaw, who, instead of playing on the "stage"
at the front of the room, stood in a semi-circle that cradled
the frontmost couches.Thanks to the line-ups and the $2 special
on PBR, Hush Hush has pulled a crowd every week, even packing
the room on sub-zero February nights. Although the out-of-town
bands give the series momentum and variety, Brauns credits
its success to the Portsmouth scene; she counts at least three
bands that are going places-- Hotel Alexis (now distributed
by Parasol), Unbunny, and the Texas Governor-- and if you
get her going, she even speculates whether Portsmouth could
follow at least partway in the footsteps of the frozen steak
and emo capital of America, Omaha, Nebraska."I don't
want to say that [Portsmouth's] a no-name town, but a lot
of bands feel self-conscious saying, 'I'm from Portsmouth,
New Hampshire.' And to me, I feel like especially after the
whole Omaha thing happened, there can be some pride in being
from a town that's kind of random. Especially if there's something
really, really awesome happening there." The point isn't
that we may have the next Conor Oberst sulking at the register
in Bull Moose Records or making burritos at Dos Amigos; it's
more that something motivated the kids in Omaha to get stuff
going, no matter how far they seemed from New York or L.A.Article
courtesy of www.pitchfork.com
Featured Article May 16, 2005
How to get more gigs
by mediawebsource.com
Press Kit - The first thing your indie act
or garage band should do is get that press kit together. This
press package or media kit will have everything you'll need
to get started. Visit our Press Kit Page for tips on getting
the package together. Once you have your kit, you'll have
a vehicle to start promoting your indie act.
Demo CD/Tape - For most gigs, A club owner
or party planner will want to hear what he might book. So
record your indie music acts Demo CD or Tape. You may want
to buy or rent a portable home recording studio at your local
music store. Make sure your songwriting is of professional
quality. Songwriting may take time with many rewrites at times.
That should give you sufficient quality for most local venues.
Once your act is more established, you may want to get into
a local reputable recording studio. Many professional indie
bands use a computer program called Pro Tools or Cubase for
recording. While this is an expensive venture, it may be just
as cost effective to learn, than booking studio time.
Open Mic Night - To get some gigs, start
off going to open mic nights at local clubs. Not only will
this give you a little experience on stage, you'll actually
have an audience to play a gig or show for. Also, many open
mic nights are hosted by more established local bands or indie
acts. You could make valuable contacts for the future with
the hosting bands and other local bands playing in the show.
This is a greatstarting point to play gigs and shows in your
area.
Offer to Open for Free - The reality is
that your not going to get paid when you first start out.
Your not in it for the money anyway right, your there for
the music. Offer to open for free for a local band you know
or maybe met at an open mic night. Maybe even e-mail a more
established indie band in the area, and see if you could do
an opening gig for them. Many indie bands love opening acts,
because you don't have to pay them much, if at all, and they
don't have to play as long of a show. This is the time to
start promoting your garage band too. Hand out business cards,
and hand out Press Kits to any clubs you play. Make sure to
follow up with the venue with a call /e-mail to make sure
they get back to you. Be persistent, because booking agents
are always getting approached by prospective indie bands.
Solicit your Press Kit - Now that you've
played gigs at your open mic nights, you want to start calling
clubs, and soliciting your Press Kit and Demo. Its a good
idea to start going to clubs that play your style of music
and talk with the booking agent for the club. Leave a Press
Kit with your Demo CD and give him a day or two to listen
to it. Now call back and get some feedback, and ask for the
gig or show for your indie act. Again, Be persistent.
Approach Town Fairs, County Festivals, or City Free
Concert Venues - Another way to get exposure is to
gig for a large audience at a Local Fair, or Festival. Most
of these are gigs you play for free to get exposure, but some
do pay once you get a following. Do some research on the internet
etc, to see what local agencies take care of bookings for
your festival or fair. Again, give out your local band business
cards at the show, just in case someone may want to book your
indie music act in the future.
Booking Agents - Most Booking Agents take
a percentage of the money that you get for a gig, but they
can be a valuable resource for getting some better paying
gigs. Just do a lot of research and be sure they are reputable.
Search your local yellow pages. A lot of booking agents only
take more well known acts, so shop around and see if they
will deal with you. Stop by in person and take your Demo and
Press Kit. Check out the Better Business Bureau and make sure
they are reputable.
Sound Technician - As your indie music become
more established, you may need the services of a sound guy
for your gigs. Many venues have their own PA system and will
charge you for the services of the sound guy. Find this out
ahead of time. If the venue does not have a PA system, you
will have to bring one, and some one will have to run it.
Just be aware that running sound can be expensive. Most sound
technicians charge a good bit to bring the equipment and run
sound. A good sound guy can mean the difference between a
good and bad gig. So make sure your sound guys sets up the
way that your indie music act wants to sound.
Website Promotion - Promote your local band
over the internet. If you don't have a website for your local
band or garage band, Get One. They are a valuable tool for
indie promotion in today's internet world. Click Band Website
Design to see our band website packages. Once you have your
web address. Start having your website address added to local
band listing websites. Do a search on your city and see what
sites list local bands and show dates. Email the site and
have your web link added. Also, e-mail any concert calendars
and have your indie shows added. You would be surprised how
many you'll find in your area. Also email your local clubs
with your website and see if they would like a press kit.
News Item May 14, 2005
AnyGig.com Member "Zion" wins the CATS Battle of
the Bands 2005
article by www.catsevents.org
The CATS Battle of the Bands was a creation of the Youth
Advisory Board of CATS. The teens worked with Sully Erna,
from the band Godsmack, to develop a large-scale event that
involved eight schools in Southern New Hampshire. High Schools
students at these schools had a chance to compete to be the
best band. The Final Event held on April 23rd at the Lowell
Auditorium was a great success with over 700 people attending!
Greg of the Morning Buzz from WGIR cohosted the Final Event
with Sully. Greg did a terrific job and we appreciate his
generosity in helping us out. Judges for this event were Mr.
Gary Cherome from Extreme and Van Halen; Mr. Brad Delp from
Boston; Mr. Shannon Larkin from Godsmack; Mr. Wayne Ulaky
from Canobie Lake Park (formerly from the band, Beacon Street
Union); and Mr. Paul Geary, manager of Godsmack and the bands
Cold and Fuel. Thanks to all of you for your help and a job
well done!Congratulations to the following bands:Zion,
1st Place'S', 2nd PlaceJonny Graves, 3rd PlaceCongratulations
to all of the competing bands for their terrific performances!
Please see our Battle of the Bands page for complete details.
The winner of the final event, Zion, was awarded an all expense
paid trip for the entire band and two chaperones to Los Angeles,
CA to record a three song demo in Sully Erna’s studio,
compliments of Sully.Sully also awarded Zion a CD duplication
package that included 500 CD copies, full color 6 panel insert,
assembled and shrink-wrapped in jewel cases, compliments of
Bruce Bennett from Superdups, a local CD duplication company
located in Salem, NH.Additionally, Mr. Ernie Boch, Jr. presented
'S' with a $1,000 check and Mr. Wayne Ulaky of Canobie Lake
Park presented the band members of Johnny Graves with passes
to the Canobie Lake Park. Sully presented each band with a
framed certificate and Superdups has generously awarded each
band a $100.00 certificate good towards the purchase of CD
duplication at Superdups. The CATS Youth Board presented Sully
with a Citation from the Town of Derry as well as a Resolution
from the NH Senate recognizing Sully for his commitment and
dedication in promoting the health and safety of youth in
Southern New Hampshire through his generous support of CATS
and the Battle of the Bands events.A big thank you to everyone
who helped make both the preliminaries and the "Final
Event" a big success...and to Sully for "making
it happen"! Thanks to the youth who participated during
set changes to deliver important messages about making safe
choices!
Join AnyGig today
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at just $99 per year!
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