Politics in the game - Posted on 2016-04-01 by Nigel Dean

I got my first taste of politics in the club world last Friday at my show at Sidebar Nightclub. It was an eye opening experience for me for it helped me determine and handful of things. First lesson I learned deals with the mistake I made prior to playing at Sidebar. All the weeks prior to the show I was told that this was the place to play at. This was the place where I would find my crowd, play the music I wanted, and collect the fans and exposure I needed for my brand. This left me entering the club with the one thing I shouldn't have had.....expectations. For the past few gigs I've been signed with this talent agency (Sound The Groove) that books young artists all around Southern California. The downfall of being in with this agency is that you don't get paid to play at any of the places your booked. Instead you're required to sell tickets and in return, they claim, they give you massive amounts of exposure. My recent gig at Sidebar made me realize how much a load of crap this is. Here's where the politics came into play. Weeks prior to the event I was told don't play Top 40, Hip Hop, and House music. Apparently, the club has been desperately trying to move away from that scene and be known as the club that throws down. Ex. Trap, Hardstyle, etc. So myself, and all the other atrists performing that night, made sure are playlists followed this memo. The starting artists were no doubt not very good. But I found it irrelevant since they played between the hours of 8-10pm, a time when most people are probably getting ready to come out. But the club made room to complain about how the club wasn't very full. Blah Blah Blah. It's 9 o'clock, calm yourself. As I was waiting for my set, I spoke with my stage manager that night and was informed that the club managers were complaining that the DJs weren't playing Top 40, Hip Hop, and House. I'm sure anybody in my position would agree how extremely aggravating this was to hear. Almost half way through the night and the club is trying to tell us to change our set mid show. So depite my annoyance, I switched my playlist to consist of more house music. I didn't make an effort to play top 40 or hip hop because if a crowd wanted to listen to that kind of music they would do so in their car with the radio not pay an absurd entry fee at a club. So at 11pm I came on and played my set. It went fantastic! I played House, Trap, Hip Hop Remixes, the works. The place was packed, people were dancing, it was a good performance. People sat by the stage and watched me play, I was getting high fives and thumbs up. My set went an hour long with no interruption. I heard no complaints from the club managers about my set so I got off stage feeling good. There were two DJs scheduled to play after me. An individual named WuTam and my good friend Pauser, who also happened to be the stage manager that night. When Wutam came on I thought his set was great. He was playing straight trap but it was good and people were moving. But then twenty minutes passed and sure enough the club manager was there to complain and this time made in effort to kick him off stage. This blew my mind. To me are spots were finalized once we sold all our tickets. Wasn't that the deal? Upon seeing WuTam get kick off my friend Pauser tried to remedy the situation by playing top 40. But as soon as he tried to do anything, security and the manage came in and told him that we were done. They brought in the resident DJ and all he did differently was play straight hip hop. But as I analyzed the situation better I noticed that him and the manager were super good friends. So here we all were doing the best we could and nothing was good enough. The club was full, we had people dancing, but somehow we just weren't cutting it. Rubbish. That was it for me in regards to working with Sound the Groove. I'm not going to bust my ass off to sell tickets (and in some cases pay to play) all so that the club can get this so called exposure it claims to be giving me. I'm good enough at this point to get payed for the work that I put in. I'm good enough to get my own exposure. And I'm good enough to find my own gigs. So I give the bird to these clubs who think they can treat me like a disposable bank account. I do this for music. Not for fame and certainly not to make other people money.