No booth monitor
Turn one house speaker in, or move the booth. If neither is possible, tell me at T-7 and I will bring headphones I trust and accept the set will be looser.
Pro edition
Advance Sheet.
The demo publishes the rider. This is what gets sent to the venue two weeks out. The point of an advance is not the document — it is that somebody at the venue has read it and put their name next to a line.
Confirm, line by line
| Line | Ask | Who | By |
|---|---|---|---|
| Player model and count | Which model, how many, and are they linked? | Production or sound | T-14 days |
| Booth monitor | Is there one, and does it have its own level? | Production or sound | T-14 days |
| Mixer and channel test | Has every channel been tested this week? | Sound | Day of, before doors |
| Set times | My slot, who is either side, and the actual close. | Promoter | T-10 days |
| Load-in | Which door, where to park, and are there stairs? | Venue manager | T-7 days |
| On-the-night contact | One name and one number answered after 11pm. | Promoter | T-7 days |
| Balance and method | Cash, transfer or invoice, and who physically hands it over. | Promoter | T-7 days |
| Guest list | How many, and by when. | Promoter | T-3 days |
A name against each line is the whole document. "The venue confirmed" is not a confirmation and it is the sentence that precedes most of the problems on the public rider.
Timings
- Doors Somebody is playing. An empty room with no music at doors sets the night back an hour.
- Doors + 2h Still the warm-up, still under 122. This is the hour most often thrown away.
- Changeover Five minutes, agreed in advance. A changeover nobody planned is a dead floor.
- Peak The slot everybody wants and the one that needs the least explaining.
- Last hour The close is a different job from the peak. If the venue has a hard curfew, say the real number.
- Curfew The actual legal time, not the optimistic one. Licences are checked and fines are large.
4 things that usually go wrong
Players not linked
A single network cable, £5, bought that week. If it cannot happen, it is playable — just say so rather than letting me find out.
A dead mixer channel
Test before doors. If one dies mid-set, the fix is a spare channel agreed in advance, not a rewire at 1am.
Set times moved on the night
Fine if I am told before I start. Being cut short with ten minutes left is the one that damages a room, not a fee.
Payment
- Deposit 50% on booking The single line that decides whether an unpaid balance takes a week or five months to resolve.
- Balance On the night Before the set, not after. Nobody wants to have that conversation at 3am and neither of us should have to.
- Method Agreed at T-7 Cash, transfer or invoice. Whichever — the point is that it is decided while people are awake.
- Travel and room Itemised, not bundled A single "all-in" number hides which part is a fee and makes the next booking harder to price.
- Cancellation Inside 14 days, deposit retained And if I cancel inside fourteen days you get it back doubled. It should cost both sides something.
6 ways a night goes wrong before it starts
- An advance sent the day before, when four of the lines could still have been fixed for free.
- "The venue confirmed" with no name against it, and nobody at the venue having heard of the booking.
- Set times agreed verbally and remembered differently by three people.
- No on-the-night contact, so a five-minute problem takes forty.
- Balance discussed at 3am with somebody who has been awake for twenty hours.
- A curfew stated optimistically, and a set cut with fifteen minutes left.
Written for club bookings of 150 to 600 capacity. Festivals advance through production rather than the promoter and have a different document; a club advance sent to a festival production office will simply not be read.