So, let's talk about this here, since I made a flippant comment elsewhere

[ericcoleman]

This started with a flippant comment on philady's LJ, but it seems to have escalated, so I feel I should discuss it.

As some of you know, I do not attend Convergence



philady posted a poll here that said

Are you getting stoked for CONvergence?
Yes.
HELL YES!
I'm not going. I'm lame.

Me being me, I said

"I'm not going, the people who run Convergence are lame"

433 took exception to this, and for good reason.

So, the reason for my problems with Convergence go back several years. When I was trying to do the 12 cons in 12 months I contacted them to see about playing.

I have one rule when it comes to cons, if I contact a con about playing, it is my responsibility to pay for my badge. If they comp me, that's a good thing, but that is up to them.

If they contact me, they are contacting me as a pro. I don't make much of my living playing music, but I certainly do at least a little. Unless you are a tiny tiny con, you comp the pros. Period.

The next year I was contacted, please come play at the con. Cool. I had a good time the year before. Oh, if you want to do anything else, you have to buy a badge.

I said that I can't do that, you're asking me to drive there and play a show for no recompense except hopefully selling some CDs, I can't. I was nice about it, I do try to treat any venue I play with a good degree of professionalism, then the guy got all defensive and weird and went off on a rant about how it is not "pay to play" since I would get into my own show free.

I live 200+ miles away from the Twin Cities. At that point driving there and back cost me around 60 bucks. This guy asked me to play a free show that is costing me money, and tells me that it is not "pay to play". If I was local I suppose that I might have had a different reaction. I'm not.

The way I see this is like ... well ... if I was playing at a club, and they said, "sure, you can be on the stage, but if you want to go anywhere else you have to pay the cover charge".

It's a terrible way to treat people who you invite in to perform for and entertain YOUR guests. We are part of the show. You should show us respect. I think I may have had a different reaction if not for the "it's not pay to play thing". It would have just been left there, and I wouldn't go to Convergence. But the guy was an ass.

I know a little about the history of TC cons, and I know that there was a point where too many people got comped, things got out of control. But there is a point at which it is just silly.

So there is why I made my little flippant comment 433. It wasn't the best way to handle it, but maybe this will do some good. I have talked to other folks involved with Convergence about this, but nothing has come of it. It's a big con. You can do what you want because of that. But it does not serve the con well to treat people badly.

Comments

[ericcoleman]

I would like to point out that Marscon is music friendly towards one specific genre of music.

[coburnsteeth.livejournal.com]

comedy/parody music?

[ericcoleman]

well ... yeah ...

[coburnsteeth.livejournal.com]

I though this year had a nice variety of acts though (albiet crammed in a tight playing schedule)

[ericcoleman]

Still all comedy music. And that's a good thing, that is what Marscon does, and I think it's brilliant. I'm there next year whether I perform or not.

[freeimprov.livejournal.com]

It's more a matter of focus than friendly, I think. I feel that the Player Characters are definitely skirting the edge of the Marscon music scene. gamerchick's songs are 90% fannish, but for the most part aren't comedy. Even Hannibal Lecter isn't directly a comedy song. I've been trying to find other con-type gigs for us that aren't Dementia music, because I think fen can really relate to the music (both stylistically and content-wise), but it's a matter of finding the gigs. Likewise, we aren't that folky either, even though we sometimes do mostly-acoustic shows. But loud rock isn't always an aspect of cons.

And I know we've talked about this before, but I'm with you... if cons invite musicians, they should comp them. It ain't THAT expensive and it's a good courtesy and reward.

I've had similar problems about "volunteering" at cons. Klee puts in gawd only knows how many hours and hundreds of dollars every year to run the Midnight at the Oasis room party at Convergence, but last year she couldn't even officially get a backrub... those were for "volunteers", and she didn't put in "volunteer" hours because she was too busy hosting a popular room party.