If you’ve ever headed to a club in anticipation of seeing one of your favorite artists perform, or host, then ended up disappointed, you’re not alone. Some of my Pulse teammates and I spent our Friday night in a club, waiting to see a concert that never happened. Unfortunately, this has become a semi-regular occurrence for shows that are held in nightclubs.
Here in Columbus, I often hear the complaint that there isn’t anything to do. This isn’t exactly true, because when I log into Facebook and look at the events calendar, there are activities lined up nearly every day of the week. What I find the problem to be, is a lack of quality events.
It doesn’t take much for someone to put a party together and slap it up on the internet in the hopes that it will stick, but what else is being offered? Sometimes the flyers are made in Microsoft Word, and just make the whole thing look sketchy. Sometimes it’s an issue of the venue not being well known, or just the way it’s promoted. Many event organizers have several hundred social media friends, but unfortunately those friends and followers don’t always translate into a successful event.
It seems as if a lot of “promoters” are taking the hosted by route in order to cut down on the work that they have to do for their parties. What I am referring to, are the parties where a celebrity, pseudo-celebrity, or Instagram “model” is the main attraction to the event. I’m not saying that these are bad events, because I’ve been to a few of them (including the one that the pic is from) that were great. The question that I have to ask is: Why is this becoming the norm?
Booking public figures to host or perform at an event isn’t cheap. In addition to their fee, there may also be travel and lodging expenses. So why do this if you’re not sure that it’s going to turn a profit, or be a hot party? Back in the day, it was rare to have celebs in attendance at Columbus clubs unless it was a concert after party or something like that, but everyone still had fun, and actually danced! Think back to the days of Red Zone (I can’t tell you which time, but it was in the early 2000’s), Club Mecca, Icon, Cove, and 504. Hell – what about The Neon and Studio 69? I often hear that a club is “too far” to go to, but back in the day, people from all over the city took that trek far west on Sunday nights, or out north to go those clubs.
Nowadays, partygoers attend some events in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a celeb. Unfortunately, the celeb usually doesn’t even come to the club until an hour, or half hour before the club closes. Technically, the promoter has done nothing wrong, as they’ve fulfilled their promise of said celebrity being in attendance. They’ve likely also satisfied their bar guarantee if they have one, as the waiting patron will drink while they wait. I think that many would agree with me however, that this practice is annoying as hell. One might ask why the appearance is so short, if the guest is being paid. I’m just speculating here, because I’m not in people’s pockets, but this might have do with budget, or even just bad time management. When I wanted to have a rapper at my birthday party in NYC, I was quoted 12k for a 30 minute walk through. It wasn’t that serious for me however, and the party went on sans musician.
The “concert” that we went to on Friday had a late celebrity arrival, and was just frustrating in general. A rapper was to be performing at an entertainment center on the eastside. I actually got there on time for once (shouts to Reem) and when we got in the building, I said “wait a minute, this is the wrong side”. After I verified that the concert was indeed taking place where we were, I looked around and noticed that there was only a sprinkle of people there. The venue looked nice, Hennessy Girls kept giving us shots, and that was all well and good, but when I looked at the clock, after a few drinks and the club still not filling up much, it was nearly 1am and still no artist.
Around 1:30, some rappers, that I assume to be local, but had never heard of; came on stage and performed a couple of songs. Then, around 1:45 the DJ announced that the rapper of the evening was in the building. About 30 or so people gathered (this cannot be described as us crowding around anything) at the front of the stage waiting for him to perform a song. Unfortunately, we’re still waiting for that to happen, because what actually occurred was the DJ playing songs from the rapper and his camp while asking if “we remembered this song” while the rapper drank with his entourage and smoked a blunt, then got on the mic and thanked the crowd for coming out. Umm WHAT? At this point, I was over it because I felt lame as hell, and like I was at a rapper zoo, so I went to go get a drink. I needed one.
While the rapper was uber cool, and took pictures with all of us, I feel that what we witnessed was a result of poor promotions and relying on the celebrity’s name to push the event. The only radio ad that I heard, besides the ones that we ran on thepulse-radio.com was on our way to the venue on Friday night. I didn’t hear anyone talk about it, or see any posts on social media except the people that I went with and met there.
I have to assume that the reason why we got an appearance instead of a concert was due to low ticket sales, as many promoters rely on these funds to pay the balance of the contract once the initial deposit has been made. I’ve come to this conclusion because: 1. The event was moved to a smaller venue, 2. The tickets were originally sold on Ticketmaster, which is mainly used for concerts. If there was never to be a concert, and was always an appearance, then I stand corrected, but it wasn’t promoted as an appearance.
For the record, the lack of attendance had nothing to do with the venue or its location, because Pulse Radio invaded an event at the same venue the next night, and it had WAY more people there, with no celebrity host or performance. That just goes to show that it’s not really necessary. Let’s bring back quality events and when partying was fun. The people, DJ, music, and atmosphere make a party hot. Not celebrities.
How do you feel about the parties in your city? Leave a comment below!
@Socialyte
This story originally was originally posted on thepulse-radio.com on 6/23/14
