Bido Lito!

"I'm on the list..."

This may be inflammatory, controversial and completely hypocritical, but is true, nonetheless; the gig guest list should not exist.

The actual concept of a guest-list for media is more than questionable; it’s founded on an idea of social superiority, an idea that some people are somehow more important and deserving of seeing a gig, and should therefore not pay, at the expense of all of the other people in the venue, and generally in expectance of getting a review in return. It uneasily calls to mind the arrogance of the Moet-toting, self-loving posers who inhabit so called “VIP booths” in depressingly characterless clubs in order to increase their likelihood of “shagging”. If you put yourself on a guest-list, you’re just the slightly more alternative, much less likely-to-shag parallel, but the problem is probably that you don’t even realise it.

In retrospect, of course, it’s a crime that I’ve been guilty of far too often. But like so many of the problems of society, it’s an accepted evil. One that slips un-noticed, unthought, beneath our consciousness. Quite simply, people never stop to think about it, what they’re doing, and the consequences of what they’re doing. PRs desperate for column inches thrust the offer before you, and most unthinkingly accept. The most obvious and serious consequence, of course, is that you’re filling space that would otherwise be filled by a paying customer, and therefore denying the promoter a return on his/her investment, and thus having a negative effect on the local music scene. And if your counter-argument is that you buy a couple of drinks which each make the venue possibly £1 in profit, then you should know that you really are trying too hard.

So what should we be doing about this? Well, of course, in the utopian ideal-led world that I am imagining, the guest-list should be abolished. Yes, it does serve a purpose; magazines and online media give bands and promoters coverage that they survive on, and if you stopped giving NME journalists guest-list, they would probably be inclined to give you a metaphorical two-fingers and not write their average review about your event. Ironically, these are exactly the people who should be paying; allegedly they are passionate about music, or so they will have claimed on their CV that they sent to their publication, and they are also being paid to write about music, and therefore have a job, which does put them in a superior economic position to at least 20% of young people.

This raises a very poignant question: would independent publications like Bido Lito! exist without the guest-list, would writers really be willing to pay to review live shows? I’m inclined to think so. Having witnessed the Bido Lito! writing team in person, and taking into account that they are already people who put aside their time to do a job for free that other people get paid to do, they’re naturally a passionate and principled group of people. And, of course, people generally put themselves forward to cover shows that they want to go and see anyway, so why should they mind paying? This logic may not hold for the smaller shows that are covered, but they generally cost just £3-£5 a go anyway. At the risk of incurring the wrath of all of my fellow writers, I can’t see the problem.

Ultimately it comes down to conscience and a moral awareness – something that modern businesses are purposefully ignorant of. Yet if some publications did turn around and start paying for their writers to attend events purely on principle, and if hangers-on like myself started realising the negative effect they’re having on an industry that gives them so much pleasure, then perhaps perceptions would start to change, and perhaps people would start to pay for something that they should be paying for. It’s a small price to ask for an industry that we should be doing everything we can to support in such tough times; venues closing is bad enough, but where would you go if promoters started folding too?