It's not even so much about sucking. I can work with a band that's a bit rough. I can't work with a band that shows up an hour late for soundcheck, takes forever to set up or get off the stage, doesn't do any promo, drives the people that are actually there out with volume, and complains about money.
It should be the person "PROMOTING" the show to do most of the promo, not the band. Why do you think they are called promoters? So, let's see the promoter's the one who makes most of the actual money, for really doing nothing other than booking the show and watching people show up? Nope. He needs to actually do someting other than book bands..and don't try to give me the, it's really hard work booking shows crap. I book shows ALL the time, for my band and for other bands... It's not that hard at all. You just have to be organized, and have good communication with all parties involved. And if you're not a total asshole, with a reasonable ammount of people skills, you could pull it off without making any enemies in the process. There's nothing wrong with the band doing some promo on their own, but it's not their job. Their job is to play music. I have no qualms personally with doing promo from time to time, but most of the shows I play booked from promoters I trust, they'll print up proper posters, pay people to distribute them, do their own promo at events (or pay others to do it).. usually the only band specific promo that I can think of traditionally is radio promo, in store meet and greet shit, maybe showing up at a club night to invite people personally.. but come on.
If there's a problem with volume, get a new fucking sound guy..or not some sardine box shithole venue that is overrun solely by the stage volume alone.
Complains about money.. you know of course the only one's involved not getting paid should be the ACTUAL BANDS, right? It's sickening the ammount of these pseudo "promoters" that don't feel it necessary to pay the people who are bringing people in the first place to your oh so honourable establishment. If people are buying drinks, you have the obligation to pay your perceived side-show act.
The only thing I actually can even in a million years agree with you on is showing up an hour late for soundcheck... but hell, since you aren't paying, don't do any promotion, have a dumb ass soundguy who turns everything up too loud, (and since they're inept at FOH mixing, the monitor mix is probably equally horrendous) why should they be too worried about being punctual. They'll just show you the ammount of disrespect you show them.
Regarding set-up, take-down time... I don't know exactly what bands you're used to working with... but in my case, and quite a few bands in my circle of friends, it's a constant worry about that. We all use multitudes of laptops, effects boxes, synths and what not. Some of us use our own multimedia projectors being sychronized to the music, and other shit allready on top of the ususal guitar bass drums vocals normalcy. In my experience, the problem is when we warn the club well ahead of time that we need to get there early to set up all of our equipment, and get a proper soundcheck (I, personally run about 10 audio tracks and 2 - 3 virtual instrument tracks on my setup, which in a perfect world should have some degree of minor tweaks to get the mix to work well for the particular venue, not including all the other normal suspects of multiple vocals, guitar, and bass guitar. The ones that cause a problem are always because they "have these types of bands all the time" and a simple line check, or setting up with a crowd sitting there waiting is the best idea. So then we're forced to show up the usual hour before the doors open load in all the gear and make ourselves look like idiots as people stand around and wait for the tons of shit that needs to be set up and plugged in and turned on.
On another note, pretty much any band I've known, and been in for that matter, that has a traditional instrumentation for the average rock band, has no problem getting on stage and off stage in a reasonable ammount of time... unless your the kind of asshole pricks I've run into a couple of times (and truely... only a couple of times) where they expect you to be set up and ready to play in 10 minutes. Yeah, champ...why don't you set up our gear for us, while we go to the back room and steal your paycheck.
A good concert "promoter" should be capable of seeing the situation in the whole big picture, not just freaking out about stuff that they perceive everyone else is doing to them, but more often than not is their own damned problem. Almost any problem I've ever seen with live shows not going right is because of the person booking and "promoting" the show, not the bands. There are simply too many unprofessional, scheister show promoters out there.
