Me and Jake's music blogs had birthdays last month. Two years for mine and the site in general, one year for Jake's.
So we decided to have a low key, not for profit, birthday party at Yuyintang.
It was to be a low key event on a Tuesday. Yuyintang doesn't have anything on on Tuesdays so we called Sophia there and made the agreement that it was a non-ticketed event where Yuyintang made money from the bar.
We also invited Ho Tom the Conqueror and Miniless Record's Han Han to play guest slots. They know the blogs and were happy to do it for free.
We made a Douban event page, for posterity more than anything: here it is
Compare the sign up numbers and activity to this event that we did, which was fully pushed and promoted: PETA show
Most people who came did so via the announcement on the blogs themselves. Also Morgan Short of Boys Climbing Ropes was kind enough to throw out a reminder at the site Smart Shanghai.
The whole thing just needed a few e-mails to set up. It went down well and many people who came took advantage of the park at the back of the venue and stayed after the acts were done.
Most true gigs here, even at smaller venues and bars are done on a ticket/cover charge system. It is also a fairly accepted model that bars make money from drinks and attractions such as bands are there to stimulate bar activity. I mention this because of recent conversations. The majority of people who came to our (free entry) party stayed late and were drinking all the time. I imagine there was more bar business done that night than at Mao on a night with five times the amount of people.
