Boo! Boo!

I learned just a little while ago that my pal David Mitchell and his most excellent Xinjiang folk/jazz group, Panjir, will not after all be playing a Boxing Day gig at Gingko (the former Room 101) this Friday evening.

The owners apparently decided - at the 11th hour! - that they weren't going to attract much of a crowd this Friday, and thought they'd try to cut their losses by cancelling the band.

A highly questionable decision, I would say. Deplorable, in fact.

Maybe they won't draw much of a crowd on the day after Christmas. Probably bookings in their restaurant aren't going well this week (because they're new, not many people have heard of them yet, and they're not doing any Christmas specials - the next few days, most people are trying to arrange parties and meals at home; and, if they are going out, they're probably going to want some sort of Christmas meal). But they might have foreseen this a month ago, when they booked the band and advertised the gig in all the expat event listings. Once you've done that, I think, you've got to commit to it: publicise the show as much as you possibly can - and go ahead with it no matter what.

I think the negative impression made by last-minute cancellation will be far worse than that which might have been made by a thin turnout - especially for a new venue still trying to establish its profile. There will certainly be some people who look in on Friday expecting to see Panjir, or hoping to see some music, anyway, who are likely to be very pissed off. The disappointment of people who were hoping for a big crowd and find a small one tends to be much less - especially if there is still some good music to listen to. Bar owners in this situation really ought to just bite the bullet, and accept the possibility of a wasted expense on the band if only half a dozen people show up (it's not as if the band's fees are that high anyway).

And I can't believe the turnout would have been as small as that. It's a Friday night. There's nothing much else going on around town. There are quite a lot of foreigners (like myself) still stuck here and at a loose end. There will, for a certainty, be at least a handful of people who wander past Gingko/101 on Friday evening to see if anything's going on there; they'd be far more likely to come in, and to stay for a while, if there were a band on.

And a band always brings its own audience, anyway. If they were worried that no-one was going to come, the musicians would ring up all their mates to get together at least the beginnings of a crowd. And Panjir are a particularly good band. And this was scheduled be (probably) their last-ever gig in Beijing (because David's going home in a few days). Of course they would have drawn a decent crowd!

Yes, I'm quite confident they would have drawn at least two or three dozen punters out - which, for a new bar, in a slow week, is a very good crowd indeed. Anyway, I had been looking forward to this all week, as one of the highlights of my Christmas; and I had been expecting to bring quite a few people along with me.

Those boys at Gingko need their heads examined.

Boo!!!