Our series interviewing the folks behind the scenes continues, this time with London gig/club promoters Some Weird Sin!
It’s kind of hard to pin down Some Weird Sin to a particular genre. The duo, consisting of Simon and Mauro, specialise in London shows and club nights featuring punk/rock n’ roll/glam/indie-pop/etc. – just trust us when we say it’s all superb stuff! We caught up with Mauro for a chat recently…
How are you, and how have the last few months been for Some Weird Sin?
We’re alright thanks! We keep plugging away, and our gigs and clubs are still doing well. The Paper Dress [venue in Hackney] nights are probably the most established ones, where we usually have a gig followed by a club night. What happens next year, I don’t know, because we often move Some Weird Sin nights around – we might be moving to some new places and trying out new venues. We’re talking to different venues all the time, really – it’s probably better not to be stuck in the same place for too long!
Also, we’ve found that we have different bills that work in different parts of London – for example, we used the Fiddler’s Elbow [in Camden] for a Continental Lovers gig earlier this year, and it probably went better than it would have at, say, the Brixton Windmill, because more people would want to see Continental Lovers around the Camden area. So yeah, we try to figure out where a potential bill would draw the most people, and we take it from there.
How did you and Simon originally get into this rock n’ roll and promoting lark in the first place?
Well, Simon and I first played together in Jonny Cola & The A Grades; I was in them from about 2008 and Simon from around 2010. He’d been in a previous band that had supported us, and we needed a new bass player, so I asked him and that’s how we got to know each other better. So we played together in The A Grades for about three or four years, and at that time we were both DJ-ing here and there, but neither of us had actually put on a night ourselves – we were mostly DJ-ing at other people’s nights.
So we got talking about putting on a night where we could play all the music that we wanted to play. The A Grades were moving towards a more 70s glam-based sound, and Simon and I liked more of the punk stuff than the other members did. So we figured out what we’d play at our own nights, but also took influence from other people’s nights that we’d previously been to and enjoyed. For example, Simon really liked Stay Beautiful, which isn’t around anymore, but was very popular in the 00s. We liked the way that Simon Price ran that, mixing up all kinds of stuff, and it was always a real event – people would get all dressed up for it!
At our early nights, we’d have (and play) the likes of Iggy, Debbie Harry, and the Ramones on the flyers, but then we’d move on to more niche bands like Suicide or The Gun Club, because those sorts of bands generally went down well with the people we were DJ-ing to. We realised that what we played didn’t have to be straightforward this-or-that, it could be a broad mix.
So Simon moved down here from Birmingham, and I’d been in London for a long time, and we found we had quite a few things in common. We were lucky in those early days with Facebook, because it felt like it was easier to promote your nights with it. You could share an event, and the algorithm wouldn’t get in your way, like it often does now! We kind of established ourselves at the Buffalo Bar [in Islington, now closed], and went on from there.
What would you say is your favourite, or some of your favourites, out of the shows you’ve promoted?
Hmm, I mean, the early ones we did – and there have been plenty of great ones ever since – but some of those early ones at the Buffalo Bar, like Giuda in around 2014, really stand out. That one was packed, and it was amazing to realise that we’d sold out one of our nights! We also sold out the last A Grades show, around the same time – just as we were splitting up, people decided they wanted to come and see us!
We also started off doing some themed nights, like a New York special, a London special, a Ramones special where guests came and sang with a backing band – we did that for The Clash, and the New York Dolls too. Those nights were always great!
More recently, we’d put on some bands who’ve gone on to greater things; High Vis, for example, they always put on great shows. Occasionally, that happens – the band becomes out of our reach, so to speak, but that’s ok. We know that we’re operating at an underground, grassroots level, but it does feel good to know that we’ve put on some big bands at an early stage in their career.
How is the state of live music in the UK, as you see it?
Well, I can only speak for London, to be honest! Plenty of other cities and towns have great scenes, of course – we’re just not aware of them. We still have nights that are packed out, which is very encouraging, but we also sometimes have nights which make us wonder why we haven’t sold more tickets. It can vary for a lot of reasons, and sometimes it’s not as easy as it should be to put on good bands and expect them to fill a venue. Maybe there’s competition from other bands or promoters that week, for example, or maybe people are just skint at that moment!
We do try and price things fairly; I don’t know if we’re at the cheap end of the market, but when we’re putting a night on, we do discuss how much we need to charge for a gig, figure out if we can make it a bit cheaper, etc. The prices of small scale gigs like ours haven’t gone up anywhere near as much as those of gigs at say, Brixton Academy or Wembley Arena. We haven’t done many free shows, because then you’re very limited on how much you can pay the bands – it depends on the budget the venue gives you. Also, it makes people more used to seeing bands for free, which maybe isn’t a good thing!
Is there anything else that you wish people knew about putting on gigs?
It is good when people get the full picture; for example, Simon and I have both been on both sides of the fence quite a lot, we’ve been in bands and we’ve been promoters. So there are times when we’ve been in bands and thought that a promoter could have done a better job, or, as promoters, we’ve thought that maybe a band is taking the piss a bit!
One thing that sometimes happens, especially with younger bands, is that they don’t think twice about agreeing to play a London gig that’s just two days before they play your gig. You see that they’ve done it, via social media, and it makes you think: that’s not going to help our ticket sales, is it?! But we understand that bands want to play a lot, especially when they’re early in their careers, they want to get their name out there. And we do tend to work with a lot of bands who are at that level.
Ultimately, if we can make a bit of a profit, that’s great, but that’s never been what it’s all about for us. We don’t want anyone to think that they’re not getting a fair deal out of us, financially or otherwise. So we just keep going and hoping for the best, really. If we always lost money, we’d have to stop doing it, but after all these years, we must be doing something right!
Finally, how is the near future looking for Some Weird Sin? You have a gig with your new band, Mauro & The Mob, coming up [on 2nd October, at Aces & Eights] soon, don’t you?
That’s a good question, actually! The Mauro & The Mob gig is separate from Some Weird Sin, that’s a gig on its own, but maybe we’ll return to Aces & Eights with Some Weird Sin, if it goes well! It is very small, as venues go, but you never know.
September is our birthday month – this year it’s our 14th – and then in October we’ve got The Empty Page headlining at Paper Dress on the 9th, with a club night afterwards. There’ll also be a club night somewhere else later that month. In November, the main one is The Briefs on the 11th at The Lexington, and then Quick Romance at Paper Dress on the 13th.
We put The Briefs on at the Water Rats last year, and that went very well, so hopefully this time will be a great one too. We occasionally work with bigger bands like them; it’s nice to be able to build a good relationship with a band, to the point where they come back and actually ask you to promote their shows!
There’s going to be another Paper Dress night in December too, a kind of Christmas party thing, but that’s not confirmed just yet. And in the New Year…still very much TBC!
Keep up with all things Some Weird Sin via the links below; tickets for the gigs can be found on Dice.
Follow Some Weird Sin on Their Socials:
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I spend my days teaching English to foreign students, and my evenings attending as many gigs as possible. Raised mainly on a diet of 90s third-wave punk, my tastes have grown to include just about anything from trad ska to thrash metal. The Ramones are my musical gods.
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