HW: Private gig

[M Holmes]

Andy Gilham writes:

> > Well Seacon booked Hawkwind in Brighton in 1984(?). One way forward
> > would be just to run a weekend SF convention with SF oriented bands on
> > the Friday and Saturday and a programme stream covering Hawkwind.
> > Alternatively hook up with an established SF con and see if we can run
> > our own Hawkwind stream at that. The advantage would be that we'd also
> > be able to invite SF authors.
>
> Yeah!  John Shirley *and* Mick Farren as guest stars! :)

Well I was thinking Spacehead on the Friday night and Hawkwind on the
Saturday night. We could try to invite Moorcock as GoH and drag in any
others who would come (Nik?).

The advantages of an SF con are that it spreads the load and you'd get
folks coming just for the con which would raise cash. Then sell a day
membership for fans of the band who don't want to stay the weekend at
the hotel. You can also sell concessions to SF book stalls and CD stalls
and maybe even Con t-shirts. Once you're talking about booking an entire
hotel for a weekend they tend to get a bit keen and drop the rates to 25
or 30 quid per night so long as you're outside London. I know a few
conrunners and could get a list of cooperative hotels and tips on how to
put such a thing together.

We'd be able to run a continuous Hawkwind stream. Hopefully we could run
a spacerock disco after the bands and get ex members along to panel
talks, display collections, show videos and all the usual stuff.

What it would take though is a serious committee with folks on it
accepting responsibility for organising their part of the thing. From
talking to conrunners it can be a hard and sometimes thankless task,
though they do all seem to enjoy themselves at the con despite the
responsibility involved. There's also obviously some financial risk
involved with the committee ultimately being responsible for the tab
should things go south.

> - Andy
k
FoFP