BetaBand-Aid as lovely band gigs to pay back £1.2m debt
Being nosey, and always eager to discover that being a popstar isn’t as much fun as it seems, I’ve always been eager to know about band finances. I love a good, ‘We were top of the charts for fifteen years, but all we could afford was Pot Noodles with cold water’ story. Especially, when it’s someone I’ve found quite annoying.
However, it’s quite a shame to read a story in today’s Guardian about The Beta Band and their financial woes as they go on tour for the last time.
All quite a shame really from a Band who’ve produced some pretty decent albums and put on one of the best gigs I’ve seen in the last few years (two/three years ago, Shepherd’s bush Empire..). Highlights of their tale include
- First album dismissed as ‘crock of shit’ by the label, so they were sent out touring Europe
- Being split between Portsmouth, London and a remote Scottish village, while having a manager in Los Angeles
- Steve Mason suffers from depression, takes a lot of acid and mushrooms (really? you’d never have guessed from the on stage visuals)
- £4,000 velcro suits they wore on stage being lost on the Tube
But there’s some fascinating points in all this. They play gigs in the same size venues as Kasabian, but their album goes in at 19, while Kasabian’s goes in at four. They get rave reviews for their albums…but don’t get any radio play. I feel like buying their albums all over again as an act of benevolence. I probably won’t..but I feel like it..which shows my heart’s in the right place, I think.