Its with great disappointment that we’ve decided to pull the under 18s night at The Hippodrome, planned for Tuesday 19th

Its not something we do lightly.  Banquet has always been about providing services, gigs and clubs for the Kingston music community. Whilst it is our business and livelihood, not all decisions are made from a purely financial perspective.  This is one such example.  The impression we were getting was that few were excited about it.  Sure, we didn’t have a long time between announcing the gig and the proposed date, but there were a number of reasons.  A few big name artists were “going to confirm tomorrow” and that never really happened.  The council no longer have money to help promote a service for under age kids, and I didn’t feel comfortable sending people to flyer t schools and the like.  We found it harder to reach the target customers via social networks than we’d thought it’d be. 

The number of people that were positive to the event was greatly appreciated.  But if we had as many as 200 people in that club it would have felt flat, wouldn’t have been a great night out like we’d planned, and we’d have lost loads of money

I and Banquet are of course super-committed to the organisation and promotion of gigs for under 18s (as well as all the over 18s stuff we do too).  Only tomorrow we have an under 18s King Blues show ahead of their New Slang gig that night.  Later this week we’ll announce a matinee 14+ show at The Fighting Cocks, and we do as many instores and chances for younger music fans to meet and watch great bands. 

But the under 18s DANCE / New Slang night just wasn’t going to work.

Maybe the last promoter of the U18s night (despite not paying all his bills, including some money to us), was better than we gave him credit for.  Maybe we just don’t know how to reach the under 18s clubbers without support from the council. 

I don’t know what the plans are for it in the future.  I know we can be involved if we want to be, and The Hippodrome have been great about all this

What do you think?
We’d love to know

Mail me jt@banquetrecords.com and if it turns out we can sort out something better for the summer holidays then we’ll give it our best shot!

Thanks
Jt / banquet / new slang / DANCE