If you are interested in playing at the Bull & Gate, have a read of the following information.

If you’ve played similar London venues before, you’ll probably have an idea of how things work down the B&G.; The Bull & Gate is a NEW BANDS VENUE. We don’t put on covers or tribute bands. The main thing you need to understand is how the gig works. There is no ready-made crowd waiting to cheer your arrival. It will only work if you can get some people there yourself. For bands just starting out this often consists of friends, work colleagues, relations, etc. The best way to let people know about your gig is to make up and distribute fliers. Bands are expected to bring a minimum fan base of 25 paying punters to their gigs to be taken seriously for future bookings.

We put 3 or 4 bands, on per night on the basis that if they all bring a bit of a crowd then they’ll all play to a lot more people than they bring. Bands who abuse this and have obviously made no attempt to promote and encourage people along to their gig will not be given a second chance. If you are traveling from outside of London, you can maybe look into arranging transport for some of your local following. We understand the difficulties some bands face with this; just be honest with us and we will do are best to help you out.

Many bands playing The B&G; or other London gigs generally are doing so in order to generate interest from members of the music industry. Industry awareness doesn’t happen by magic, so don’t listen to unscrupulous promoters telling you to come and play their ‘Industry Showcase Night’ or whatever. These people are just after yours and your friends money! The best way to generate industry interest is to do it yourself, i.e. sending your demo to someone at a label you think may be interested, then keeping them informed of any impending gigs. We can offer advice on this if you need it.

For a venue of it’s size The Bull and Gate has a sound system which is second to none with a good sized stage, making it one of London’s best and most well known showcase venues. Interested acts should send us a minimum of two tracks on a demo CD or cassette (our preferred choice of formats).  Dodgy rehearsal room recordings are just as likely to impress as heavily over produced and over priced studio nonsense. We also request that you send us the following info on your band: Up and coming gig dates, where you are based and a little background history, life stories are not necessary. We need this information to help us to bill your band appropriately. Bands who just send demo’s accompanied by nothing other than a mobile phone number are likely to be rejected. 

We do not accept MP3 files or have the time to look at band websites for demo purposes, so please do not clog up our e-mail by sending us large music files. Bands who do this will automatically be rejected.

Send demo’s to:

ANDY/PHIL c/o THE BULL GATE,
389 KENTISH TOWN ROAD,
LONDON, NW5 2TJ,
UK.