Craic On

Paper Man

One of the banes of the life of a festival organizer is when bands or acts don’t show up. I always contact them a couple of days beforehand to make sure everything is all right.

All the other acts got back to me except Paper Man from Ballymena. They are a young 3-piece band who are Beatles influenced in their music.

Said the guy who contacted me about playing “I represent a young alt-rock 3 piece from Belfast called Paper Man. I’m just getting in touch to enquire as to whether there would be a slot available for the group in the Beatlesfest lineup this Summer.

“It’s hard for me to describe this band’s love for The Beatles, and I know it would mean the world to them to finally have an excuse worthy enough to allow them to play the music that inspired theirs.”

Redcastle

The Redcastle picked them to play both in Saturday and Sunday.

If acts aren’t going to show up I would rather they told me. It’s one thing I find around here is that people will go to any lengths not to say No. They’ll not answer your emails or Facebook messages and will ignore your phone calls.

It would be much easier just to say No. It would also be much better for festival organisers who have enough time to get a replacement.

Worst World

The worst of all worlds is to not reply and then not turn up. Yet, that is what they did.

We did manage to find a replacement, Paddy the Shoe at the last moment but we would have liked more time.

I was sending emails, sending messages to their Facebook page and sending messages to their individual Facebook Pages. I even said that I just wanted to know one way or another. It was No Reply as regards Paper Man and the BeatlesFest.

But I would much rather they had said “We don’t have enough Beatles songs” or “we got another gig elsewhere” which would have given me two days to get a replacement.

They would have been welcome to play again next year. However, there’s no way I could take a chance some other year on them.

You don’t get to the top by letting people down.