A couple of weeks ago, the regular Out There column announced it would no longer feature Plug & Play nights. Since then the emails have been running hot.

One of these emails – from Derrin Richards, the original promoter of the nights - is on the Letters Pages (42/43) and in refreshingly forthright terms he makes some strong points. Perhaps this week I can look at a few of the issues involved. But first, a quick bit of nutshelling for those who missed the start of this story.

Plug & Play nights are showcase nights featuring five or so upcoming acts (and occasionally an established headliner) which happen on the first Thursday of each month at the Colosseum. They are well worth checking out, with some great bands and more than a little variety (last Thursday ran the gamut from acoustic folk to rap).

Since their inception nearly two years ago The Weekend Sun has written about them in the Out There column but, in recent times, information supplied to us has dropped to being simply a list of names, making it impossible to actually put together a story.

In case anyone think this is pure laziness on our part, I should mention the steps we took. Firstly an email to the promoter seeking more information (not answered). Then two hours of Google searching (with no clues about the artists it seemed like the only way to find them). This also yielded nothing. Then, last month, a column saying 'we can no longer do this unless we get more information”. This month there was again no information.

Therefore, we decided not to feature the nights in Out There any more They'd still be in the Gig Guide, just not promoted in an article.

Many people – if emails are any judge - were unhappy about this. Allow me to offer some observations…
Firstly, I should mention that many musicians and event organisers possibly don't realise quite how lucky they are in having a paper like The Weekend Sun, which continually offers coverage of local music. Many cities simply do not have a newspaper that does that. At least we have one here in Tauranga – if you let us know about something that's happening then chances are we will write about it.

But back to Plug & Play, where the problem seems to be extracting material from artists about what they actually have done/can do. And while it is easy to blame a promoter for lack of supplied information, the bottom line is that performers have to provide details about themselves to the promoter.

Derrin, in his letter, suggests that it may be a function of the national character, and perhaps he is partly right. There certainly seems to be a curious contradiction, in that the more you achieve the more unassuming you are expected to be about it (The Ed Hillary syndrome). This paradox may have some effect on budding musicians needing to promote themselves. Or, perhaps, as Derrin also suggest, it could be sheer laziness.

Kollen da Kol (a Plug & Play artist) emailed with another explanation:
'I am pretty sure that a good many musicians, artists and entertainers suffer from a basic insecurity about themselves and/or their art so are often loathe to self-promote for fear of undermining the 'artiste” inside or some such thing. As most are aware, insecurity is often responsible for the addictions and self abuse that people inflict upon ourselves.

At the same time we artists also have massive egos, and perhaps, delusions of grandeur that tell us we are too good to be bothered with the business side of music. We might be afraid to look less like the artist than the business person. Although this does not excuse the promoters of events, they are often trying to squeeze information from artists who no doubt have no idea how to categorize themselves and are loathe to compare themselves to their influences.”

All this is no doubt true. Musicians usually dread questions like 'who do you sound like?”, and the competing forces of insecurity and ego make self-promotion uncomfortable.

However, these are trials that must be faced and next week I'll offer some pointers for up-and-coming artists, ways that we can help them and, most importantly, ways they can help themselves. In the meantime you could check out the discussion on this topic at www.myspace/taurangamusic.