Pay To Play: That Much Worse

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, my only trip to Studio B in Brooklyn was less than pleasant on a number of levels, including the one where hypothermia poked its ugly head, stared at me and started licking its lips. However, I was willing to entertain the idea of going back again...until this past weekend.

The home domain of filteredwave.com (where this blog resides) is a clips page I built to link to all of the writing I've published, mainly over the past year. On that page is a link to a "contact me" page, because I'm a glutton for punishment who hopes to drum up business in the process and on Friday, I had the pleasure of receiving an email from Walter Cardenas, one of the guitarists from Everything's Ruined, which opened up for Destruction that fateful night. Although he had contacted me in search of a (forthcoming) review of his band's EP, we ended up discussing the show that night - specifically the sketchy ways of Bill, the Studio B promoter. Edit: the Darkcity Production promoter. Basically, when it says Studio B, read Dark City. Although I'm still not thrilled about having to wait outside in the cold. Thanks to Walter for the correction.

Bill is one of those pay-to-play guys bands hate (and with good reason - they're screwing things up for us fans, too), although he seems to operate with a special venom or a special level of retardation. Up until Friday, my understanding of pay-to-play was that the band and the promoter worked out a specific number of tickets the band would sell beforehand, the band would pay for those tickets up front and that was it. Any losses came out of the band's pocket, or something to that effect, but they're (hopefully) manageable because the band estimated the amount beforehand. According to Walter, Bill took this grimy business to the next level by giving Everything's Ruined the number of tickets he wanted to sell (70) and the price ($20) in an email before the show, without any negotiation. When the band arrived that night at the door with the money from the 24 tickets they did sell, Bill tried to demand that they pay for the extra 46 tickets themselves, at the cost of about $1,000.

Stupid sick, right? People like Bill make me think of the quote about the music business attributed to Hunter S. Thompson, because somehow, emotions go from sickened to outraged when someone takes something you love and exploit it to its last penny just for short-term gain. Although I have no way of knowing how many concert promoters in New York follow the same practice as Bill, I do have one recourse: I won't be giving Studio B my money ever again.

Secrets of the Photo Pass

Starting last fall, I've been getting photo passes to the shows I review. Photo passes are interesting things: they give you the liberty to not only carry a camera into a venue (which seems to be a pretty common privilege these days, when everyone has a camera on their cell phone), but to go up in front of the security barricades and take pictures of the band while you dodge crowd surfers and the security personnel in charge of catching them. There are also a few universal rules:

• If you're photographing a well-known band (i.e., most headliners and a few major players at the end of the opening list), you'll also
  
• Time up front seems to be universally limited to three songs, a rule that seems fairly arbitrary, but does at least give you a lot of practice in taking effective shots quickly. My guess is that the three song rule is a compromise between event organizers, security staff and bands to get the maximum amount of publicity with the minimum amount of distraction. Also, unless you're photographing a band with a long stage show like GWAR, you've probably taken every useful shot you can get in three songs. When I took pictures at Destruction's show in February, there was basically no security to speak of until people started stage diving during Municipal Waste's set, but I kept to the three song rule for each band because I ran out of subjects.
  
• Flashes are almost always verboten. It doesn't stop people in the crowd from using them and given the number of stage lights some bands use the rule doesn't always make a lot of sense, but the rule still stands and event organizers won't hesitate to call you on it.
• There will be at least one fanboy who sings along with the songs. Many times this person is me, although I always spot at least one other photographer screaming out (for example) the lyrics to "Valhall Awaits Me" while he takes pictures of Amon Amarth. Singing photographers (and headbanging photographers, who are a subset of singing photographers) stand in direct contrast to everyone else taking pictures in the security well because they actually seem to care about the music. The first show I shot with a pass was Gigantour 2006, where there were a whole gaggle of photographers in the security well. After the three song limit ended, two-thirds of them retired to the quiet confines of the venue's green room instead of, say, enjoying the show from the floor. In other words, there seems to be a definite line between photographers who are fans...and photographers who are not. I have a theory that there's a correlation between these two types of photographers and the amount of jadedness in the industry, but I'm still working on evidence.
• Some people will have point-and-shoot cameras, some will have high-powered SLRs. I'm of the former variety, because a.) I can't afford a larger camera and b.) carrying around a big camera is a pain in the ass when you're standing in a room full of people trying to beat the crap out of each other. Come to think of it, this last point might relate back to the jadedness point above.

In the four shows I've shot so far, I've noticed three things: first, my love for venues with lighting rigs that actually illuminate the stage instead of masking it is undying and eternal, because I get so many better pictures that way. I may, in fact, love the Nokia Theatre for just this reason. Second, to take pictures of death metal bands requires extreme patience, as you struggle to capture a shot where the musician isn't moving too much but still looks cool. Third, bands with lead singers who do nothing but sing are the bane of my existence, because the singer, having no instrument to him or her down, charges around the stage and makes so many erratic movements as to make taking good pictures impossible.

And I Couldn't Feel My Feet for 45 Minutes...

Here it is, folks: the first official review of the year, Destruction at Studio B, Brooklyn (review here, pictures here), from a show fraught on the fringes with danger and more danger, plus sheer exploitation of my title as journalist. Let's start with the exploitation, because as John Lennon once said, "Power corrupts. Absolute power is kinda neat."

I assume many of you have heard of Almost Famous, the Cameron Crowe semi-biopic where a wannabe young rock journalist goes on the road with a rising-star band to chronicle their trials and tribulations for Rolling Stone. I love the movie for two reasons: first, it's got Jason Lee sporting a full beard singing a song called "Fever Dog" and generally making an ass of himself. Second, I can relate to how much William Miller, the main character, loves the music he's covering. At one point in the movie, William is listening to Lester Bangs expound on why it's simultaneously so awesome and so terrible to be a rock music critic - and one of the reasons why it's good is because you get free albums.

I've been the beneficiary of this quirk before, but the night of the concert was the first time I got to use it in person, when a member of Sanitarius's street team came up to me and asked if I wanted to buy a CD. I lied and said I didn't have any money on me (which is my standard response), but then I remembered I could get the goods in exchange for a review, so I told him I was a journalist, gave him a card and got a free CD to review. Exploitation for personal profit is fun!

The danger part was less cool - not because I'm against danger per se, but because this danger was danger with absolutely no upside. Studio B is located in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, an area (for those of you not familiar with the geography) made up of alternating groups of residences and miles of warehouses. Studio B was in the middle of one of these warehouse blocs, 15 minutes walk away from the subway station. I walked quickly, hoping I wouldn't see anyone because I figured that would reduce the possibility of getting knifed. Given the amount of empty warehouses in the area, I'm a little confused as to why someone decided to build a club in middle instead of at one of the fringes.

I arrived outside Studio B at 6:30, which was when the show was supposed to start. The doors were not open, although the club had put up the crowd control to form a line outside the door. Normally, not a problem: this is rock and roll; it works on its own schedule, published times be damned. However, February 5 was at the start of the cold snap that continues to dominate New York City and it was 18 degrees and windy outside. Keeping the doors closed for 45 minutes past the supposed start of the show while people queued up outside in the freezing cold? Not cool. Bands might have been setting up inside, but it's OK to expose someone's sound check to the public to prevent hypothermia.