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.

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.