Lava’s blog

No, this post involves no Vogon poetry.  It is, however, a malaiseful comment on corporate America, where words like synergize and leverage slowly lose their meaning; where necktie-wearing nerds clog the pipes with unnecessary impediments to just getting it done; where pointy-haired bosses pat you on the back repeating "fuck you fuck you fuck you"; where management begets management and common sense becomes a game of Rube Goldberg one-ups.  I think "If only I were boss..."

And then I think about the people I work with, the ones who devalue my work with their stupidity, laziness and undeserved managerial leniency.

And then I think, "do I really want to be your boss?"

Firstly, I apologize for the instant Godwin.  I know it's not a Nazi reference, but it seems just as dramatic to compare our current economy to Germany's post-Great War economic boner as it is to compare Bill Richardson to Judas, the Iraq War to Vietnam, or gun control to you-know-who.  I simply felt that it's a fair juxtaposition.

Here's what I came here to say.  Stop printing money!  The Federal Reserve is a company which wields the power to print and distribute dollars, set interest rates, etc.  Regardless of where you stand on the issue of bailing out lenders, the fed is doing it.  But in their infinite wisdom, they've decided to print money to do it.  They're not taking taxpayer dollars to do it, they're simply devaluing everyone's money.

The Weimar Republic did the same thing, and after 4 years they saw inflation of 3,250,000%.  Basically, the value of the mark halved every 49 hours, a direct result of pulling money out of their asses.  If the fed is so concerned about the economy, why are they doing their best to harm it in the most devastating and longest-lasting way possible?

Say what you will about bailing out lenders.  Our economy runs on credit, and when no one can get a loan, we all suffer.  Bailing the lenders out isn't a reward for bad behavior, it's a stopgap to protect the rest of us who understand the value of the dollar.  The money has to come from somewhere, but for some reason our leaders choose to cut taxes for the rich, while at the same time running up the deficit to record highs.

It's tough to be patriotic when you're not proud of your country.

I don't know what it is that affects me so much about his writing.  Perhaps it's the incredible depth and range of thought that went into his stories.  Maybe it's the ultimately humanistic color behind his stories.  It certainly wasn't the cop-out endings.  But take any Clarke book, whether you've read it or not, flip to any page, and enter the story there.  It's easier than you'd think.

"One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories."  - Arthur C. Clarke

You know why I don't pay to play?  Because of last night.  Because of every experience I have ever had as an artist, a musician, perfectly exemplified by lunacy of last night's show.  The people running the show may as well have been running around bumping into each other.

We were invited to play Emergenza.  For those of you not in the know, they are basically a corporate-sponsored battle of the bands.  They originated in Italy, and now they have regional showcases where they whittle the contest down to a handful of bands that are eventually flown to Germany to perform, and Denmark to record, and are given piles and piles of gear.  How do they make their money?  An even mix of sponsors and bands.  Bands not only pay to play (they call it a "deposit"), but a large portion of the ticket sales go directly to Emergenza.  The first 40 tickets that is.  What bands can pre-sell 40 tickets in this day and age?  It basically means Emergenza always makes money, and that it's extremely difficult for the band to recoup their "deposit".

So why did I do it?  Because it was free.  They contacted me and said they need a band.  And I figured hey, it couldn't hurt.  Of course, we paid in other ways - our patience was tested, our egos were bruised, and I had to pay a toll at the Holland tunnel.  So here's a quick (not) recap of last night's lunacy/mediocrity.  Skip to the review at the end if you don't want to hear the bitchy details.

We arrive at the venue at 5:20.  Sound check was supposed to start at 4:30, with our band checking at 5:40.  We were supposed to go on at 9:30 in the second slot.  9:30 on a Saturday night you say?  Yes, the most awesome of all time slots.  The woman running the show is not there.  Here colleague, the stage manager, was there, and so was the sound guy (who works for the venue), and so were the bands.  I asked them if we could sound check, and neither the sound guy nor the stage manager seemed to be able to make a decision without the woman running the show.  Their excuse, "I don't know what order the bands are going on".  The bands all know, because they were told their time slots.  Never let knowledge get in the way of progress.

The emcee arrives after 6, and informs us that 3 bands have dropped off the bill, and the entire night is being pushed back.  We are now playing at 10:30.

We sound check.  We were told all the bands would play on the same gear.  Now usually, this isn't a problem for me.  Many musicians whine that they don't get to play on their own gear, and the sound is awful.  But I personally pride myself on being perfectly capable of dialing in any sound I want on an amp.  I've done this long enough to ignore my hangups with gear, because the sound really comes from my hands.  But these amps were the most awful sounding amps I've ever played on.  Ever.  They're supposedly some high end boutique brand, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find the "suck" knob to turn it down.  So we dealt with it.  The stage manager comes up when we're done and writes down all our settings on a convenient little chart and walks away.  3, 0, 2, gain hi, compression off, attack on, tube contour full, both preamp levels at 9:00, yada yada yada.

I take 5 tickets, give $50 to the emcee, and give her 4 of the tickets to leave at the door (will call).  I asked her if I can give her a list of names, and she said no.  And I expressed my concern about someone coming along and simply saying there is a ticket waiting for them for my band, and the ticket being given away.  She said that was the way it worked.

We go out for a bite to eat and a few drinks, because we have 4 hours to kill.  We get to talking about battles of the bands, and why we're like every other whiny band that bitches because they lose every battle of the bands they ever play.  "All those other bands suck, why didn't we win?"  "We were clearly the best band."  "It's a popularity contest."  We already know we're going to lose.  Here's my theory.  Bands with actual followings don't play the battle of the bands.  So the bands that win, win because they bring a lot of friends, not fans.  I've actually seen this happen so many times, it just seems so obvious, partly sad, and partly funny.  Some jokers get together, start a frat-boy party band, playing every cliche they can find, and all their friends come to see them at every show.  Sadly, it's these cretins that are breeding.  Until 6 months later, when their friends get tired of the band and going to shows.  The friends start realizing that the band sucks.  Eventually the crowds dwindle, and the band is left hopeless and depressed, because they neglected to actually do any work, such as rehearsing or building a fanbase.  They try things like playing covers, wearing velvet dinner jackets, frilly pirate shirts and cowboy hats.  But nothing seems to interest anyone.  I watched the beginning of all this last night and thought not only are they going to win, they are going to go far enough along in the contest where they will eventually be laughed at by an international audience thinking "Americans must really eat this shit up."

Having a work ethic (and apparently the patience of Job), I attend the first band's set.  They opened with a cover.  A Black Sabbath cover, "Symptom of the Universe".  How do you play Sabbath poorly?  Somehow they found a way.

We go on, and the stage manager is telling me to get on the stage, pointing to a spot on the stage where all the last guy's gear is sitting.  I point to that same spot and say "That's not my gear".  He seemed confused, as though I should be removing someone else's gear from the stage.  I am being berated now, because I am supposed to be on the stage as quickly as possible.  I am tuned up, ready to go, cables in hand, guitar on shoulder.  But there is nowhere for me to go, and spatial analysis is probably not his forte.

He dials in my amp, and none of my settings were the same.  And all I could think of was, what was the point of writing this down?  Was it to appear busy?  When I told him things were wrong, he acted like that's just the way it was.  Redial your amp.  "Oh it's just the preamp level", or "Oh, then just turn the compression off."

For the first two songs, the amp kept cutting in and out.  I tell him there's something wrong with the amp, and he just refuses to believe it.  So I unplug everything and plug straight into the amp.  Now it sounds fine.  He is sure my pedal is to blame, but I was in no mood to argue with a dimwit.  My pedal works fine, my cables work fine, and the battery is still brand new.  It worked fine when I got back to my rehearsal space, so it's obvious to me that this awful amp is just like other awful amps i've played (crate, marshall valvestates, line 6) whose preamp stages can't handle the current from a tuner pedal.  I'm sure at that point I already seemed like a bitchy rock star to this guy.  When our set was over, I do not recall the emcee telling the crowd to vote for us.

After we played, my girlfriend walks in and tells me this ludicrous story about how she told the door guy there was a ticket waiting for her, but he said there were none.  She asked how much, and he asked who she was here to see.  She told him which band, and he said we already played and then asked her if she still wanted to go inside.  She said yes, and he said "but they already played."  It was as though common sense was off this evening.  It was a weekend, and common sense has been needing a vacation for a quite some time now.  I don't blame him, no one ever listens to him.

I tore the door guy a new one later, explaining that he gave away a ticket for which I paid, and then made my girlfriend pay the higher door price to get in.  He didn't seem to understand that I was instructing him to give her back her money.  When I explained to him that the emcee wouldn't let me put names on the list, he followed it up with, "you should have left names with us, or wrote the names on the tickets."  And when I explained again that I was told I couldn't do that, he said yet again that I should have, because it prevents this sort of thing from happening, and that it's standard operating procedure.

The next band was a frat boy party band.  Does the chubby drummer really need to play in his undies?  Do they really need two guitarists for that?  Why do they have two white boys wearing old navy, rapping about partying?  Obviously, I'm doing something wrong.  The female response was overwhelming enough for me to notice the scent.

The last band were a handful of aging hipsters.  Gene Simmons on crappy guitar, Ron Jeremy on crappy drums, some bassist in a short sleeve shirt and tie with chucks, and a velvet-clad cowboy with poor mic technique.  All of them somehow fell short of recapturing their youth.  Here's some advice: if your hair is thinning, growing a mullet will distract people from it, but in a bad way.

We lost.

We are now stuck asking ourselves why we are pissed, why we put ourselves through this aggravation.  Here's why.  Because we rock.  Because we love our songs, because we love our sound.  We love to play, and we love hanging out together.  We have a great time writing, playing, and being friends.  No amount of bitching changes our situation.  No amount of artistic sacrifice will ever put us in the line of commercial success.  We're not pie-in-the sky kids who think we can just rock our hearts out and be successful, and we're not jaded old farts who think only the hipsters magically have success.  But we've done this long enough to know that popularity and success are a rare thing for any artist.  Why bother spending all your time and energy spinning your wheels when you can be yourself?  At least that way when it's over, you'll be happy with yourself instead of being full of shame and regret.

you cant throw a stone without hitting a bar with a live bands. but they're all cover bands. who keeps feeding these pests?

i've heard better. whatevs.

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http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/29/america/NA-GEN-US-Obit-Hilly-Kristal.php

Hilly, you opened a country music bar in the lower east side in 1973.  You're fucking nuts.  And I don't think you ever understood anything about the music scene.  You hated the bands that played there.  The manager hated the musicians.  The bouncers hated the musicians.  The bartenders hated everybody.  The door was $10+.  The beers were $6+ (50 cent discount for musicians, how generous).  And in the end, you made millions off teeny boppers buying babydoll tees in the mall and on the internet.  You wouldn't fork over the extra bread to persuade the homeless shelter (which btw is not a not-for-profit as they would have everyone believe) to renew your lease.  But you had no problem with rebuilding CBGB in vegas.

CBGB was my home away from home, because it sounded best, and that's where I met all my friends.  If Hilly had anything to do with that, he probably also would have had the intelligence to see what he really owned.

Fuck you Hilly.

Hudson River, New Yoisey

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This show is sold out. Everybody and their mother wants to go. Tailgate parties are out of control (they're fucking catered!). There's no reason I can think of that could keep anyone away tonight (except a funeral, which was the case with one person). So why, o why, could we NOT SELL THIS EXTRA TICKET?!!?

You assholes are on your own from now on.

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Don't stand so..

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