THD - "evolution of our decay" album

Sun Oct 26 15:49:27 EDT 2008

John is a little misinformed about the issue. This has nothing to do with
making bands sell tickets (which, whenever I do, I do it purely on a
profit-sharing basis - it is never pay to play). This has to with whether
I follow through with any obligations I commit to. Which I always do. If I
say I'm going to pay someone something, I do it.

And as for your insinuation about 'promoters' taking out ads, color
posters, etc, there's nobody
you can be talking about other than Elise. And sometimes a lot of fat good
it does for them. Not everything they do smells like gold. They did a show
for System Syn in a huge place where it shouldn't have been (Altar Bar)
and nobody came. They didn't provide an adequate sound situation for
Prometheus Burning and were dismissive about the live-act element of their
fetish event, at the particular event. These are facts I've been told
directly by people involved or attending the shows.
Note that I'm NOT trying to talk shit on Elise or anything, As far as I
know they have successful productions as well. But so do I. And nobody
bats 1.000 all the time.

Kelly rarely if ever took out ads. Jim isn't taking out ads. Neither of
them got 'radio' coverage (if by that you mean ads on the X or something).
And what's the difference whether a flyer is black & white or color, as
long as it's readable? I don't go to random arbitrary locations. I flyer
everywhere that stores allow flyers within the city limits, BAR NONE. And
on the rare occasion I do hand-to-hand promotion, it's  because the show
is directly relevant to the audience I'm trying to reach (like for example
getting Obituary's crowd to go see Watain, which was a really good idea).
 I don't 'post to an e-mail list'. I post wherever it makes sense to post,
whether's it's livejournal groups, NTMTO board, WYEP's PSA page, this is
happening, newspaper listings, whatever makes sense to do given the
audience for the show. So none of what you're saying applies to me, even
though I know full well you intended it to. It's becoming more and more
evident that you don't know your shit, even while you are accusing me of
not knowing mine.

None of what you are saying is relevant to me except the part about
blaming the damn lazy music fans. The music fans are damn lazy. That's
their fault, not mine. For example, the fact that nobody came to see The
Brides show that your band opened can be nobody's fault but the fact that
the
scene either had no idea who the Brides were, or didn't care. I'm not
blaming the band. And I've never decided that bands deserve 'no money' for
hauling their asses into town if *in advance* I've made an agreement with
them to give them a set amount or a set door deal. I sign over 100
contracts a year with bands, and fufill them. Jim Semonik does the same (a
dozen or so per year).
Bands who come here without contracts get whatever door money they can,
that's the vagarity
of going out on the road and trying to play weekday show in a
disinterested, backwards town
when your band is still utterly unknown.

How many contracts do YOU fulfill? If you are a local band, and you have a
local fanbase, your 'verbal contract', when you agree to open a show, is
to do the best you can to draw people to it.
If you equally fail in that mission, then you are not keeping up your end
of the 'promise', either.

Anyway, the point is - you can't really find *anything* I've done that
really smacks of being
'wrong'. So you're really running out of steam in both the accusation and
the argument departments.

-mt

> Some promoters take out big ads in periodicals, put up large
> attractive color posters all over town, distribute attractive
> professionally made fliers at key locations with the assistance of a
> street team, get radio coverage, and then consistently get people to
> arrive to see bands play. Other promoters hand out shitty black and
> white fliers at arbitrary locations at weird times, maybe post to an
> e-mail list now and then, and then blame the band who just drove into
> town that afternoon when nobody arrives to see the show. Sometimes
> they also blame those damned lazy music fans for not seeking out
> information about which bands are playing where. And sometimes they
> decide that bands don't actually deserve any money for hauling their
> asses into town and doing their job.
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 12:13 AM, John <anhedonia77 at comcast.net> wrote:
>> I realize it is a promoter's job to promote a show and I typed my
>> response
>> out wrong. What I meant to say was that it's usually on them to sell
>> some of
>> the tickets to the show. You've never been to one where the bands had a
>> certain amount of tickets to sell on their own? I still think a band
>> that
>> wants a decent audience at their show should take it on themselves to
>> get
>> the word out as well. I'm not in a band but if I was I would never rely
>> solely on the promoter, no matter how good they are, to bring people to
>> the
>> show.
>>
>> John
>>
>> Jeremy wrote:
>>>
>>> "I've heard a lot of bands complain that they don't get enough for a
>>> show, but it's usually on them to sell the tickets to the show."
>>>
>>> I'm not sure what you're talking about there. It's a promoter's job to
>>> promote a show. It's a band's job to play a show. Bands make music.
>>> Promoters sell tickets. If bands sold tickets themselves, they
>>> wouldn't need promoters.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 10:27 PM, John <anhedonia77 at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> No problem Manny. I've never heard any concrete proof of anything
>>>> major
>>>> come
>>>> out of these discussions. It always seemed like it was someone trying
>>>> to
>>>> make a big deal out of something small. Almost any promoter I know has
>>>> been
>>>> accused of some bullshit at one time or another and 95% of the time it
>>>> was
>>>> usually the bands fault. I've heard a lot of bands complain that they
>>>> don't
>>>> get enough for a show, but it's usually on them to sell the tickets to
>>>> the
>>>> show. If they don't sell a decent amount, they won't get paid what the
>>>> other
>>>> bands who did pull their weight were payed and they don't deserve to
>>>> be.
>>>> As
>>>> for the comment about the knife incident. I don't know anything about
>>>> it
>>>> but
>>>> if it was in self defense, I really don't have a problem with it.
>>>>
>>>> John
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks, John.
>>>>>
>>>>> Even more importantly, based on whatever has been discussed on this
>>>>> list
>>>>> in the past ten years,
>>>>> there's very little that I've really even done "wrong" per se.
>>>>> We talked so far about my being late for radio shows, my rubbing a
>>>>> handful
>>>>> of people the wrong
>>>>> way at a radio station which caused them to take undue vengeance, and
>>>>> my
>>>>> trying to defend myself when physically attacked three times.
>>>>> Anything
>>>>> else?
>>>>> If that is the absolute worst that can come up (and I guarantee you
>>>>> that
>>>>> it is), then the rest is just shit-talking and either falsifying
>>>>> incidents
>>>>> or blowing them out of proportion.
>>>>>
>>>>> -mt
>>>>>
>>>>>  Sure, he
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> may have done some questionable things in the past, but who hasn't.
>>>>>> I
>>>>>> just can't seem to understand why people would want to attack a guy
>>>>>> for
>>>>>> a few things he's done wrong, when he really has done a lot of good
>>>>>> for
>>>>>> music in Pittsburgh.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
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