November 7th, 2009.

Another venue gets bitten by ASCAP. There are three ways to go when ASCAP comes knocking, insisting that you pay them $400 (for a small venue – VSC is being asked for $2000) a year to have music once or twice a week in your venue. You can knuckle under and pay them – which rankles at everything that exists inside me and in a brighter world I’d never play a venue that had an ASCAP license. You can insist on only original music and non-ASCAP licensed artists at which point ASCAP will sue you because there’s no way you can INSURE that no artist will pop in and “accidentally” play an ASCAP-licensed song and then wage a lengthy and costly legal battle that will probably drain you of money long before you dent ASCAP… or you can kill Live music.

It simply doesn’t pay to be early in this business. Heather and I showed up at 10.15 at 98 Rock for our Noise in the Basement interview on Sunday night. We joined the industrial band Dying Design in the lobby, waiting for almost 45 minutes because we were 15 minutes early. Still – I made friends with a bug that Heather found me in the lobby, and that’s always good. I think Heather was just grateful that I’d found a way to finally occupy myself.

I hate seeing it go that way, especially when it happens to a favourite. Is it bad that in a world of huge injustices that this relatively minor example of unfairness and abuse makes me more furious than almost anything else? It’s certainly mob-like but at least it’s not pushing drugs, right? It’s certainly Gestapo, but it’s not like they’re killing Jews, right? They’re protecting artists’ rights!

Hrm… let’s see who they’re protecting today: Jay Sean, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Jason DeRulo, Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, Rihanna, Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Kings of Leon, Drake and Miley Cyrus.

Somehow I don’t think any of them are coming to play this coffeehouse anytime this week… and I wasn’t planning on playing any of their music.

Oh – wait – ASCAP member? Didn’t you know all your dues only go to paying people with top radio airplay? Cancel your fucking membership.

Us owning said stage at the Quarter in Baltimore, MD. It’s an incredibly flattering thing for an acoustic band to be invited to perform at a 98 Rock show and I was all too happy to put on my rock face. But they still didn’t quite seem to make of the fact that we didn’t show up with a drummer. I don’t think they realized they were in for something serious until we threw down.
The stage at the Quarter in Baltimore, MD.
ilyAIMY performing at the Quarter for 98 Rock’s Noise in the Basement in Baltimore, MD. We had the largest draw of any of the acts, and won over many new converts. It was good to be a rock band, it was good to be loud. It was really good to remember that our audience is really, really hungry for us to explode out of our coffeehouse setting.
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