To celebrate Heather’s birthday and Halloween, ilyAIMY plays Teavolve in Baltimore, MD dressed as Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise and Tom Cruise.
Holy crap – when did I get that crazy white stripe in my hair?!!? Here I am creating Rowan’s tattoo for the Tom Cruise Crazy Halloween show at Teavolve in Baltimore, MD. 
Peter is Rob Zombie for Halloween. Unless he’s a Peter Zombie. But that makes me think of zombie peters, which of course can only be stopped if you cut off their one-eyed heads. Because Heather’s been feeling poorly, we gave the first portion of our Halloween night over to IO. It was great to watch them to a full set rather than just one or two songs.
Heather dressed up as Tom Cruise from Legend at the ilyAIMY Tom Cruise Crazy Halloween party at Teavolve in Baltimore, MD. Sigh. I forgot my sunglasses. And my pants. Kristen Jones as Lestat the Vampire Tom Cruise for our Halloween show at Teavolve in Baltimore, MD. Oh Sharif.
(interesting to read this in post – this is definitely in reference to HUGE FRUSTRATION with Dogfish Head Alehouse at the time – and absolutely nothing to do with the accompanying photos of Teavolve!) – rob 3/4/21
The people who are deemed to be the least professional are the ones who need to be the MOST professional. The world at large expects musicians and artists to be fuck-ups, to bend over for the sake of being allowed to express themselves. To be… that greatest of all sins… to be LATE.
We have a couple of favourite venues who thinks it’s amazing that they’ve got a couple of musicians who show up on time, who speak civilly to their staff, who don’t get drunk, and who in addition to doing the job, do their job WELL. Venues generally don’t open their doors to musicians at the time of scheduled sound checks because they don’t expect musicians to show up on time.
I’m sure that when you’re “real”, that when you’ve got an agent or a manager, some sort of shield against the world, that you don’t get treated this way – that a venue doesn’t say one thing and do another – and I shouldn’t go TOO far down that route because generally we’re treated well. The venues we’ve dealt with have paid us what they said they’d pay us, don’t generally misrepresent their spaces or audiences too much – the few who have, we don’t return to. We warn our friends. Some of them listen. Some of them will bend over for the sake of being allowed to express themselves. Some of them need to find out for themselves, some of them just don’t care.
Heather and I do this for a Living. We can’t afford to be screwed around with, but we also can’t afford to make enemies. When a venue screws us over, or things DO go awry, e can’t afford to go nuts with our upset. Often as not it’s just a mistake, but sometimes a deliberate “error”, if treated with political savvy, can be resolved sans further issue. I’ll admit, I get pissed. But I try to keep it to myself.
Well – in truth I try to vent at Heather – but you know, in the car… afterwards.
But the point is, you do it politically and professionally. I got to watch a venue treated UNPROFESSIONALLY recently, and that venue will probably never open their doors to a particular segment of musiciandom again. Now, they kind of deserved it, but I think the “retaliation” was done in such a way that it doesn’t even reflect poorly on the venue – just on the artists and organization involved.
Meh. Well, in TRUTH in truth… I sometimes vent in the Journal.
