People suck. It’s true. There are a lot of great ones out there and I think the good guys probably outnumber the bad guys, but I think the actions of one bad guy might outweigh the actions of ten good ones. There should be an equation of some sort. You could plug a numerical approximation of your actions into said equation and determine whether or not you’re adding to the overall tarnish of the world’s collective soul or whether you’re giving it a polish. Then you could decide whether or not you care. Crime and punishment could be weighed using the same equation… it’d be nice to have a definitive and objective method of meting this stuff out.
House of Musical Traditions has been victimized in two particularly nasty little bits of fraud in the last couple of weeks and they both came to a head yesterday and I just feel terrible for Dave, because as the owner, it all really comes back to him both a) the consequences and b) to a certain extent the fault. Not because he’s a bad guy, or did the wrong thing, or anything like that – both things were enabled somewhat by his willingness to trust other people – a trait which I find to be one of the most admirable of all the various traits he’s got, and one that I hate to see shat upon.
Heather’s had days like that. Palladium Books has had years like that, from what I hear. Betrayal is terrible and strikes you on so many levels. And in this case the shop will be out money, out trust, and it’s tarnished the enjoyment of a couple of particularly fine instruments. The details of the theft overly offend me too – this guy is truly despicable and …. And it’s interesting to think that in a world where we sometimes ATTEMPT to rehabilitate our criminals (they’ve had a bad Life, just need better opportunities) this guy comes from a GOOD Life and has presumably had GREAT opportunities… he’s just a bad guy and rehabilitation is probably hoping for far too much.
Or at least, that’s what’s easy for me to believe. I don’t think he could frame his story in such a way that he would glean any sympathy from me. It would’ve been like me stealing my father’s Austin Healey and selling it without his knowledge…. I’m a big fan of rehabilitation and hate that our system is often used more for terms of vengeance than in genuine attempts to reduce recidivism – but in this case (because I’m petty and it’s happening to those around ME) I want this guy nailed to the fucking wall. And I’ll be honest, I wish I had the hammer.
Not that I’d really engage in something as animalistic as fisticuffs, of course, but MAN would I be snarky.
January 16th, 2012.
Ugh – I can’t sleep. I often can’t sleep, but I remember this particular insomnia – bred by turning the day’s events over and over in my head, wondering if I could’ve done it better. And I’m tired, and maybe the adrenaline still hasn’t run its course – but I remember from being a child even, and complaining to my parents that I caaaaan’t sleep.
Tonight I had a particularly problematic open mic. Most of the night went very well. Performers went mostly smoothly and even with an absolutely massive list (25 artists + a feature in the 3 hour and 15 minute time span created by my generally beginning 10 minutes early and leaving open the possibility of running five minutes late), and a featured artist that featured a mini-drumkit, the performers simply flew by. There was, as always, an awful lot of talent, dazzling performances, a lot of smiles – generally happy people.
Alas, I had one guy who, after I’d made sure that my performers were reminded that it was a family-friendly event asked that he perhaps go slightly later in the evening because his work was, possibly, not-so-family-friendly. I appreciated his candor and especially since we had a lot of kids in the audience I assured him we’d put him off till later.
Eh, perhaps that was my real mistake – I should’ve just said “no”, but I tend to be a little lenient with the rules, especially later in the evening…
And so the night is filled and we get into the portion of the evening where the artists are allowed 5 minutes / 1 song – and the performer now tells me that he’s got a 6 minute piece which probably can’t be edited to be family-friendly or a 9 minute piece which probably can. And I tell him that that probably won’t do, we’ll see what we can fit in.
Half-an-hour later, luck of the draw puts him in the last three performers or so. I look at who I’ve got coming up, I figure I didn’t want him to be LAST… we’re running with a tiny surplus in time and he offers to speed through his “family-friendly” piece in closer to seven minutes… I figure it’ll work out fine. He’s got one caveat: “I’ve got to do it with my dagger!” He says it with a smile, and there’s an ornate dagger in a sheath around his neck and I was foolish enough to think that there was humour in that statement.
Friday night we did a rare show in Washington DC. We were joined by a couple of other artists… …(including Steph Modder)at SOVA. I’d never been there before but it’s a very cool espresso and wine bar down the street from the Palace of Wonders in DC… . I think if you own a venue in the area, you’re RESPONSIBLE for making it architecturally quirky with nice chandeliers. At SOVA, one of the other artists was Heather Renee, who we haven’t seen in about 10 years or so – back when she was performing with her sister under the name Ceylon. I approve of her optimistic setlist treatment. At the end of the night at SOVA in Washington, DC, our friend Justin Brown sat down with Heather’s guitar for a bit and put the beest through it’s paces. He’s a wonderful player – and just a cool-looking guy. This photo’s more about my admiration of his sense of style than anything else. Keith Center in the house! (Dreamscapes Project)
And so, as our second-to-last performer we’re treated to a lengthy monologue about the “truth” of the resurrection of Jesus Christ in a thick Cockney-ish / Australian accent, the latter half of which is accentuated by his drawing the dagger and waving it around at the front table. (an interesting point later on, we looked this performer and this performance up online, this is an excerpt from an 80 minute performance that is marked clearly as “INTENDED FOR ADULTS ONLY”)
The Parlor Soldiers performing at the Takoma Park Open Mic… On a night that saw the open mic’s first electric / acoustic autoharp (courtesy of Phil Fox)… …musical saw, and potentital first physical altercation, we also had our first teeny drumkit! people had a good time though… A nice full house for the Parlor Soldiers. all fun and games till he pulls the knife! Another first at the Capital City Cheesecake open mic – unfortunately one that was particularly tricky to photograph – performing with Peggy Brennan and Leah DeLano was our first saw player, Greg! (?)
Awesome. Well, the performance is over, and minus a mistaken dropped “fuck” he did pretty well of curtailing the cursing – and Hell, he’s reading from a piece of paper, it’s a piece he’s probably rehearsed a couple of times, I know from experience that no matter how hard you try not to say the word “fuck” sometimes it just pops out there…
The dagger thing wasn’t cool though. It made the front couple of tables pretty tense (later a lot MORE than just the front tables confided that it made them pretty tense) and I make a point of saying that the use of such props was probably not too wise in the future – I pointed to the on-stage suicide at an open mic on the West Coast (I misremembered that as taking place in Seattle, it was actually Bend, Oregon – home of Breedlove – how can I forget!? [for more information, click here]) and that the use of weapons in our performances here was perhaps not something to encourage.
I was pretty unprepared for the response. In hindsight, I didn’t need to tell the story, it’s enough to say that it wasn’t appropriate. The last thing I want is for someone to point to that performance and say “well, he did x so I can do y” and my experience is that you get serious for a sec and then humourous for a moment and it’s pretty painless – but nope, the yell of “censorship!!!” comes from the back as the artist starts mocking me by drawing the knife across his wrists – I guess the idea here was to show me that it was just a fake knife – but you know what? You STILL can’t tell from where I’M standing!
Ah, rob, you like to reason with people – I explained into the mic my usual response to the censorship complaint that “it’s not about censorship, it’s about respecting the venue” only to get more shouting from some guy in the back.
So now I’ve got an angry heckler in the back – I set up my final artist and head over to him in the hopes that we can resolve this or at least quiet him. In hindsight, the guy (not the performer, but someone saying he’s the performer’s manager) probably thought I was coming back there to kick him out or something, but really, yelling an argument back and forth across a big room just isn’t cool…
And so we’re face-to-face in a crowded room. He’s got his back to a flight of stairs, his artist is behind me to my right and he keeps yelling about how I’ve disrespected his artist – about how he’s fought censorship for years and he was disgusted to see it here, that I was an asshole and someone had to tell me so, and that no, he didn’t NEED to be here but he was going to be here every week because someone’s got to stand up for art and he was going to call me out every time I censor someone.
Niiice. I ask if we can talk about it downstairs. “You’re not getting rid of me”. Can he not interrupt the CURRENT artist “I am a record executive and you’ve disrespected MY ARTIST”. He has a large wooden cane which he waves under my nose and asks “do you REALLY wanna be in my face?!” In his opinion, beyond asking artists to be family-friendly, my “attack” of the use of prop weapons was censorship, and even if it’d been a REAL dagger I’d have no right to tell him not to have it – he wanted me to know that when he came back with a 6” bowie knife it’d be completely legal.
At which point the artist points out that the band t-shirt I’m wearing has the word “hand grenades” on it – which is, you know, apparently the SAME THING as waving what appears to be a real knife around in front of a crowded room.
Sigh – I think at this point the audience is yelling at these guys to shut up and someone says to me “go do your thing at the board, he’s not gonna follow you” – there was wisdom in that, and sure enough they shut up shortly after I left – I probably should’ve just walked away earlier (this was about 4 minutes of heated conversation, based on the length of the song they were raising their voices over) but frankly, since the yelling had started while I was at the front of the room, I just wasn’t sure WHAT was going to happen.
Yay – walking away worked. The manager went and reinforced my authority and informed the stick-shaker that if he ever caused trouble again she’d ask him to leave. A number of people came up to me afterwards to say that they were grateful I’d said something, because the knife thing had made THEM very uncomfortable too, and that they appreciated everything I did…
And that DOES make me feel better, but damn it, I’m lying here awake letting these two fools rent space in my head. I don’t actually think there was a way I could’ve worded things to disarm everything, but I keep turning it over and turning it over… and wondering if I have to worry about it for NEXT week.
The threatening thing really bugged me. I mean – there’s a difference between FEELING threatened and an intent to threaten, and this guy was clearly saying “I’ve got a big ass stick here, do you really want to be messing with me”. I didn’t feel threatened because, frankly, he didn’t really have space to swing it, there were about 50 witnesses if he TRIED to… my biggest concern was that he’d try to hit me and he’d go backward down the stairs. Am I concerned about him coming back to me with a 6” bowie knife? I’m not concerned about him threatening me with it, but I’m concerned that he’s going to try to make a point by performing with it.
I just see all this fire and anger and wonder, why is THIS the battle this guy wants to fight? Does he really think he’s fighting for First Amendment speech rights in a coffeehouse in a little town on the edge of Washington DC? Or is it the right to bear arms? I guess even he was kind of confused on that front – but really, can you imagine the headlines? America fights for artists’ rights in cheesecake bakery!!!
If he’s got an issue maybe he should be down with the Occupy movement fighting for a real cause or something. Or maybe he could go be upset about SOPA, or about newspapers that won’t print the word “fuck”.
I’m just so very annoyed that I’M losing sleep over it because in a bad situation, I probably did close to the best thing possible, and still sort of lost.
Meh.
Oh, I forgot one of my favourite parts. He asked if I was a “Seventh Day Adventist” and informed me that that wouldn’t fly here. Sigh. Someone’s got some serious issues. Why
are they MY problem?
Other note really quick – my computer bluescreened in the middle of the guy’s performance, so on top of everything, I’m stressed about the crash, rebooting, getting the video stream back up and running… thank you to everyone at the open mic who made a point of telling me I’m awesome at the end of the night cause I sure didn’t feel like it!!!
Now it’s 3.30am and I’ve got to be conscious in 4 hours… maybe sleep will follow now that I’ve got this all written out?
