(photo by Miles Tsang*)

Some promoters wouldn’t book you because you weren’t popular enough, others because you were popular with the wrong crowds. I met this one set of Rastafarian cats running a venue out of Harlem who told me my bands couldn’t play because they were white. I asked if the word “unity” rang any bells with them, and he asked if the word “apartheid” rang any with me. The point was moot and I had no choice but to tell “Blunted Me with Science,” the Rasta New Wave band I was managing, that they couldn’t play with their idols Bad Brains because of the color of their skin. It was a shame too, the fellas in the band had been telling me about this “Devo style cover of ‘banned in D.C.’” that I was dying to hear.

More often than not you could find ample booking if you were willing to settle for the emo scene. This being the heyday of New Jersey’s emo fallout, every church, VFW, and basement was a retrofitted showcase for self-indulgent, misguided, tight-jeaned Maiden fans convinced that they too were the next big thing. Hard to blame them, record companies really WERE snatching up bands from the area like hotcakes. Having dibs on a venue during this period was like staking a claim on an undiscovered oilfield, promoters could just kick back and watch the money pile in.

Local emo bands became bitter rivals, fighting to death for opening slots on gigs they themselves wouldn’t have paid to see. Record contracts were popping up in the strangest of places. Suddenly even the smallest showcase presented the potential for life-changing emo success. But people only wanted to hear what they knew, shitty high school poetry sung over recycled Taking Back Sunday riffs. Ska and punk bands were confined to two venues on either side of the state that were perpetually overbooked and impossible to play. I only got on one of these venues once, and it was a nightmare. I’d misread the show’s roster and accidentally booked my Latin/Jazz fusion group on a September 11^th punk show.

The first sign of trouble came when the opening band, who arrived at the show in a leopard print hearse, started their set shouting “FUCK FIRE FIGHTERS!” Hernando, the leader of the Latin group, went into a frenzy. He came from a long line of firemen, and had lost an uncle to the Trade Center rescue teams. Nando, as he never let me call him, was a pretty level guy, but to hear someone say something like that . . . well . . .

Two sets later he and his boys climbed on stage with their horns and congas. “In response to the viscous declarations of the first band (if you could really call them that) we’d like to take a moment to commemorate a group of valiant heroes from across the mighty Hudson River.” I could feel the tension in the room, the punks gathering together in one corner making obscene gestures at the stage and the rest of the crowd waiting silently for what would happen next.

“These heroes,” Nando continued, “risked life and limb to save New York, if not the world, from a terrible threat the likes of which we’d never seen before. We hope you will join us in honoring these tragically underrated New Yorker heroes, saints even, with this song.” And with that he counted the band off. Much to the surprise of everyone in the cramped auditorium, the tune which followed was a straight cover of Ray Parker Jr.’s “Ghostbusters.” Although most of the crowd enjoyed it, Nando and co. still got beat up after the show by the opening punk band. That was a given, those guys’ll smash anything. What’s really bad is when the promoter’s the one trying to wring your neck.

I’d been living in the van with “Karl Marx and The Kommies,” a 5 piece rocksteady group on their first tour, and tensions were running high. There’s only so long you can live off Hostess’ Fruit Pies and Mountain Dew before you snap, and Fast Eddie, the band’s chicken-picking lead guitarist, had actually proposed this as his senior thesis back at Bergen Community College. It got rejected of course, which made him twice as angry as before. He wasn’t a violent person, but he could pass aggression like a motherfucker. “Donny,” he’d say to their drummer, “maybe if you stopped smoking all those cancer sticks you’d be able to keep up with the rest of us on ‘Ranking Full Stop.’ You’re going to die if you don’t, just saying.” Donny, on the other hand, was an extremely violent person and would usually respond to this by forcefully holding Eddie’s head out the window of the moving bandwagon and telling him that he’d die first.

All of this disappeared when they got on stage. It evaporated into the music. Even at gigs like this, where there wasn’t a single dude in the crowd wearing men’s jeans, they managed to draw some skanking. Not the easy kind either, but the hectic “Pick it up, Pick it up, Pick it up!” type that haunts rude boys’ wet dreams.

Overall the show was a success, the boys had more of a draw than even the headlining act, “Cross The Street Not Down The Road” (an up-and-coming emo band with a sound indistinguishable from anyone else’s), and were looking forward to a night in the lap of luxury; which, by their standards consisted of a moderately priced Chinese dinner and a round of Olde English. But it wasn’t meant to be.

The promoter played it cool, claiming we hadn’t earned the money, but after retrieving the evening’s ticket quotas from the doorman and presenting him incontrovertible proof, he came clean. He said bands like “Cross The Street Not Down The Road” didn’t play without a signed minimum of eight hundred dollars. Even if they didn’t draw a crowd (which they didn’t), contractually they were still entitled to that amount. Such agreements hold up in court, the promoter explained, and paying the band now would save him a lot in legal fees.

I didn’t care and told him so with a series of superlative attestations to his mother’s promiscuity. My boys had earned their money fair and square and wouldn’t have enough to keep up the tour without it. The promoter laughed, saying that if the band wanted to stay afloat they should “get with the times” and “play music the kids actually listen to.” I tried telling him he was a closed minded cog in a corporate machine threatening the very fabric of music itself, but he’d stopped listening.

So off I went to round up be band, leaving in my wake a slew of thinly veiled allusions as to how sorry the promoter would be when I returned. Before I could reach the door I saw him whistle to a large Russian fellow working security and give him a few violent hand signals directed towards me.

The Ruskie came running and jumped into a half kick, half lunge at my chest. Making a split second decision, I hopped back a step and pressed myself against the side of the entrance hall. It worked too, the bouncer had been aiming for me at the hall’s center and was unable to reroute his course midair. He flew right past me, ramming headlong into the church’s heavy steel door and taking an emo kid with him.

I looked down at the two, the hulking former-soviet giant sprawled out unconscious atop the flimsy, moaning skeleton hipster. His shirt read “fragile,” and for the first time I actually laughed out loud at a pre-fab, Hot Topic one-liner.

“Keep your dirty money!” I shouted and stormed out of the venue, making sure I further smashed the bouncer’s head upon opening the door. It felt so good I did it again. Then a third time for luck.

Outside the Kommies were waiting in their van. “Boys, I’m a failure as a manager and do hereby resolve to never book a show again” I announced.

“Oh come on,” Donny said, “You’re not that bad!”

“Yeah!” Eddie and Tim chimed in.

“I couldn’t get your money” I said.

“I take that back” Donny said, “He is that bad.”

“But I’ve got an idea how to get this son of a bitch back real good and leave our mark on this whole god forsaken music scene! You with me?”

“Will it cost us anything?” Tim asked.

“A little” I replied.

“Well . . .” the boys said in unison. This was a technique they’d often used to squeeze a free pizza out of me.

“Alright, fine, I’ll flip the bill,” I said, “Just get in the car; we’ve got work to do.”

“Alright!” the boys cheered.

We drove to the closest Wal-Mart and picked up 4 bottles of the most potent deer musk we could find. Then, driving back to the venue, we dumped it all over the promoter’s car. This being deer country, the smell attracted dozens of horny deer within minutes. The deer, being fully aroused and disappointed to find this strange metal contraption at the odor’s source, became enraged and tore the fuck out of the car. We could see them running from the woods in hordes as we drove away through the dreary Jersey evening. This was our mark on the music scene, and thought it was forgotten within a week and brought about no long term or radical changes to the tyranny of commercial music as a whole, you should have seen all those deer trying to run with raging hard-ons bouncing between their legs. It was priceless.

*Click here to view original photo.

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