Thanks to Backseat Sandbar for this horrendous photo:

Since I’m in Chicago, I haven’t been able to report much of what’s been going on. However, my friend Joe at Barefoot and Progressive, and of course Matt at YANP, are still in Lexington and have coverage on this treachery.

I have so many emotions running through my head. Personally, working at The Dame throughout college was such a cool, rewarding, indescribable experience. Between the Dame’s high profile in Lexington, the quality of music we were able to provide, and the support we had from so many people, I felt like we were helping to really make Lexington a much more unique place. I am proud that I had a hand in helping local bands build audiences, as well helping to create a really welcoming environment for national acts, which for many, led them to reroute their tours to play Lexington. That’s pretty special. And that’s the type of loyalty and service that’s hard to just up and recreate. It truly stings to know that, at least for the foreseeable future, it’s not there anymore. I’m not sure what Kubler-Ross stage of acceptance I’m in right now.

But I do know that I’m a living example of what is wrong with the city of Lexington – people come there to go to school, the city shows absolutely no concern toward the 18 to 24 year old demographic (or the arts community in general), they grab their degree, and they leave. The Vice Mayor of Lexington, Jim Gray, understands this notion. Unfortunately, he’s a minority. Lexington has become so bourgy, it’s absymal.

Handywork:

Saying The Dame had character is like saying that space is vast – it’s such a gross understatement. Every night, something totally out of the ordinary happened, and that’s really what gives a city character – having a place where you know you can see something you can’t find elsewhere. I mean, stuff you couldn’t make up. So rather than recite the tragedy that occurred or analyze what this says about mid-sized cities in Middle America, I’d like to cross-post something I wrote in the CHIRP blog a couple of months ago. I didn’t specifically name the venue for this article, since the Dame was still functioning at that point and I wasn’t sure if representatives from some of these artists would get all livid about sharing this information. At this point though, I think that’s probably a moot concern. The post was titled “Promotions Confidential,” though perhaps a better title is “The Secret History of…” Either way, here’s just a small sample of some of the real mind-puffing shit that goes on behind the scenes in putting on shows.

Some MP3s of my favorite artists who’ve performed there are found below the story, acting as an abridged history of The Dame in sonic form that spans the five years the venue was open (a full history can be found on the Dame’s MySpazzz page)…

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Show business is a strange business, and music is probably the strangest of them all. From working in college radio, to becoming a promoter and talent buyer (jargon for booking agent lackey) for a recognized music venue, I’ve had the fortune of witnessing some truly astrophysical phenomena. As a quick bio, I spent close to five years heavily involved in the music scene of my old stomping ground, a quaint college town in the south, before uprooting to the city with broad shoulders.

I’ve always felt I could write a sitcom around these experiences, and I might just fax over my pilot to Lorne Michaels in the next couple of business days. The owner of this particular club also had this idea, and he wanted to consolidate his thoughts into a book called… “Bar World.” For serious. I think this blog post will work better for this purpose.

Anyway, most of following instances occurred at a 400+ capacity music venue and bar that shall not be specifically named to protect the innocent and to protect me from defamation claims. Not that any of this counts as defamation because it’s all true. But I have no way to prove it. The people that were there could certainly provide expert testimony to every detail, but since most people who work in music are invariably drunk half the time, I’m sure you start getting into witness credibility issues. Undoubtedly there are more bizarre stories out there, but these are mine and I find them quite entertaining. So without further ado, here are some nuggets from the other side. Rock stars, woot.

Mogwai

As brazen Scotsmen, Mogwai’s contract and rider provided the same delightful sense of humor that their song titles do. Some of their requests included “drawing by a gifted child” and “five football tickets,” as well as the usual smorgasbord of food. However, they all were very gracious and polite people. Mogwai was one of my favorite bands ever – someone who believed that anyone who had friends that didn’t “get” Mogwai weren’t really your friends – so I certainly was starstruck while getting to meet them and take them around looking for computer parts and random effects. Stuart describes everything as “wicked.”

While loading beer into the green room, Stuart and company were hand-making T-shirts, in complete and foreboding silence, for sale later that night. I apologized for all the noise I was making while stocking up, to which one of them retorted “Oh that’s fine, we apologize for all the noise we’re going to make tonight.”

This much was true, as Mogwai parted seas with tridents in hand, challenged everyone’s physiological fortitude toward rock, and used all the building’s electricity in the process. The power from the office and other non-essentials were rerouted to the stage. Though a 32-channel sound board was good enough for every single act that’s ever played there before, Mogwai needed a 64-channel board (that we had to rent from a company who stated “no one has ever asked for something this insanely large before”) with an additional, smaller auxiliary board that was set up on a platform to the side of the PAs, impeding the bathroom line. None of the five members could move around on the stage due to their equipment arsenal. A strategy was developed in the event that Mogwai completely blew the power – how we would get people out safely, and how we would keep the fans from chasing after us with pitchforks and goedendags.

All went smoothly, fortunately, and Barry, Dominic, and Lee (the merch dude) joined us afterwards at a friend’s birthday party two or three blocks away. They chugged brews whilst party guests inquired who the Scottish dudes were. By the time I left, Lee was roughly 20 feet above in a tree, wearing a top hat, and cackling at each passerby. They were really fun dudes. Mogwai uber alles.

DJ Funk

It certainly could be considered par for the course for “booty house” pioneer DJ Funk to copulate with a fan or two. No qualms with that. But why did he have to choose the booking office for this engagement; and on my nap couch nonetheless? DJ Funk has no concern for subtlety.

Suicide Girls

Specifically stated in the rider: “no whipped cream, no show.” Serious business.

Pete Best

Though some Beatles maniacs may feel sorry for Pete Best due to the nature of “being a human footnote,” I don’t. Pete still makes a rather handsome living playing songs that he had only a minor role in creating. When an artist is booked, their management usually sends a press pack with various information, CD, and glossy black and white press photos. Press photos are usually set to a theme, and feature a band or artist looking somewhat stoic. Sometimes it’s shadowy, sometimes it’s diffused (depending on the artist), but always done with some sort of thoughtful composition and artistic motif. Pete Best sent a bunch of 35 mm color photos of him on a jet ski.

Pete will sign autographs for exactly 30 minutes. After that, all bets are off. No dice, easy goer.

Carlos D of Interpol

Carlos does DJing gigs throughout North America and Europe. He charges a large sum of money to spin records that you probably already own (Violator, Unknown Pleasures, et al). When he arrives, he specifically requests to not be seen. He wants to be on the far stage left or the back away from line of sight. No lights are to be shown on him whatsoever, presumably since he is afraid of light. Nobody would even know he was there. As a matter of fact, I had a friend that looked similar to him and the club manager and I considered (sorta jokingly) to just let my friend slam the decks like Carlos, save a few thousand dollars, sell out the room, and no one would ever know. He’s just as Nosferatu looking of a dude as you would expect. As most philosophy majors I know, he likes to ask anyone and everyone about their bookshelf.

Devin the Dude

According to the sound engineer that evening, in the time it took for him to walk from the green room to the walk-in refrigerator and back, a distance of about 80 or 90 feet (approximately 24 to 27 meters for you metric types), Devin had cut, gutted, packed, fastened, and ignited a massive, voluminous, triumphant blunt. Sweatshops don’t even work that efficiently. Pothead ingenuity is a hell of a thing.

Dark Star Orchestra

The first thing you notice with jam bands is that an entire culture surfaces from beneath gnarly depths. Outside, hours prior to the show, a gaggle of rather crusty fellows sold weed pipes and all-natural, homemade, organic, vegetarian-friendly, $3 burritos to any and all who pass. As for the performers on this most groovy of evenings, the jam heads have come out for Dark Star Orchestra who, as some may be privy to, don’t just cover the Dead, goddammit – they recreate a specific Grateful Dead show, with instruments that represent all the members present at that performance, set list, and identical stage banter. They bolster themselves as “the world’s most enthralling Dead tribute.” Personally, I hate the Grateful Dead. Paying money to watch longhairs noodle on the guitar is lame.

There were two extraordinary personality types in this band. The first one we encountered was just before the show time. One of the members was in the backstage stairwell smoking. The club manager approached him to inform him that he cannot smoke in that area of the building. “I’ll just go outside,” he responds. “Right, but you guys are getting ready to start in five minutes,” my boss said. The guy takes a drag and exhales: “that’s fine, I hate this band anyway.”

I encountered the second type when trying to find my friend’s designated driver. It turned out she had taken off to a neighboring bar, with DSO’s vocalist, and was sucking face in front of all the inebriated Irishmen. We waited for my friend’s ride (and old dude, I suppose) outside the bar. When they exited, the vocalist has his arm around her, looking longingly from his Bonnaroo ravaged eyes, and said in the most cheese-dick of inflections “so, if you and your friends want a couple of free passes to the gig tomorrow night, I got you, babe.” Gig? Babe? Jesus. Then, when he leans back down for more lip action, he turns to my friend and I – “you all can get lost now.” At this point, I end up taking my friend home, and spent the next couple of days spreading the gospel concerning how astonishingly retarded DSO is. Fucking cover bands. The burritos were righteous, though.

The Arcade Fire

I personally know two people who were, at the time, under 21 and couldn’t get in. Win Butler, from a little group of goodtimes friends called the Arcade Fire, snuck them in himself through the alleyway door. Both were in attendance at an 18+ show the night before, somehow met the band, and they agreed to help assist in this covert mission. So your questions are answered – yes, Win Butler is lawless.

KRS-One

Hip-hop artists, along with most punk bands, notoriously foster a healthy aversion to being punctual. The difference between KRS-One and his contemporaries, though, is that if his set time is 10:30 p.m., and he rolls through at 10:27, he still performs on time, without sound check or removing his coat. All while sporting some remarkable sweat pants.

Rhys Chatham and Tony Conrad

There’s still something rather amusing about seeing minimalist neo-classical and avant garde musicians rock a cerebral, challenging, often inaccessible art-ensemble performance while knowing that these dudes are really, really into eating pizza. Lots of it. You would think they would be about eating minimalist, sophisticated fusion food that you’d find in chic cafes dotted along Greenwich Village or Wicker Park sidewalks. But no, pizza. Lots of pizza. Maybe this isn’t that strange.

Robert Earl Keen

Typical of the archetypical Nashville, pony-tail-clad music industry two-bit charlatan, country music management really does (often) present a fascinatingly abysmal, shitty-ass attitude toward everything. When the tour manager refused to move Robert’s colossal tour bus from the venue’s storefront, located on a busy downtown street, we made sure that he understood we expunged all responsibility for what happens to that bus. When the police arrived about two hours later, they actually did a full search of the bus (though they found nothing). The tour manager spent the rest of the evening looking spooked and said nothing else to us. Moral of the story, the police do not give a shit and will search a large tour bus no matter how much No Depression loves you. Don’t be a meat head.

Low

This didn’t happen at the Dame, but at another show I was apart of. However, since we almost booked Low, this counts. And it’s a good story. Alan Sparhawk shows gratitude for booking a Low show by giving you a novelty Low refrigerator magnetic poetry kit. It’s awesome.

Animal Collective / Six Organs of Admittance

What was strange about both of these acts was that there was nothing strange about them at all. Dave (Avey Tare) kicked it on MySpace all afternoon. Noah (Panda Bear) helped me hang up the posters around the club and was an all around swell, chipper guy. They were nice people. Six Organs’ Ben Chasney was pumped about everything. He loved the green room, the venue, the scenic downtown, the Thai restaurant down the street, the stage, the sound, the posters we made, the cheap beer, his chakras, and life in general. Truly a hippie in the best regard. So why is it that artists like Animal Collective and Six Organs are normal, friendly dudes making freaky music, while straightforward artists like David Lowery and his Camper Van Beethoven act like total freaks? Let’s call this, for conversation’s sake, the Lennox-Lowery Conundrum. That could also serve as an excellent band name for some vapid white jazz fusion group.

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Hopefully, when I get back into the world of arts admin, I can add many more cosmic experiences and oddities to the strange world of music promotions and booking. These are nefarious times – it can only get stranger from here.

Have you worked in music before? Have some stories? Or are you familiar with The Dame in Lexington and want to share your favorite memories? By all means, comment below!

MP3 :::
Mogwai – Batcat
Indian Jewelry – Bird is Broke (Won’t Sing)
Battles – Leyendecker
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Awake
Blue Cheer – Sun Cycle
Califone – A Chinese Actor
Holy Fuck – Super Inuit
Animal Collective – Lion in a Coma
Burning Star Core – I Wanna Make a Supersonic Woman of You
Six Organs of Admittance – Attar
Bonnie Prince Billy – Lay and Love
Growing – Innit

OMG MYSPACE LOL :::
Some of my favorite local bands over the years
Tight Leather
Eyes and Arms of Smoke
Wax Fang
Heartless Bastards