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At 6:00pm, both myself and Chris from NGB pulled up to the crack den neighborhood that held the Thunderdome venue. To say that it was in a sketchy neighborhood does a disservice to all the crime ridden holes of the world. Thunderdome itself was actually much nicer on the inside than it was on the outside. Of course, given the broken and boarded up windows of the outside, this really isn't saying all that much. Needless to say, I was already starting to have a bad feeling about this show.
While we were loading into the club, I met the workers in the club as well as some of the members of the other bands. And that's when I noticed something about these kinds of clubs that bother me.
Thunderdome -- like a number of other clubs that cater to both local bands as well as "B"/"C" level national acts (Jaxx comes to mind) -- treat local bands with the very clear attitude of "we don't need you." On the one hand, this is absolutely true: there are almost always bands that want to play at the venue -- any venue -- so they can find a replacement act for almost any band. But that doesn't mean that you have to be jerk about it.
During load-in, one of the bands placed some of the equipment in front of a door that was very clearly marked "Do Not Place Equipment In Front Of This Door." When the sound guy noticed this, he walked over and said "Who's the asshole who stacked their shit in front of the door that's clearly marked don't put your shut here?!?" As opposed to "who put this equipment in front of the door?" The band was in the wrong, but there's no reason to go all ogre over it.
Anyway, the opening two bands were pretty much hard, hard rock/death metal. Apparently, Thunderdome tends towards that genre. In fact, it seems to be the place in Baltimore to go if you want to see old hair metal bands before they die and/or death metal (witness the Maryland Death Metal Fest that will be playing there at the end of May). The best thing I can say about either opening band is that they were loud. And rather young. In fact, the entire crowd skewed very, very young. Like high school or so. And this ended up causing a problem.
According to the contract of the show we were playing (it was a Battle of the Bands kind of deal), there was a set formula for determine performance order:
ADVANCE TICKET SALES WILL ALSO DETERMINE IN WHAT ORDER THE BANDS WILL PLAY. EXAMPLE : IF A BAND SELLS NO OR THE LEAST TICKETS IN ADVANCE THEY WILL RECEIVE THE OPENING OR LEAST DESIRABLE SLOT. BAND WHO SELLS ALL OR THE MOST TICKETS WILL RECEIVE THE HEADLINING OR MOST DESIRABLE SLOT OF THEIR CHOICE. ( IN EVENT OF A TIE, A RANDOM DRAWING WILL DECIDE THE ORDER.)
Based on the pre-sales that NGB had amassed at the reckoning time, we were 3rd out of 5. Accordingly, we were scheduled to go on stage at 9:35pm. While I was sitting over by the gear (because I'm just a little bit paranoid about the safety and security of my gear around bands that I don't know), I noticed the sound guy (Darryl) walk over and change the schedule. NGB had moved from the 3rd to the 5th slot, taking the stage at 11:45pm.
This change of events didn't sit all that well, and we tried to negotiate with the club manager to remedy the situation. We all went round and round the situation, with the manager contradicting himself a few times and generally having a rather dismissive attitude towards the band.
A small digression. I can understand this from the manager's perspective. He has to get the underage kids out of the club by a certain time to comply with the liquor laws of Maryland. A band that he has never heard of is trying to negotiate with him to change his business practice. In his shoes, I would have tried to work something out, but I don't know how receptive I would have been. </digression>
Finally, we came to a proposed compromise. The manager made a verbal promise to reserve an opening slot for an upcoming show of a national act on a to-be-named Friday evening. The four of us stepped away to talk about the situation. We basically concluded that his verbal promise was worth the paper it was written on, and, after some intense discussion, we voted. The band decided to declare the club in breach of contract. Accordingly, we packed up and left.
There will be consequences to this decision; of that I have no doubt. I do not expect to be playing at the Thunderdome anytime in the near future (not that I'm crying about that), and this might end up hurting NGB's reputation, but I suppose we will see what happens in the future.
Posted by Casper at April 29, 2004 10:01 PM