Photos are up of our previous three live shows:
- Koi + Solomon;
- The Dickies + Millhouse + Second Class Citizens + Royalty;
- Fear Makes Perfect + Plastination + The Brides.
I liked The Brides a lot -- they were sort of a spooky rockabilly/deathrock number.
Originally Orgy was supposed to be the headliner of the Koi show, but pre-sales were really low, and when the promoter asked the band to charge less, they decided to cancel the show (along with, I'm told, half of their tour.) The rider they gave us was the "Stadium rider", with requests like "six private dressing rooms", so I guess they're not yet adjusted to their new reality.
At most of our live shows, we use the lounge for the bands' backstage area. There's a cage that goes in front of the bar to keep the liquor locked up. Well, at the Dickies show, someone with one of the bands broke through the cage and stole a few bottles of booze. This is extra lame, considering that we are always generous with the drink tickets. But hey, it's punk rock to "stick it to The Man", right? Still, given that only 150 people showed up, they might want to wait for a night when The Man was actually making any money. Perhaps they didn't realize that they had already stuck it to The Man by simply not being very popular.
They put on an entertaining show, though. The Dickies were a lot of fun.
In further jackassery news, we had another KMFDM show booked, but they canceled on us. We still don't actually have any idea why. As I understand it, the exchange went something like this:
| Promoter: | KMFDM says they won't play at DNA because you were so rude to Sasha last time. Apparently there was some incident where he was smoking inside and it turned into a big scene. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Alexis: | There was? This is the first I've heard of it! | ||
| Promoter: | Oh wait, that happened at Slim's, not at DNA. What happened at DNA is, Sasha wanted to get some friend without ID into the club and you gave him all kinds of grief about it. | ||
| Alexis: | Did not. | ||
| Promoter: | Oh wait, that's not it either. He's mad because you're selling bootlegs of the show. | ||
| Alexis: | No we're not. That's crazy talk. | ||
| Promoter: | << hangs up, purportedly calls Sasha, calls back >> Yup, it's because of the bootlegs. | ||
| Alexis: | But we didn't do anything like that! | ||
| Promoter: | Well what kind of hoops do you want me to jump through! | ||
| Alexis: | Just tell us what we did wrong, and how we can fix it... | ||
| Promoter: | What kind of hoops do you want me to jump through! |
And that's pretty much the end of that. It seems likely that all this nonsense isn't the promoter's fault, it's Sasha not giving either of us a straight answer. Oh well, whatever. It's not like I'll miss them. Their shows attracted an enthusiastic crowd, and many of my friends attended, so that was nice, but the truth is that they're an absolutely horrible live band. Both times they've played here, they've managed to make this club sound worse than anyone else ever has; it's really a good trick, especially since (at least lately) they make heavy use of backing tracks. How do you screw up so badly when you're phoning it in to begin with?
Which is just, you know, another reason for the "bootleg" fantasy to be so nonsensical. They sounded terrible in the room and even worse on the webcast.
On a more pleasant note, please to be joining us this Sunday for Spectacular Spectacular's production of Atomic Jungle! Nothing says vaudeville like south seas atomic testing, right? I saw the rehearsal, and it's going to be hilarious. This is from the mad masterminds behind Zombie DNA and Castle Spectacular.
6 Responses:
Gee, and I thought KMFDM sounded bad in the Detroit-area performances because of the horrid Royal Oak Music Theater. It's good to know they have spread the wealth.
likewise at the Metro in chicago. they actually didn't sound too bad once you put the earplugs in, but that's the wrong way to go about sonic engineering. with the earplugs out they were second only to Ministry in "wow, now my brain is bleeding" loudness.
No, they sounded horrible at the Odeon on Cleveland last year too. Well, not horrid, but too damn loud. The crowd was fun, and the band was pretty active onstage, but the sound was not up to par at all. I was glad to have my earplugs on me.
The opening act was even worse, they sounded like pure noise, and not even in a good Throbbing Gristle kind of way... some forgettable metal group, all I can recall is the bassist taking his shirt off. Let's just say he could go to a furry convention without having to wear an outfit... ick. It got worse when the very attractive young lady next to me elbowed me and said in my ear: "I blew him last night, I'm a <insert name of band> groupie". How nice for her.
Huh. What were Orgy trying to charge? I went to their show in a NYC club in May for about $30 (after all the Ticketmaster crap tacked on) and they sold out the place.
Tickets were $15 (+ $2 svc) and as of a few days before the show, we'd only sold 45 tickets, which suggested that 100-150 people were going to show up. I don't know how much they were charging the promoter, but those numbers made her panic. Looking at the Pollstar data, it seems that this year they'd often been getting around 300 people (except in LA where they got 1400.)
the one time i met kmfdm was after their (bomb) tour at Irving Plaza in nyc, and despite it being a good show and my girlfriend enamoured with the band they were the most arrogant pricks I've ever met. I listened to the webcast and you are so right, they did suck and the quality of the webcast was not all that. Good riddance I say. amusing update though.