It's 9AM. Haven't slept since last night's show. Can't sleep cause I'm still too wired. No drugs in my system, yet my brain is racing, my heart is pumping, and for the first time in a long while I long for some of sedatives that used to seem to make mornings like this a lot more pleasant. We paid to play last night and damn, did we pay to play.

I'm writing this article because I'm sick to death of the injustice that plagues our musical community. I've got many years gigging experience under my belt and I know that we do NOT have to stand for it. There are plenty of venues that treat musicians with respect, and if we as musicians don't learn to respect ourselves by not honoring these clubs that don't honor us, we will continue to fall prey to the cutthroats of the club business.

So what's my beef? Well, against my better judgment (and warnings of others) I accepted a gig at a local establishment that was a "pay to play" place. "Pay to play" means the club gives you a handful of tickets and you have to sell a certain amount in order to take the stage. In this case, we had to sell at least 25 tickets at $8.00 a piece. Price at the door is $12.00. If we sell them for 10 we get 2 bucks a ticket. Seemed fair enough. Having developed a solid fan base in Manhattan (although this gig was in one of the other boroughs) we didn't really see that to be a problem. It wasn't.

The reason I put my judgment aside in accepting the gig was that we were catching a break on this night and were playing with a fairly big label act. It was worth getting our people down to another borough because they were not only going to see us, but also see a pretty happening band afterward. Since we had never played there before, the only request I had prior to accepting the gig was that we would NOT be the first band to take the stage. This was so that we could play for the fans of the other bands as well and expose ourselves to new people. We were assured we would not be, and at least, we might be the second band. Fine. We were given no further instructions, just a hundred tickets sell.

A few days before the show I heard a rumor that the major act we were playing with had canceled. I went immediately to the club's website and noticed that on their calendar of events there was no mention at all of the cancellation nor even of the date that we were playing. No mention of us, no mention of anyone. Every other Friday and Saturday for a month prior and after was listed. My first fear was that the entire night had been cancelled. I called the club to find out who was playing only to be told "uhhh, I think so and so is playing." When I asked who else was playing they said rudely, "listen to the message!," and hung up on me. I started to get a bad feeling about the club and maybe a premonition of what was ahead.

So I eat shit now. I'm used to it. As I said, I've been doing this a while. I'm selling tickets for these guys, playing their club, and working really hard to promote the whole thing, and they don't even have the consideration to promote the show on their own website nor tell me who's playing when I call. The major band had canceled so it seems they thought the other bands playing weren't worth listing.

Friday arrives - the day of the gig. We're a little bummed. We sold a lot of tickets, but feel bad that people are traveling to see us, paid a higher price than they're used to paying to see us in Manhattan, and they're not going to see the headlining band that's clearly printed on their ticket. We call the club earlier to double check on load in time and we're told 8PM. We get there at 8PM and we're scoffed at and told we were supposed to be there at seven. We're told to put our stuff right on the stage. Okay. There's another band already set up. "Do we set up behind them?" we ask. "No, in front of them, you're the first band." I take a deep breath and explain our agreement. Well, our agreement wasn't about to be honored. "You guys go on at ten" we're told. We were scheduled for ten thirty. We tell them that we told everyone we were going on ten thirty, and were then told "We'll see what we can do. Maybe we can push it to 10:15".

We take our fan base very seriously. They have been loyal to us, we work really hard at keeping them happy, and we realize fully that without them all we do is pretty much pointless. Since they were going to get screwed out of seeing the headlining band we requested once more that we go on at 10:30, as scheduled, so they at least get to see us as expected. We were told, "Okay but then you guys are only going to get fifteen minutes to play. You gotta be off the stage by 10:45". Another surprise, and they weren't kidding. Maybe our mistake here, but we assumed we were getting at least a forty minute set. How fucking stupid of me. How would the club make money then? No. Half hour set for all so they can squeeze 10 bands in a night that have to sell 25 tickets each in order to play. I'm catching on a little more now. So now our loyal fans paid more to travel to see us then they would have if they saw us in the city, are only going to get to see us for a half an hour if they were lucky enough to get there early, will see us for only 15 minutes if they come when we told them to, AND won't be getting to see the canceled headliners for the evening. I'm smoking by now.

I think it may have been a little easier to go with the flow if we were getting treated with any respect. But we weren't. No apologies. Just a "tough shit" attitude and even a little bullying about getting our wristbands on if we wanted to leave the club.

I locked myself in the dressing room bathroom and prayed. It helped. I convinced myself that no good was going to come from the negativity that was welling inside. I decided that I would swallow hard and take some deep breaths. We would go on at 10:15 and all things would be well in the alternate realities.

There's more. As I leave the bathroom I'm told by one of the owners that he needed the money for the tickets before we would be allowed to play. No mention of this until now. We still had to meet up with a few people who had been selling tickets for us. I asked if it would be okay to give him the money for the twenty five tickets we were required to sell, and then we would square the rest after we played. He said "No problem." I handed him $200. Ahhh, my prayers worked, things were beginning to flow a little more smoothly now, and his attitude was nice for a change. I guess it was because I coughed up money.

We play. Wasn't our best performance. We brought lots of people. Most of them came early and got to see us. We're thrown off after a half an hour, but I'm okay. I'm in acceptance mode now. A couple of cute girls wanted us to autograph their chests (that was first), we sold a surprising amount of merchandise, and we got to play for at least 30 new people. The night wasn't a complete bust. We collect the rest of the money from our ticket sellers, we settle that, all is palatable.

A friend comes up to me then and tells me I owe a girl $12.00 because she had to pay to get in. I don't understand. He said "she bought a ticket from you guys but had to pay to get in". I still don't understand. I go to find out what happened. The club only allowed for 25 tickets to get in. They said, "you just gave us money for twenty five tickets, so that's all we would let in." I reminded him that I told them I would square the rest with them later and that they said "fine". He then said, "how am I supposed to know you're not gonna walk with my money, I get fucked over all the time here". I asked why they hadn't explained to me that they were going to do that when I gave him the money for the first 25 tickets. I would have happily laid out the extra money to cover the other tickets. He didn't have an answer. Just some mumbo-jumbo about "I'm running a business here". I had to walk away.

At least five people that we know had purchased tickets didn't show up at the gig. Hence I'm still wide awake at 10AM now. I don't know who or how many friends and fans we fucked over, but the club told that one girl (the one we owed the12 bucks) that we didn't give them money for the tickets. This is the treatment we get for working as hard as we do and making this club money.

There are some really bad attitudes and nasty practices out there in the club world. There are some really good ones too. I choose to honor the good attitudes. By doing so, I honor myself and all other musicians as well. I hope you do the same. I'm gonna try and sleep now that I've gotten this a little bit off my chest.

If you 'd like to comment on this article, repost it, or share your similar experience feel free to email me here.

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