Me Vs. The Libertarians - Round 57

The Argument:

Imagine you are in a family, and you have a dozen or so brothers and sisters. You all work. You are children of a single parent.

Your father, presumably very wise, tells you children that instead of having to stretch your meager paychecks across many different bills, that he will pay all your expenses. He requires that you contribute about a third of your paychecks to him (maybe a little more or a little less depending on what you make), but he’ll cover any expenses you accrue. Your school, your doctor visits, your car payments. No matter what you rack up, he’s going to pay.

So naturally you live a little beyond your means. You drive a car that’s more expensive than you would if you were looking at your own money, you eat out more often, etc. But the bills always get paid, so this seems like a good system.

Then one day… one day you find out that your dear old Dad doesn’t even have a job. He’s been paying all those bills (and his own, too!) with a combination of the part of your paychecks he collects (which of course isn’t enough) and putting the rest on credit cards. Massive, massive credit card debt has accrued as a result of this.

And that debt is still there when he dies, since he never had any way of paying it off. And you inherit it, because that’s the way debt works.

Welcome to government.

My Response

This is an example of a heuristic argument. I might be playing devil's advocate a bit here, considering I am a firm believer in paying debts on time, as I always have. However, your emotions tell you that debt is inherently a bad thing, so the government should not have one. However, this is in conflict with reality. For one, you present the common fallacy of comparing the federal deficit to a household budget, and there are a few holes in this. I recently read an article that showed that the US has only NOT had a federal debt for something like 5 or 6 out of the last 60 or 70 years. Despite monetary standard, political party in power, economic boom or recession, the debt is nearly always present, and has not stopped our way of life in its tracks.

In addition, while dad can die, The United States probably won't. When you say that the debt will be passed on to our children I guess you are technically correct, but it really just means next year's congress will have a budget deficit, and the next year's after that, and the next year's after that. It doesn't mean that a Chinese army is going to kidnap our population and throw us into debtor's prison, or repossess the state of Delaware. Operating in debt is a worldwide phenomenon, and if every monetary institution were suddenly and abruptly forced to balance their budgets, society as we know it WOULD cease to exist. Even the giant corporations that you hold in such high esteem operate with high leverage, the term for the ratio of actual liquidity to debt. When the bubble burst in '08, many of the investment banks were operating with ridiculously large ratios such as $40 of debt for every $1 of liquidity, but to a certain extent, nearly all profitable business operate in such a manner to a much smaller degree.

I also heard a piece today about how Newt is talking about returning to the gold standard, as if it were the magic bullet to control the deficit. While its probably true that it would control inflation by limiting the Fed's ability to just print more money, it's by no means a sure thing. Gold's value is subject to demand by countries, investors, and speculators, the same as any other commodity in the world. As Wyatt Cynac said when asked by Jon Stewart "But what about gold?", he responded, "Turns out, gold is just a shiny metal, Jon."

The problem is, wealth is an abstract concept. Therefore, so is debt. Now, debt may have real world consequences, such as a bank forces me out of my house into a smaller apartment, or Big Jimmy Breakabone (Break-a-bo-nay) comes by and pops me in the knee cap, but the actual debt I owe is as subjective as the value of the paper money I have in my wallet, my high yield mutual fund, or the gas in my lawnmower. (In reality I have only one of these things. Try to guess which!) Operating in debt is the way that our global economy works. China, or US Bondholders (who actually hold more of our debt than the Chinese ever will) cannot file some paperwork and force the population of America out of the country into a smaller one. It could be that humanity as a whole is exploiting the absurdity of such a system, flaunting the fact that despite the negative numbers on the balance sheets, life goes on much as before. Its easy to point to current events and say "Look at Greece! Look at what happens when a country racks up debt!". But countries have become destitute before, and they will become so again. This is not an argument against debt. After all, let's face it, Greece has been around since the Bronze Age. They've seen worse.

In addition, your example above takes for granted certain social values. It takes for granted the fact that anyone who has their basic necessities provided for will doubtless take advantage of this and live outside of their means. Its also sort of hints at the fact that of course dad couldn't afford to pay all those bills, and you were stupid to think that he could. Well, I believe these are very American assumptions. On the second point, in socialist democracies, government can, in many cases, afford to pay for these basic necessities like healthcare, maternity leave, etc, because income and sales taxes are very high, sometimes around 50-60%. In this country, we would equate taxes like that to the equivalent of the king of England bursting into your room on your wedding night to screw your new wife. We've been conditioned by our society to view contributing to the advancement of said society as a fundamental breech of our rights, and that nothing should be so abhorrent as parting with some of our money, no matter how beneficial the effects. I know you are in strong agreement with this, as you are a product of this society yourself. However, this is not a genetic imperative, it is a sociological one. As to the first point, this is not the case either. People in Spain and Germany aren't gorging themselves into obesity because the government pays their bills, that's us! We have a comparably small social safety net, and yet its we Americans who are living beyond our means, buying new cars and becoming the fattest fucks on the planet. Again, this is a product of our consumer based society. High taxes are seen as a violation of our rights because we have been told all our lives that buying equals freedom. It shouldn't take long to strip this down and discover the absurdity. I, for one, feel that a mandatory six weeks of vacation a year is more akin to freedom than two weeks and a new TV, but that's just me.

Anyway, back to the debt argument. I submit that the case against it is overblown and disproportionate to reality. Its easy for a presidential candidate to get a roomful of applause when he promises to "Git this country out of debt!", but such promises go far beyond the President's power in the first place, and in the second place, that applause would dry up quickly when the people providing it realize just what exactly our country's debt is providing them. So, I will use an argument you often use with me. Since debt is the status quo, as long as my creditors are happy with the terms of my borrowing and I can keep up the lifestyle to which I am accustomed in said debt without anyone else coming to harm, who are YOU to say that I ever need to pay it off? That anyone needs to pay it off? That the United States has to pay it off? This is simply the new perspective on an old concept, nothing more. And it is the world we live in.


However, while I feel these arguments are valid, I myself pay my debts on time.

After Extensive Debating:

Idea by Me.
Design by Jimmy Viola www.zomgimbored.com

Capitalism At 40,000 Feet

This week, the president signed into law what I believe is called the "Americans Go To Jail Forever Without Trial" Act. So now, if you are suspected of doing anything terror related, such as bombing a government building or accidentally going to the Al Qaeda website while searching for Al Qadim, you can legally be held in a secret prison forever with no trial. As I understand it. Anyway, to balance out this rape of American liberty, he also did a good thing. He used some weird loopholes to finally dodge congressional opposition and force-appoint a head of the new Consumer Protection Agency so that this agency can actually start working to, well, protect consumers. So, like anything that actually benefits the public, this met with a dumpload of opposition from Senate Republicans, both on the grounds that it circumvents the sacred institution of filibustering every item of government business to death, and that the appointment makes the role of government too powerful because it might tell businesses to stop ripping people off.

The detractors have the notion that ever telling businesses they can't do a thing (ie regulations) is an affront to freedom (unlike real affronts to freedom like indefinite detention without trial, because that keeps us safe from terrorists). That the government passing laws about what businesses can and can't do is somehow antithetical to the very notion of what America should be. Well, let's look at a real life example of an industry that, in my mind, gets away with murder as far as misleading consumers is concerned. The problem is, people are so used to being bent over by this industry that we now take it as a matter of course.

A few months ago, a group of us all took a flight to Atlanta. Same exact flight, same exact section, and most of the seats were even right next to each other. My friend and his wife paid $205 each for round trip tickets, whereas I, having bought mine a week later, paid $350. Other people, having all bought tickets at different times, each paid different prices. You see, airlines now use complicated computer algorithms to basically randomize their prices, making it nearly impossible for any two people to pay the same price for the same ticket. This is obviously bullshit, but people have become so accustomed to going online and hunting for hours on third party websites like Orbitz to be that 1 lucky winner who actually gets a fair price for a flight. That's not even to mention all the fees that pop up later that aren't listed in the flight price. When did it become cool with everybody to have to pay to actually take your stuff with you when you go somewhere? I'm supposed to pay extra for the "luxury" of not buying a wardrobe of new clothes every time I land in a different city? Thanks to cool new innovations like these checked bag fees, I got to watch as an old fat tattoo biker guy literally punched his luggage until it fit into the same compartment as my reasonably sized carry-on. That's one way to save $20; punch your crap into mine til everything's broken. Still, its not even his fault, really. Its theirs.

I don't know, maybe its something about the majesty (or necessity) of air travel that makes people tolerate this garbage. I guess the vast majority of people don't fly every day, so they might just expect to be put through the ringer once a year for vacation or something. But let's make a comparison. Let's say you meet me for lunch at my favorite upscale restaurant, McDonalds. When you get there, I've already ordered and sat down, because I'm a rude asshole. You walk up to the counter and get the same thing I did: #1, supersized, with a Diet Coke (cause we're on diets). You join me at the table and say:

"Hey jerk. Thanks for waiting."

"I'm sorry man/dude/cuz/bro/lady-bro, I was STARVING. This was the best $2.05 I ever spent. It's gonna be soooo good *nom nom nom*."

"Wait, what? You paid $2.05 for a #1, supersized, with a Diet Coke cause we're on diets? They just charged me $3.50! They must have fucked up. I'll go talk to the lady."

"Don't bother homes/busta/dudet/she-homes, its too late now. You should have gone on Burgetz.com, like I did, to find the best time to order a #1. They get way more expensive the closer it gets to dinnertime, or lunch time, or holidays. I ordered mine at 3:22 AM last Tuesday."

"That makes no fucking sense! Its the same exact thing!"

"Oh, well, I also saved fifty cents cause I had two connecting orders."

"Wait, what?"

"Yea, I had to pick up the fries in Westmont, then there was a 15 minute layover in Cherry Hill while they changed the syrup tanks on the Diet Coke. No way I'm drinking regular Coke, I'm on a diet. Then I got the Big Mac here."

"Wow, that's a lot of effort just to save a marginal percentage of the price, but I still feel like I just got slapped in the balls/hooters by the company. Oh, hold on, I forgot ketchup."

"Oh yea, I also signed up for my 17th credit card when I got here, so they waived my ketchup fee! I'm the smartest!"

"But ketchup is free! How can they charge extra for something that almost every single person in the restaurant needs!?"

"Ketchup was free..."

Using the above example, we can see how fucking ridiculous it is for two people getting EXACTLY the same thing at EXACTLY the same place to have an absurd differential in the price they paid. "But Lou," you may say, "You can't compare airline tickets to fast food! They're completely different industries, with different expenses and concerns!"

First of all, I can compare anything I want, so go screw yourself. Both restaurants and airlines have costs of doing business that need to be factored into any business model, but I bet you'd be furious if every meal you ordered could potentially vary by 100% of the price depending on what day you ordered it and on how many places you were willing to go to in order to get it. Yet, this is exactly how airlines treat their customers every day. The "free market" has done nothing to curb this abuse, because random price fluctuations are such a great idea that every airline does it! Just you try to shop around, sucker!

But God forbid we try to regulate this fucking nonsense, because that would mean that Government is too big, and we don't want to infringe on corporations' rights to ram us on a bed of spikes by being as deceitful as humanly possible about the real price of their products. There are actually some regulations being passed this year regarding some of these issues, but of course they are being fought in court tooth and nail by the airlines as an attack against their "right to free speech". Come on! How can any sane person who has been hit with secret fees, bogus prices, or having their bag punched into an overhead compartment realistically say that it wouldn't be a good thing to have the government step in and make them tell the truth for once?

And keep in mind, if it wasn't for government regulations, there wouldn't be a weekend.

In Defense Of Rock!

This is an excerpt of a reaction I had to an article expressing a Libertarian viewpoint in defense of abolishing copyright and intellectual property laws. That's the gist of it, but if you really want to read the article, its here: http://freenation.org/a/f31l1.html (Its a bit dry).

Anyway, here's what I said:

His solutions, however, are ridiculous. He seems to be suggesting some sort of artist/creator based league by which to organize boycotts as a way to curb the practice of stealing ideas. In today's age, this is simply irrelevant. Boycotts simply don't work now. There's buy-no-gas day boycotts, which do nothing to control costs. There are over 2,000,000 vegetarians, and still Burger king is the only place with a veggie burger. There's Buy Nothing day, which also is ineffective. So this guy thinks that "producers of intellectual products — authors, artists, inventors, software designers, etc. — were to set up an analogous court system for protecting copyrights and patent rights — ...Individuals and organizations accused of piracy would have a chance to plead their case at a voluntary court, but if found guilty they would be required to cease and desist, and to compensate the victims of their piracy, on pain of boycott."

Come on. Let's imagine a real word scenario with this solution:

This court of loosely affiliated authors, tv script-writers, rock musicians, and freelance painters will now come to order. Judge Bono presiding.



Judge Bono: You, Time Warner Corporation, are found guilty of stealing the music from John Roccia's self-produced and non-copyrightable harmonica solo album, giving it to Aerosmith (whom you keep on retainer with your billions of dollars) to, shadily but not illegally, record and perform at great profit to yourself. For this act of piracy, we, this court of washed up artists who have enough time in our schedules to be doing this instead of creating things, do so enact a non-legally-binding and completely voluntary boycott of Aerosmith's music and performances. Fans of the harmonica album are urged, but not required, to purchase the original John Roccia recordings, of which there are only 500 because he is poor, from his website, at no penalty for non compliance.



Yea. Seems like a good system.




Anyway, I'm all for the abolition of intellectual property, so long as it went along with the abolition of ALL property. Bear with me a moment, I'm talking theoretically here. After all, what's the difference between your latest short story, and the deed to your house? They're both just words on paper, conveying an idea of something. If we lived in a communist utopia where there was no need for money, it wouldn't fuckin matter who owned what song or book, because there's no wealth or livelihood at stake, only street-cred. Anyway, copyright laws are barely even relevant, because anyone who works in any capacity to make something (invention, art, or otherwise) at a big corporation usually surrenders those rights to the company anyway. You think Bruce Springstein owns ANY of his songs? Nope. These days, copyrights just protect the little guy who isn't making any money from situations like I hilariously described above. Since we live in a society based on valuing property, to say that stuff is property but ideas aren't greatly advantages one group of people. And in any society you need both builders and thinkers, and you need to value their contributions equally by the standards of the society.

Short Fiction

I'm at the worst bar. They don't have Papst. What fucking state is this anyway? That's fine, I stole some gin from my roommate and drank it in the car. He wouldn't mind though, so I guess I borrowed it. Some good news this week, but mostly bad. By which I mean devastating. The musician I'm here to see, the sound guy, and myself were all in a band 1,000 years ago, and we were definitely going to make it. Or so I believed when I was 17 and playing venues 1,000 times better than this. Still, despite the lies I've been told and the truths I've learned, despite all the instincts I've learned to honor and those I've learned to ignore, despite the fact that there's only four other people in the audience, the only thing that I can be sure of is that I wish it was me up there instead of him.

Toiling in Obscurity

The annals of music history are awash with stories of big rip-offs; bands and artists getting royally screwed by record companies, promoters, managers, etc. However, as most of you in bands are already well aware, you don't need to be famous, or anywhere near so in order to get bent over. By comparison, there's almost a quasi-romantic appeal to hearing artists telling the stories of how they were adored by hundreds of thousands of fans but ended up broke because they signed a bad deal. At least that's failure on an epic scale. Compare that with having to fight with a drunken promoter for $20 in gas money after dragging ten of your friends 50 miles to spend over $300 in an otherwise empty bar, and see which story gets you laid first.

I guess my point is that there are sharks in every sized pool, but its the small timers who really piss me off.  At least in the big leagues, they have teams of people relentlessly honing their craft of ripping off the creatives, experts in milking the dreams of others for every last dollar. Shameful, I know, but what's worse, those soulless corporates, or the pathetic bar-level nobodies who want to be like them? I would argue that its the latter. For those of you who are not musicians but might take an interest, I offer a retrospective on the stinking pile of garbage that even the weekenders must fight through in order to achieve that one simple goal: to play a good show. But first, to keep things in perspective, and to demonstrate some of the unavoidable realities of toiling under the radar of whatever passes for "the music business" these days, here are some things that I don't mind:

Sometimes you gotta play for free.

There are plenty of artists out there that will go to their graves defending the sentiment that doing it for free devalues your craft. That absence of payment reflects an absence for respect for what it is that you are creating. That you are providing something that should be paid for just as much as any other product or service. First of all, on this philosophical level, I couldn't disagree more. How many concerts have you missed because of a $75 ticket price? Before Internet piracy, how much music did you miss out on because Sam Goody was charging $21.99 for a CD? How many people have missed my band's shows because they couldn't afford to come out? Did anyone really think that Metallica was devaluing their music by playing for free in Philly? No! They devalued their music by making bad albums. I honestly wish that I could go to every show for free, and that everyone could come to my shows for free.

However, this is the USA and that shit doesn't fly. The reality is that you can only lose money on something for so long before you need to get some back. I want to get paid for shows. Now, that said, as an unsigned band, you do have to exist in the real world. Maybe you get to play a sweet party with a bunch of people at it, but they're not going to pay you. Well, do you want to sit at home, or do you want new people to hear your music, hear where they can find your website, and hear where your next non-free show is? Sure, it costs you gas money and your time, but you want to spend your time playing music anyway, right? I definitely don't think you should play every, or even most of your shows for free, but sometimes its the right thing to do as long as you have the rest of your shit together. The trick is to know when its OK and when it isn't.

Preselling tickets

OK, preselling tickets to a show is annoying as hell, but I'm not against the concept of the practice. Again, you have to live in the real world. Bars/venues have to pay their bills or they cease to exist. There is no reason for them to book bands that don't take the time to bring anyone but themselves but yet somehow expect to rock a packed house. I see preselling tickets as a somewhat necessary defense against the types of bands too lazy to even get mom and dad to come out to a show. Unsigned artists should be fairly eager to make money for a venue, because after all, when a venue goes down, that's one less place to book a show. So basically, I am pro preselling as long as the band is getting a fair cut.

So, while toiling in obscurity, some things need to be borne silently. The following things, however, should not be done or tolerated, should make you angry, and range from "these people need to be punched in the face" to straight-up criminal activity.

Bullshit promoters (Jerseyshows.com, Afton Live, Etc.)

Now, working with these types of promoters will get you a show. It will be a bad show, most likely a  weeknight with an 11pm slot and a 30 minute set time (especially if its your first time with them), but it will be a show. There will most likely be ticket presales involved, of which you will be lucky to get a 10%-15% cut unless you can somehow talk them into more. These so-called promoters actually do little to promote shows outside of updating their own website and spamming the inboxes of the same bands that work with them to get said shows. However, you can expect lots of needlessly complicated payment structure guidelines and long winded emails to make the whole process sound much more important than it actually is.

The thing is, these promotion companies are actually just vestigial middlemen that work out deals to fill venues with bands on slow nights. Their quantity over quality approach assure that they are going to try to fit at least five possibly completely dissimilar bands on every bill for each night they are slated to book for the venue. Beware if they tell you you are headlining a show. For signed bands, headlining is a good thing; a mark of success and a symbol of popularity. For everyone else, it means going onstage at 1:15 am, having already spent more than you are making on drinks to kill the boredom of watching terrible bands play for five hours when you have work the next day. These promoters, (who, by the way, are far more likely to return your emails and phone calls than legitimate ones, even to the point of harassing you about shows) are not usually, in my experience, affiliated in any permanent way with these venues. Many venues have their own booking guy or teams working on more profitable shows, so in most cases the person who you spoke with to get on the bill will be nowhere within miles come set time, leaving all of the actual work of running the show to the sound guy, who is high.

These companies prey on bands desperate to get shows, don't know how to promote themselves (or have no fans cause they suck), and are happy to get any money at all for playing even if the day is an overall loss. Their convoluted pay scale charts basically equate to the pocket change left over after they pay themselves for their ridiculously unnecessary service of being the go-between for your band and the bar/venue. After all, someone had to print all those fancy, unnecessary tickets for you to presell and update those weekly spam emails your band will receive for the rest of your life.

However, working for bullshit promoters isn't always a total loss. If you suffer through several "why am I doing this to myself" shows and can actually draw more than 10-15 people, you may end up at a real venue that these guys have access to once in a while. It will probably be under the same overbilled, underpaid, ticket-selling conditions as the other shows, but it sure feels better to say "I played the Trocadero last Thursday!" than to say "I played the Barf Shack on 93rd and Crackton last Thursday!" If you see a date on a venue calendar that says something like "Mantis Productions Presents" followed by 15 bands, you can be sure that nobody in the music business touched that show with a 10 foot promoter-pole.

So, if you have to work with these guys (who unfortunately qualify as the best of the bunch for the rest of this treatise), there are some things you can do:

1) Don't let them make you headline! Say whatever you have to get any other slot, preferably 2nd or 3rd if possible. Even your girlfriends who love you more than anything in the universe will have fallen asleep long before your singer says, "Thanks to Jerseyshows.com for having us and all the other bands. Good night!" at 2 am when you are done playing. You will also not want to kill yourself quite as much.

2) Find out who has your money!  As I said before, the promoter who booked the show was in bed long before you started playing, so anything you may have made off the door is somewhere in the building. Maybe the sound guy has it, maybe the door guy has it, or maybe the bartender has it. Its a monetary Where's Waldo, and you're the reader. Trust me, there's nothing they'd like more than for you to leave without getting paid because you were too drunk and depressed after playing for nobody to ask for your money. They're not going to come over and find you, so you have to find them.

3) Milk that shit! Make the most you can out of that crappy-ass show. Sell your merch, give out fliers to your next show, pimp the hell out of your website. Network with the only other good band on the bill (cause there's only one, maybe). Get something out of it. It may just preserve your sanity.

Now, the rest of this list makes playing for bullshit promoters seem like selling out the Tokyo Superdome. For example:

Battle of the Bands (Emergenza, etc)

The myth is well ingrained in American culture thanks to television and movies: the underdog band works hard and wins the big battle, gets signed and becomes famous! Works every time, right? Baloney. I challenge you to name one nationally famous band that got their start as a battle of the bands. (American Idol doesn't count). Since winning even televised and radio sponsored battles of the bands does nothing for your career, its even more futile to enter these at the local level. A lot of times these battles are put on by bullshit promoters like those mentioned above, or scam companies who exist only to fleece bands in much the same way, like Emergenza. These guys take the "blowing smoke up your ass to make you feel big time" approach to a whole new level, even going so far as to make you attend meetings beforehand to go over information that could have been covered in a two paragraph email.

These guys operate in much the same way as the promoters above. They are busy filling the "rounds" of the battle at different venues with as many desperate bands as they can find. You will also be selling tickets and getting an absurdly small cut, but because this "battle" is a HUGE deal, the tickets will be more expensive, making them much harder to sell. Whereas you might have to pay an $8-$10 cover to see your friends play a normal show at a local bar, seeing the same band play at the exact same venue for "Emergenza Presents: Battle of the Bands!" could cost $15+! Fuck!

Sure, the prizes sound great. Its usually something like free studio time to record a four song EP. (Yea, that's gonna turn out great. I'm sure the studio is top quality, and your band is their highest priority.) What's more, you're not going to win. The selection of winners at these things ranges from an audience clapping contest to whoever the sound guy picks as the best because they were on stage when his mescaline kicked in. The reality is that the company couldn't give a shit who wins the contest. The only thing that winning round one means for you is that you have another batch of nigh-unsellable tickets to move before round two, which is 16 days away. And if you win that one, you get to do it all again for round three, and so on. This is a really good way to burn out your local fans and to get all your friends to hate you after they spent $45 on tickets to dive bars to watch you fail because the fat-guy friend of the hardcore band was the loudest during the clapping contest.

My advice about battles of the bands is to not enter them. Seriously. Unless you can guarantee that you can pack the house in the same city once every two weeks for five rounds, the likelihood that you will walk with one of these great prizes is very small. If you can guarantee that, you don't need to be playing a battle of the bands anyway because you're making money already! In either case, you're way better off just trying to strategically book good shows that you have time to promote and that give you a fair payment. Hell, you're better off finding a hall and booking a show yourself. At least that way you can bring bands you like, split the door fairly, and charge all your fans a reasonable entry. Everyone wins!

One thing that is worse than a battle of the bands, however, is an

Online Battle Of The Bands (Vans Warped Tour, etc)

These things are the biggest slap in the face to musicians and the most shamelessly corporate rape of the spirit of rock and roll that has ever existed.  If you're not familiar with them, they are websites where you enter your band, upload a song or two, and then people simply click to vote for you to win a spot on a Warped Tour side stage or something like that. I suppose the hook is that, besides the chance to WIN!... just entering this web contest increases your visibility and fan base.

Its total bullshit. The reality is that the Vans company and others have found a great way for people to be forced to look at their web based advertisements every day for months preceding the Warped Tour. Voting is reset every day, so fans are encouraged to vote for their friends frequently by going to their contest page, checking out how comfortable and "with-it" the new Vans products are, and eventually clicking the button that says "Vote For Me!".

For one, the fact that the band is making yet another web entry does nothing to help their visibility. After all, its 2011. Every unsigned band in the world already has a website, a Myspace, a Facebook, a Reverbnation page, a Twitter account, and Jesus knows what other kinds of web pages. Does anyone really believe that people are heading to the battle of the bands page, listening to mp3s from thousands of applicants and then making a well informed vote for their favorite? Of course not, that's ridiculous! The only people voting for your band are the people you personally told to vote for you via one of the websites you already have. Your odds of getting more votes than that one band who still isn't signed but somehow gets 1,000 unique hits every day to their site but still inexplicably joined a worthless online battle is even worse than winning a battle where you actually get to play. All you are doing is directing traffic to advertisements for free, and at no benefit to yourself. Your band is being used and getting literally nothing in return. Unless you win.

So let's take a look at what you win; a spot on a Warped Tour side stage. I've worked the Warped Tour before and I've seen the stage these "winners" get to play. I mean, I guess technically its part of the tour, if you consider a 12 foot mobile stage in the far, far corner of the parking lot where even the hippies selling hemp wallets would be furious to be placed as part of the concert. You'd probably get more exposure playing in your own backyard. Meanwhile, everyone you know has an inexplicable urge to buy a pair of Vans. Good deal.

Con Artists

As if the bands of the world didn't have enough to contend with already, then you have the con artists; people who are just plain criminals that steal your money. These guys will promise to book you shows that conveniently fit your schedule exactly, often asking for an up front service fee that seems very reasonable. After they get their money, like any good con artist, they disappear. An easy way to avoid these guys is to remember the old truism: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. If your band that has never played a show outside of your home state is now miraculously booked for an east coast tour, beware. Be very ware.

In a way, maybe these guys are the most admirable. At least they have the balls to admit what they are: useless sycophants who rip off bands. The other guys will throw you a bone here and there, and you'll get to play, but you're slowly and painfully being ripped off just the same. Its kind of like how when the mafia demands money from you for an imaginary service its called extortion, but when your car insurance company does it, its called the law. In the end, whether you play a bullshit promoter show, enter a battle of the bands, or just give your money directly to a con artist, it gets your career to the same place.

In conclusion, I'm no dummy. I know that most bands suck and don't deserve fame and fortune. But they also don't deserve to be ripped off, strung along, and abused. If a band isn't good and can't draw anyone, they shouldn't get shows. Eventually, they would figure it out and quit.  However, thanks to all the really cool people who quit being drug dealers when they realized they could make more money throwing phony Battle of the Bands for idealistic young musicians, we have a never-ending cycle of empty bars and terrible bands with full show schedules. Why would any casual fan go out to support local music when they are practically guaranteed to have to sit though a poorly planned, nonsensical bill with waaay too many bands on it until 2 AM? This is why cover bands make so much money!

So, thanks a lot you bottom-feeders. Having experienced firsthand everything I've just written about, but having also gotten to work with a lot of reasonable promoters and straight shooters, I can honestly say that you are bullshit. Your amoral attitude and clear resentment of musicians is topped only by how pathetic your attempts are to legitimize your scams. But, as long as there are people left to dream, there will be people there to bilk them.

Hey Buddy, I'm Talking To You

Today, I'm talking to this guy:

If you can't read what this passionate anti-protester (Frank Decker) has written on his "with-it" webcam spiral-bound lecture sheet, here's what it says:

      I've lived below the poverty line. My wife and I decided in 1996 that we were sick of poverty.

     We went back to school. We earned degrees. We got jobs. No one handed that to us. We earned

     it. We did it. I didn't go through all that struggle while raising 3 children so that I could support

     lazy ass people who want nothing but government handouts. You want to "occupy" something?

     Occupy a job and start contributing. I AM the 53%.

I've taken the liberty of correcting Frank's rampant capitalizations as he hasn't been to college since the mid-nineties, but his point remains flagrant and obnoxiously clear: every Occupy protester is jobless and lazy and wants nothing but free government handouts. The 53% that he IS refers to the percentage of people who make enough money that the government can actually take taxes from it.

Wow Frank, what can I say? You're a real rags-to-riches Disney story come to life. If you can do it, anyone can. I mean, fuck those lazy-ass protesters, right?

Well, let's break down Frank's elegant autobiography a little further, starting with his sweet pic. What's this? He's a white male. Well, gosh, I'm sure that fact didn't close too many doors for him. I guess its a good thing he didn't have to deal with any of the socio-economic or systemically  racist factors that to this day confront minorities in our country. I wonder if the same arrogantly simplistic garbage scrawled on that notebook would have been so comfortingly linear if it was written by the black Frank Decker, or the "child of immigrants and living here illegally through no fault of his own" Frank Decker. I seriously doubt it. On to the text.

"My wife and I decided..." Whoa, whoa, stop right there. Wife, huh? Well, I guess its a good thing that Frank chose not to be gay. That might also have been somewhat of a speed bump on his meteoric rise to the top. I mean, thanks to being legally heterosexually married, he gets tax deductions that, say, a gay couple couldn't get in many states, or for that matter, a single person couldn't get anywhere. But I'm sure that America's Workhorse here doesn't feel like that's a government handout or anything. Surely he deserves to pay less in taxes than some of the other illustrious 53% by viture of the fact that he found some chick to straight-marry him. Good work, Frank! Onward.

"...in 1996..." 1996, huh? Lets take a look at the comparably adverse economic climate that Frank had to struggle though in order to be able to thumb his nose at every unemployed person in the country today. Oh, what's that you say, first result in a cursory internet search?

     During 1996, the U.S. economy saw moderately high growth with low inflation and

     historically low unemployment. Gross domestic product is forecast to have grown

     2.8 percent for 1996. The economy created approximately 2.5 million additional jobs

     in 1996, a 2.1 percent increase from 1995 levels. Inflation again remained low, around

     3.0 percent...

 Huh. How about that. "Historically low unemployment" you say? "2.5 million additional jobs" you say? "Inflation again remained low"? Well that doesn't sound so bad at all. Ooohh.... so the Clinton years were actually the opposite of today's economy. Well I guess its a good thing that Frank was seeking employment in one of the most stable economies of the past quarter century, with a growing job market and record low unemployment. I bet it would have really sucked if he'd graduated today, with record student loan debt and historically high unemployment. Although, I'm sure he would have been just fine. Frank isn't anything like today's lazy-ass college graduates, whose $40,000 BAs no longer qualify them for the same jobs they would have 10 years ago. He earned his job, unlike those sycophants who carelessly idle their time away in un/underpaid internships or perpetually teaching as adjuncts while leeching off of hard working taxpayers like him.

Yup, no one handed it to Frank. He, a born member of the statistically most financially successful demographic in the country, pulled himself up by his bootstraps and fought his way through reasonable tuition rates and a booming economy into a stable job from which he could pass judgement on any unemployed hippie filth who has a problem with anything. 

Alright, enough sarcasm. This guy makes me sick. His narrow-minded, unempathetic arrogance makes me fucking sick. He says no one handed him his job. Well I'm sorry, that's just plain false. His boss handed him his job, just like everyone elses'. Additionally, just like everyone elses', his boss can fire his ass when whatever institution he works for downsizes due to economic factors. That is, unless Frank has tenure, which he very well might considering that it looks like he took his chic webcam photo in an 8th grade classroom. I'm sure if that was the case, he'd feel that no one handed him that either.

Of course it would be this guy. He's the apple in the eye of the corporate elite; the complacent, counter-protesting arm of the middle class. These are the kind of people that will always use their mediocre good fortune and moderate accomplishments to hold themselves above those who have had to overcome significantly larger challenges in order to get anything. These are the kind of people who will inexplicably find a way to change the narrative of any movement into this inane notion that hippies still exist and are finding new and inconvenient ways to burden those noble, tax-paying WASPs rather than finally swapping their tye-dye bandannas for business suits.

I've seen a lot of news photographs. I went to one of the protests. I saw a lot of different things, and a lot of mixed messages. I've yet to see a single sign, speech or commentator that has said "We Deserve Free Money From The Government". So what the fuck are you talking about, Frank? People are out there correctly protesting corporate criminality, greed, and influence within our government. (You want to bitch about government handouts with your taxes, how about the bank bailouts?) And yet, no matter how many people repeat their outrage at this variety of injustices, your answer will always be the same: Get a Job, Hippie. How comfortingly eternal.

Of course there are people out there gaming the system. Everyone knows that, but people like Frank believe that anyone with a dissenting position must be in on it. The Franks of the world aren't millionaires or billionaires, and they never will be, but they simply won't hear of anyone protesting them because they honestly believe that that bailed-out multi-millionaire CEO was just a really hard worker who earned it, just like he did, and no one should be able to take that away from anyone. See, what the Franks don't realize is that they're only one layoff away from being one of those "lazy ass" people who don't "occupy" a job any longer. They're only ever one car crash or house fire away from being a single parent with a significantly reduced income on which to raise a family, or worse yet, from having their orphaned kids have to grow up with an aunt or other extended family relative because of some terrible tragedy. One thing is all it takes, and those governmental safety nets that they call "handouts" won't seem like such a burden.

There, but for the grace of God, Frank.

So take that piece of paper and shove it up your ass.