Thanks for Rocking!

[manny at telerama.com]

Quoting your-friendly neighborhood-pain-in-the-ass <deviant_1 at hotmail.com>:

> Joe, don't let Manny get to you. You did a great job.

I wasn't trying to 'get' to Joe. I complemented him on his job and his
resourcefulness. The compromise he struck with the bands to lower their fees
is also admirable - parties should be able to compromise in just such a
situation (Jeremy David are you listening).

If anything, the ones who 'got' to Joe (by all reports I've heard) are the
Egyptians. If what I've heard is true, they 'got' to him by extorting for $300
extra bucks above and beyond the cost of Oakland Cafe. A place the size of
Sphinx Cafe being worth $500 just for room rental? No way. Had he moved the
show to GA, even at the last minute (and two hours out, he had a captive
audience who were pretty much going to come anyway - how many of those 160
people would not have followed him to Garfield? 20 maybe?) his costs would have
*dropped* by $100 instead of rising $300. Which would probably have enabled to
keep his original guarantees with the bands.

I am 'not' trying to 'get to' Joe. I am only trying to open a dialogue with him
based on simple reason and logic.

 Most people would have
> just canceled if they had lost their venue.

Not necessarily. I have been able in the past to move shows on a week's to
several hours' notice. In fact when the Millvale Industrial Theater closed, I
moved more than month's worth of shows to other venues in only one day's worth
of phone calls. It's all about being resourceful. Which Joe was, to his credit.
I'n not saying Sphinx Cafe wasn't an option. I'm saying there was a better
option from the start. If he had had his 'shady radar' on with regards to the
Oakland Cafe, he might have seen that a bit earlier and avoided the Egyptians'
extortion.

You not only went on with the
> show but found a great replacement venue.

I agree that it was admirable but not necessarily that the Sphinx is a great
replacement venue. $500 room plus $250-300 for Jerry's PA system means that
the Sphinx was about as expensive as *Laga was*. That's not 'great'. Not to
mention that loud music coming through those church windows might be OK on
Memorial Day Weekend when nobody's around, but it's certainly going to be
a noise problem in the future (like it was with The Eye, over and over and over
with the people behind the venue calling the police - many people don't realize
that one of the main reasons the Eye was never viable was that it could have
never been feasibly soundproofed against those complaints).

Keep up the good work and I'm
> looking forward to seeing what you'll bring to the city in the future.

As am I. My suggestion, obviously, is that at least *some* of it makes a lot
more sense financially at the GA than anywhere else. If you only want to pull
off really popular bands, and you're very concerned with keeping everything in
Oakland, then ignore my suggestions. If so, you're idealistic in a way that I
am not - you run up against a hard reality which says that Oakland is dead for
alternative/subcultural options, killed by Pitt and chain stores and Oakland
Real Estate, and you refuse to admit defeat. The fact that Brave New World,
Laga, the Upstage, and the Beehive have disappeared as venue options doesn't
daunt you or slow down your determination. I've got to admire that to some
extent.