THD - "evolution of our decay" album

[Jeremy]

You're right. It's completely unlike you to threaten anybody. That
time when you pulled a knife on a kid at at show you had promoted was
a total fluke too.


On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 7:49 PM,  <manny at garfieldartworks.com> wrote:
>> Ah, so they kicked you out and instructed new DJs to call the cops if
>> anyone sees you near the station because you were just too good for
>> them. Good story.
>
> They kicked me out because two people there (not the whole staff, or even
> remotely most of it)
> were offended by aspects of my personality & action enough to collude,
> cobble together some real and/or imagined peccadilloes, and then convince
> three other people to back them. If what I did for the station, as well as
> for the scene at large, was really taken into account, they wouldn't have
> had a shot at doing so - most of the station staff was either on my side
> (I got 15 signatures from station staff within a couple days of my
> banning) or didn't care one way or the other.
>
> Let's review a bit of what I was doing at the time I was banned, and what
> I was supposedly accused of:
>
> 1) I was both PSA director and concert calendar director. I had served in
> both of those volunteer positions for at least two years and faithfully
> executed my function week in and week out. I used the office to make the
> calendars and PSA cards etc. And in the course of using the office I
> designed some show flyers on their computer and printed them out. Not
> copies, just originals. A couple of sheets per week, in other words. At
> the time, others at the station were using the same computer to do their
> *homework*, generating dozens of sheets per week, and also to print up
> other show flyers for their own shows. None of them were banned, of
> course.
>
> 2) Also, it was accused that I was using the station to take calls from
> people. That was patently untrue. I had a home phone and I had a message
> machine there, so i was not using the station as an office. I made calls
> to venues and others during the course of making calendar listings. Some
> people from venues may have called the station while I wasn't there,
> asking to speak to me. (In fact, one of the two people who concocted the
> ban plot claimed to have received a handful of calls asking for me, as if
> it was such a big deal just to tell someone 'he's not here'). But how is
> that different from anyone calling the station and asking for someone who
> works at the station, but doesn' t happen to be there at the time?
> Remember, this was in an area before everyone had cellphones. Station
> staffers used the phone all the time to call out from it.
>
> 3) I had provided the station with hundreds of hard-to-find import/indie
> experimental/industrial
> albums and CD at rockbottom wholesale prices, for which the station never
> even had to spend a dime for out of their Student Senate budget. Instead,
> the station paid for them by trading in unwanted promos, which they would
> have taken to Paul's or Dave's anyway if they didn't trade them with me
> for cool albums. If you go to WRCT's library and look under experimental,
> you'll still find those releases there that I provided to the station. The
> music director, with whom i had no issues and who was not part of the five
> people who banned me, had an understanding with me which worked quite well
> as it enabled me to order records for myself from wholesalers while also
> supplying them to the station at wholesale rates. Nobody was being hurt
> (except the shitty bands whose CD were going to be traded away, anyway)
> and  everyone was being helped.
>
> Meanwhile, a simple misunderstanding about a single record (a Rasputina
> promo CD), which I thought was up for grabs, totally owned up to taking
> (even though no one knew who had taken it - you've got to ask, why would I
> finger myself for no reason, if it wasn't an honest mistake?) and
> returned, was brought up as the *only* *one* *clear* evidence of supposed
> 'theft', which simply never happened. No theft ever occurred - merely
> transfer of unwanted albums in equal measure for desired albums. All of
> which the music director was OK with. No theft was ever proven. No
> examples were given. It was just merely *accused*, without any proof or
> citations, and would never have stood up in any court other than a
> kangaroo one.
>
> 4) I had tried to get the station to run concert announcement carts (not
> just for me but for concerts all around town) which would be the impetus
> for being able to give away many concert tickets to shows. In other words,
> I was trying to serve as the function of promotions director, a position
> which the station had not had for many years due to its total lack of
> caring about connecting with the outside community. I was trying to give
> the station some real promotional weight and significance in the music
> scene. At the time of being banned, I had recently been rebuffed from
> using the production facilities at WRCT by one of the very two people who
> started this plan. That is no coincidence.
>
> 5) I had been accused of 'threatening' people. However the only instance
> that could be brought up
> is that one of the two people who started the plot said that one time,
> years before, i said something about wanting to 'snap their neck'. I
> didn't deny doing it (it was so long ago that how could I possibly
> remember a tossed off comment like that, and as far as I know I could have
> been quoting the Prong lyrics 'snap your fingers, snap your neck') but I
> asked the kangaroo assemblage if they could think of any other instances
> of supposed 'threats' and no one had anything to add except one instance
> of a wrestling altercation many years ago. Which just so happened to be
> with the friendly, on-my-side music director with whom I had the
> understanding about the CDs. The music director no longer cared about our
> fight from long ago, but apparently to the other people who had nothing do
> with it, it was an issue for them and therefore somehow another example.
> So, a vastly trumped up charge. Practically a lie.
>
> 6) Finally, I had been accused of missing the beginning of my show by the
> program director.
> This was in fact the only true accusation. I had in fact been warned about
> it before, and that was
> grounds for losing my show for the semester. Which I would have been
> perfectly willing to accept
> as due punishment. Losing my show for a semester, however, was certainly
> not grounds for
> being banned from station, especially when I was serving other useful
> functions. There were certainly other people who were on the station staff
> who did things (such as engineering etc)
> who didn't have a show that semester.
>
> So that's pretty much it. I got accused of theft, threatening people,
> printing flyers on their printer, and having people call me at the
> station. All of that was either trumped up to make it look like a way
> bigger deal than it was, or not even true at all. The only true accusation
> was that I had repeatedly been late to my show for most of that semester.
> And that's it.
>
> THAT is the 'story', as you like to call it.
>
> Also, regarding the dictum to new DJs and the cops -
> That is a standard procedure they did for anyone they banned from the
> station.
> It applies to anyone they banned, and they banned other people as well for
> doing things a lot more odious than anything i had either actually done or
> was falsely accused of.
>
> I didn't do anything to insinuate that I would come back to the station
> and doing anything untoward. I never said threats, I never typed threats.
> (In fact, the only thing I did do was circulate a petition amongst WRCT
> staff, off station grounds). Therefore, the haters were merely following
> procedure, plus hating me as they did, and their justification for banning
> me being so flimsy and unwarranted, they were simply so afraid that I
> would cause trouble. Which I did not.
>
> 'New DJs', ten years later, would have no idea what I looked like, nor
> would they possibly care to follow that dictum anyway, so that part of it
> is pretty useless at this point, and just a relic of that particular
> incident and nothing more.
>
> If you recall correctly, I was a DJ on WRCT for 12 years before the ban,
> from 1986 on. Obviously I could have been banned any other time. I had
> been doing promotions for the station in the past, and I had been
> providing the hard-to-find records for many years previous. But I wasn't
> banned until 1998. So it didn't have to do with what I did over that time,
> so much as how this particular group of five people (and mostly the two
> who hatched the plot) perceived me as a hated threat
> at that exact particular time.
>
> Conjecture: Had I not done a show that summer (1998) on the station, or
> quit my summer show saying I couldn't handle it, and returned, say, two
> years later, the people who hatched the plot would no longer have been in
> the positions they were, and I would probably still be happily involved at
> WRCT in some respect, with people at the station who didn't hate me having
> my back. I present the following evidence: the year after I was banned,
> one of the two plotters became General Manager (hence, a power grab). Then
> the year after that, this person (and the other original plotter) left the
> station and never was heard from since.
>
> In retrospect, I do wish I had walked away at that particular time, but
> there was no way of knowing
> that, because the banning dictum came upon me suddenly, without warning
> and without recourse.
> So, that can only be hindsight.  I was there in the wrong place at the
> wrong time, mixing it up
> with the wrong people.
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