THD - "evolution of our decay" album

[Chris Rapier]

As much as I've disagreed with many over ephemera over the years I've
always felt that he's a very distinct and positive force in the scene
here. Someone who is willing to use their encyclopedic knowledge of
music to take real risks. I really respect that and the work he's
done. Has he pissed off some bands over the years? Of course. Does
that diminish his impact in any way? No. You don't have to be a nice
guy, you just have to get shit done. Manny has gotten shit done.

On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 4:26 PM, John <anhedonia77 at comcast.net> wrote:
> I've been subscribed to this list for close to 10 years I'm guessing and it
> never seems to change. While I don't really listen to a lot of the music
> people subscribed to the list listen to anymore, I still stay on it in case
> there is an actual decent conversation or there is news of a band playing
> Pittsburgh that I wouldn't mind seeing. Over the years I've noticed one
> thing that is consistent on the list, Manny has been flamed many, many
> times. It almost seems like some readers can't wait for him to respond to a
> message so they can bring up some shit that happened however many years ago.
> I don't know Manny on a personal level, only meeting him here or there at a
> show he is involved with. This discussion got me thinking about the shows I
> have gone to that Manny has been involved with and it made me realize that I
> have seen a ton of killer bands solely because he put the show together or
> brought the bands to Pittsburgh. I've been to a number of his shows that
> should have pulled decent crowds but didn't because people in Pittsburgh
> would rather sit at home and bitch that no good bands ever play here and
> that the Pittsburgh music scene sucks rather than going out to shows. I
> really think the guy deserves more credit than he is given based on the work
> he has done for the Pittsburgh music scene in the past 20+ years. Sure, he
> may have done some questionable things in the past, but who hasn't. I just
> can't seem to understand why people would want to attack a guy for a few
> things he's done wrong, when he really has done a lot of good for music in
> Pittsburgh.
>
> John
>
> Jeremy wrote:
>>
>> 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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>>>
>>
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