Girl Talk, THD, etc...

[manny at garfieldartworks.com]

> I didn't say "subjective," I said "comparatively."  And you answered
> yourself.  Elise/Distortion often announce months in advance, they
> blanket places with full-color fliers (and Elise is putting ads in the
> City Paper now)... I am usually sick of hearing about their show by
> the time it comes up.  With you, you have to be paying attention,
> that's all.  You don't need to be defensive.

I'm just explaining, that's all.

I'm not going to compare myself to anything Distortion does because Jim is
just an amazing guy and deserves nothing but praise. He is the
motherfucking king. Also, sometimes he and I collaborate on shows as well.

But what Elise does cannot exactly be compared to the way Jim and I put on
shows. With Elise, bands are auxiliary to the fetish event, like the way a
live P.A. would be secondary to a rave or a 10-minute appearance by a
rapper would be ancillary to a hiphop party. When Elise tries to put on a
pure concert (such as the recent System Syn) it doesn't work any better
than the ones I do, because there isn't any magical, untouched music
audience that she can reach which Jim and I cannot. The fetish crowd is a
different, more mainstream, and larger crowd than the ones going to shows,
and Elise has therefore probably determined that more money is needed to
be spent to reach those people.

I don't think there's any point throwing away hundreds of dollars on
wasted postcards and on City Paper ads when that is going to do very
little to increase the attendance for a music subgenre.

In fact, it would make more sense to take drives out to Hot Topics and The
Exchanges in the suburbs (by the way, I mail packages of posters to the
suburban Exchanges already) and pass out flyers at malls. That's where any
audience increase would come from, not from stacks of postcards
languishing in the South Side Beehive. But I don't know how well that
would work. From what I understand, Joe Presely tried to do some of that
suburban outreach when he was putting on shows (correct me if I'm wrong)
and it didn't really bear fruit.

Putting on shows is tough - putting on parties is a little easier. More
people overall like to go to parties than like to go to shows. Also, after
a party, a promoter doesn't have to do another one any time soon. Parties
can happen whenever. But anyone who does shows has to do them over and
over again on a regular schedule to accomodate touring dates (no one who
does one concert, and then waits a very long time to even put on one more
concert, can be taken seriously as a concert promoter) so it's a tougher
grind.