Welcome to the Music Business - The Low Life
The Audiophiles were the second band on a bill at a dive called the Time Out in Concord tonight. The opening act was supposed to be ROBUSTO at 10:00pm , followed by the Audiophiles at 11:00 and the headline act G-9 after that.
Here is what actually happened - the manager was sick and wasn't at the venue. ROBUSTO didn't get there on time, so G-9, the headliners, set up and played the opening set. The Audiophiles showed up on time (10:15), got their equipment inside and then, because they are underaged, the assistant manager gave them $25 and told them to go get themselves some burritos and hang out at the burrito shop until 10:45 when they were supposed to set up. They get back to the venue, and ROBUSTO had arrived, and made a huge fuss about how they were supposed to be first (even though they were late) therefore they should get to play before the Audiophiles. The acting manager agreed to this. This left the guys hanging outside in the cold, since they couldn't sit inside, expected to wait another hour before they were to play. All of this for renumeration of $7.50 a head for every paying customer who says they were there to see the Audiophiles. As far as I could figure (since this is 25 miles from their home turf, and a 21+ club where none of their friends could come ...) that would be exactly $30.00, $7.50 each for the four parents that trekked out there to see them play.
Once we arrived out there, all 3 of Zak's moms and Jeremy's step-dad, we found the guys hanging out on the sidewalk trying to figure out where they could go to keep warm. We talked with the guys, had a discussion with the clueless woman who was acting as manager, and recommended to the Audiophiles that they just bail-out. The low life was the leader of ROBUSTO, who declared to the (sparse) crowd that the "other band" had been "kicked-out" and that they would get the "pleasure" of getting two full sets of "melt your face" entertainment from them.
As the drummer of the Audiophiles said as we were leaving "that was one way to waste an evening."
I found the other band on MySpace - they have only a fraction on the traffic that the Audiophiles have, and these guys are at least ten years older ... pathetic to think that they feel so threatened by this young band that they had to be that rude and obnoxious.
As always - check out the Audiophiles on MySpace, download their tunes, look for some new music in the next couple of months.
http://www.myspace.com/theaudiophilescali