Bands might feel a little self-conscious about performing at St. Louis’ The Creepy Crawl after reading their “Top 39 Annoying Things That Bands Do” list, but odds are the crew at The Creepy Crawl would rather those bands didn’t play there anyway. Along with being a pretty hilarious list with some great anecdotes, the piece helps reaffirm one of the reasons that bands might not be able to survive off of touring alone: Musicians aren’t all that bright. That said, I’m looking forward to a “Top 39 Annoying Things That Clubs Do” list from some artist who feels confident enough to risk pissing off the hand that feeds.
A few highlights:
1. Bands that feel compelled to bang on their drums and guitars in an annoying display of lack of talent before the doors open. Usually this occurs when we are trying to talk to someone on the phone or give instructions to employees. There is a place for this type of behavior, its called your basement.
17. Bands who pester you to book their bands “side-project”. Side-project is another name for self-indulgent crap so embarrassingly bad they can’t dignify it with a name and gives them a cover why none of their friends will come see them “perform”. (Would you go see your friend masturbate if they asked you to come watch?). Note to bands: think of your side-project as a project never to get booked again.
18. Bands who show up wearing “All Access” laminates around their neck. (Note to these bands: We honor these laminates for the bathroom and parking lot areas only.) I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up but you don’t see me walking around wearing a spacesuit at the club. We’re convinced these people are recovering air guitar addicts from the 80′s.
25. Bands that send us emails that say: “We’re XXX from XXX. We wanted to play your club on XXX date. How about if you book us a show, put a bunch of good drawing locals on that bring a lot of beer drinkers and then you guys can make a lot of money and we can put on a great show in front of a big crowd and get paid. That way we all win!” Here’s an idea, why don’t we book a show with a bunch of good drawing locals that bring beer drinkers, we make a lot of money from the show and you can keep your sorry asses the fuck in XXX? (Really, we’re not making this stuff up, we actually get these emails).
27. Bands that pester you constantly to open for a particular touring band because they swear they worship their musical footprints and are the heaven endorsed guiding light of their musical lives. On the day of the show and after you told them sorry but the show was already filled up they don’t even bother to come to the show. However, someone at the show reports hearing they decided to catch the Story of The Year show at the Pageant that night.
34. Pathetic reasons why bands cancel. Bands that cancel 10 DAYS ahead of time because they have to go to a funeral! We feel so sad for these bands. Geez, I didn’t know your grandpa was being stored on ice for 10 FUCKING DAYS! Who is he, Walt Disney??? If your going to friggin lie, try and come up with something half-way believable please.
39. Bands that read this list and then send us emails like this one:
“dont take this the wrong way i am just a guitar player but ur annoying list was some what funny, but it makes u guys seem like a bunch of pricks u would not have ur joint with out the annoying bands. i frequent ur place when my friends play but if u dont treat the bands that deserve respect with respect they will not play shows and tell others and so on and so forth just a little concernced.”
If that wasn’t awesome enough, the bar also has a Wayne St. Wayne Drinking Fund, which allows patrons to donate to their cleaning guy, a former wrestler/wrestling photographer.
Top 39 Annoying Things That Bands Do [The Creepy Crawl via Metal Sucks]
40. Bands that in any way remind me that, while I once loved dark,
stale spaces and found romance in the thankless pursuit of breaking new
bands, I’ve long since burned out and should probably see if my
father-in-law needs somebody to look after one of his Papa John’s
franchises.
The list’s funny.
But I have a feeling that a lot of these things wouldn’t happen to them if they would book bands that weren’t so craptastic and/or stupid.
It looks like Sloppy Seconds are playing there on the 4th of July, so I expect this list to get a whole lot longer.
@GWY: No, it doesn’t matter how good the acts on your stage are, any venue will always be inundated knuckle dragging dipshits that think long winded explanations of how awesome they are will land ‘em a show. I’ve seen it happen too many times. I wish I had this list back in the day.
“(Would you go see your friend masturbate if they asked you to come watch?)”
It really does depend on which friend was doing the asking.
what’s wrong with watching your friends masturbate? these guys are very judge-y…
I see the Tossers are headlining on that flyer. They should have a rule against booking bands whose names are too similar to URLs for gay porn sites.
[blog.newsok.com]
@Fried Bologna Is Back!: a) Sloppy Seconds are still around? Weird. (They’re locals.) b) I’d sincerely hope if this is the same Sloppy Seconds we’re talking about, they’d have their shit together by now, having been together for 20 some odd years and toured the world a bit.
But yeah, this list, thumbs up and I’m a musician. Sharing a bill with bands like that (as I’ve done often) is oooh so much fun.
This reminds me of that old feature of anonymous interviews with music insiders. I think one of them was with a club promoter. I liked those. Of course, I also liked the pictures of assholes at concerts, maybe I just crave consistency for consistency’s sake. Time to see that therapist I guess.
Oh geez. If I have a free minute tomorrow, I’ll happily compile my promoter gripe list for Idolator. With that said, I think I can totally agree with the Creepy Crawl’s list.
I have seen these black, gay Republican unicorns, and believe you me, they are majestic creatures.
The real joke here is that the Creepy Crawl has an owner who has both puked on customers and been pissed on by his staff after passing out, the worst sound system in town, and the rudest staff I’ve ever seen in a venue. They’ve cancelled shows on less than 24 hours notice, their sound board usually has about half the faders burnt out and the mains are always blown, and the staff has quit en masse at least threee times that I’m aware of- most recently last week when a new venue opened. Not to mention the fact that they’ve been without a liquor license for probably around 25% of the decade they’ve been open. The only thing more embarrassing than that stupid list is the club itself.
“6. Bands that bring their own “personal” sound-tech. After seeing him try to operate the soundboard for 5 minutes the house soundman concludes that this guy has absolutely no clue how to operate a PA. Accordingly, the band sounds like total shit.”
LOL. House soundmen who can actually work the equipment and/or make their system sound halfway decent, let alone good, are rarer than black gay republican unicorns.