I have a love/hate relationship with booking agents. Most promoters do. We mutually understand that one does not exist without the other, but both are equally important to an artists’ career. The agent must ensure that the act gets booked into the smartest situations for the most lucrative payments. Conversely, the promoter must ensure he gets the most professional and promising acts at a rate that’s both fair to the act and commensurate to what they are worth in his market.

Most agents and I get along just fine. We’ve been working together long enough that they understand that I know my market and what we can generally expect from ticket sales for an act. They also know that I’m as persistent as I am because, in order to book shows in little old Harrisburg, one must be persistent.

All that said, once in awhile I’ll come across some asshole who has watched one-too-many episodes of Entourage and deserves the little respect he shows when dealing with a venue. However small my market is and no matter how challenging selling tickets in Harrisburg can be, I pride myself on how well we treat the acts that choose to play Harrisburg. Everyone’s got options and no one needs to play Harrisburg like they’d need to play Philadelphia or New York City on a record release tour.

I’ll keep this long story short : a few months ago, an act played one of my rooms. (I’ll leave out names to protect the innocent) The particular show they were playing was sold out a week in advance, they were the opener and we didn’t necessarily need the act on the bill. The show was what I call a “gift” – when a show sells out in advance, the opening act is getting tremendous exposure to a crowd that isn’t there to see them, but will still buy their merch and hopefully come back to see them when they return down the road.

From the start, it was agreed that they needed to load in at a specific time and were to be paid one hundred dollars. The day of the show, the band missed their load in time and wound up arriving over two hours late. Subsequently, we had to push the doors back about thirty minutes. They played their set, loaded out their gear and left sometime after. Normally, the band tracks down the promoter and asks to get paid. This band didn’t. They just left.

A week later, I got an email from the agent asking to send their check. Gladly, I dropped it in the mail. A week after THAT, I got another email asking me to send a different check cut to a different name because the band wasn’t able to cash checks in their band’s name.

Sure. Send the old one back and I’ll send you ANOTHER hundred dollar check.

Another couple weeks pass and I don’t see the check in the mail. From time to time, I’d see their band name pop up in the subject line of an email and I would delete it, assuming they were getting in touch to get a return date. Why would I want to book a return date for a band who showed up two hours late to a sold out show and caused me this much grief? There are literally hundreds of other bands I’d rather develop.

Fast forward a few months and I get a voicemail from the agent that was around three minutes long, chock full of expletives, accusations, threats and a demand for his bands hundred bucks.

Having some built up steam to blow off, I called the guy back and the conversation played out like two dogs barking at eachother through a fence. We hung up on each other and that was that.

About twenty minutes later, I decided to call the guy back, hoping to calm things down. After all, this was two type-a personalities in a pissing match over a hundred bucks. But the expletives and accusations kept flying, so I blew it off. Fuck it. Not worth it.

And sure, I’ll send you your hundred bucks.

Which is, if you’re still with me, where this story gets fun.

At first, I thought “Hmm, I’ll send him a hundred bucks in pennies.” – but decided the shipping would be too expensive.

And then, it was “A hundred bucks in crumpled up ones” -

But I knew I could do better.

So here’s what I decided to do. To settle this pissy hundred dollar dispute.

Remember- this band DID get their check for a hundred bucks but couldn’t cash it and I never got the check returned to me to issue a new one…

First, I went to the bank and got a hundred dollars in one dollar bills -

Then, I visited the party supply store and bought two pounds of glitter and confetti -

After my stop at the party store, I visited the adult shop up the road and looked for the nicest pink dildo I could find.

On my way home, I stopped by the post office and got a shipping box that would fit all of the goodness that I could pack into it -

And here’s the “how to” section of this post -

Take fifty of the one dollar bills and crumple them up as much as possible and layer them at the bottom of the mailing box -

Next, lay the pink dildo in the center of the dollar bills. *This is important because you want the dildo to be at the bottom of the pile*

Now, take one of the pounds of confetti and cover up the fifty ones and the pink dildo – (sort of like a dildo lasagna)

Then, the second layer of crumpled up one dollar bills -

Then, your other pound of confetti -

Finally, seal the box up good and tight ensuring that the confetti stays completely inside the box as to surprise the recipient as much as possible.

Take it down to the post office, mail it off and sit back and wait!

Now I’m not saying sending a pink dildo inside two pounds of confetti and a hundred crumpled up dollar bills is the way to settle EVERY disputed debt, but sometimes, when dealing with a shitty agent, there’s really no other way.

PS- This is perfectly acceptable behavior in the music industry.

Remember a few years ago when I’d bang my head against the desk for the repeated lauding the Patriot News would bestow on former Mayor Stephen Reed?

It seemed like Reed couldn’t fart without writers like John Luciew calling it something like “a new fragrant aroma to fill the air of the city of Harrisburg”

Back when the Sports Hall of Fame, Capitol View Commerce Center, The Incinerator, Restaurant Row and dozens more projects were announced that never came to fruition were “s’poda” be saviors of Harrisburg’s economic crunch, The Patriot News (and it’s website, PennLive) would write accolade after accolade for the man dubbed “Mayor For Life” during his 28 year reign at City Hall.

Interviews, profiles, editorials, endorsements and features would make one think that Stephen Reed was the Messiah, once here to rescue this riverbank city from it’s own devices, demographic disparity and limited tax base. But today, Heather Long sung a different tune with regard to the former leader.

In a long-overdue editorial in today’s Patriot News, Long said this about Reed: “…it’s hard not to wonder how different Harrisburg might be if the mayor who left the city with a financial mess and a smoke-drenched office to clean up had been in office a lot fewer years.”

Which, if you’ve been reading the Patriot News for the past few years, would likely leave you scratching your head as well.

One may argue that print media and traditional newspapers are in the twilight of their lives, on a life support system powered by the traffic these sites get from the comment sections and local fluff pieces. But after citizen activists like Eric Papenfuse, Bill Cluck, Jim Roxbury, Tara Auchey and this blogger have been beating the “Reed fucked up!” drum for the past several years, it’s about friggin’ time the Patriot got on board.

Maybe they’re taking a cue from the huge web traffic they garnered with the Sandusky scandal and realizing that they’re better off reporting the truth and doing actual investigative journalism than piggy-backing off the AP or placating the local good-ole-boys.

There are probably a hundred angles the Patriot can take when talking about the three decades of fiscal irresponsibility and mismanagement this city has suffered from. And probably hundreds of charges that can (and hopefully will) be levied on the people who drove us into this ditch.

But the local newspaper cannot live on the fence. They must take a stand and REPORT on what has actually happened inside Harrisburg city hall over the past thirty years.

And Heather Long took a step in the right direction today.

http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/index.ssf/2012/03/harrisburgs_mayor_reed_goes_fr.html

My friend Joe Casillo – fine young Irish lad that he is-  used to write a pretty neat blog called Instrumental Analysis (RIP)- geared toward the more fringe, up and coming bands too ripe even for Pitchfork’s cherry pickers. He’s the guy who turned me on to bands like Frightened Rabbit, These United States, J Roddy and The Business (he gave me a free ticket to my first J Roddy show at the Recher), We Were Promised Jetpacks and tons more way too hip to put in this intro.

Joe is thinking about starting up the blog again – but until then, he’s just sending around a PDF of shows he knows about that are coming through the area. And there are a ton. So in the spirit of teamwork and community, here is the list – the Instrumental Analysis List of Killer Rock Shows Coming Through The Region In The Next Few Months.

(PS – I’m too lazy to link each show to the individual band or venue site.)

You’ve seen all of the regional YouTube videos about what people in virtually every city in America “say” – hipsters and hippies and suits and snobs…here are a handful of things you’ll most likely never, ever, ever hear someone in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania say. Not ever in any of our lifetimes. Ever.

1. “Man, these roads are really smooth!”

Last year, I spent around nine hundred dollars repairing the front axle of my car. And I absolutely blame about eighty percent of those repair-needs on the totally horrific upkeep of the public roads within the city of Harrisburg. There are straight-up sinkholes throughout this place. SINKHOLES.

2. “Ya know what? I do feel really safe walking alone at night in Harrisburg. Especially on the dark streets where the streetlamps have burned out.”

If you choose to walk the streets of Harrisburg alone after dark, especially between the hours of 11PM and 3AM anywhere between Forster and Maclay, Front to Third, you are absolutely taking your personal safety in your own hands.

Oddly, though, you’re generally safe along Front Street in Riverfront Park.

3. “I feel pretty satisfied that my local tax dollars are going to good use and benefiting me directly.”

Have I mentioned the condition of the roads?

4. “I wish we had more bars here”

For a city of forty seven thousand, Harrisburg certainly has an abundance of watering holes. Some are swanky and some are skanky, but there really seems to be a bar or tavern within every three blocks here. You’re never more than a several hundred yard stumble from your next shot in Harrisburg.Which gives plenty of us plenty of options for the self medicating that seems to happen nightly here.

5. “Man, that river is so beautiful and CLEAN”

How many e-coli breakouts were there in this section of the Mighty Susquehanna last year?

6. “Considering how many parking tickets I get here for street cleaning, I feel that the streets are pretty darn clean and I probably deserve to pay a fine for failing to not park on alternating sides of the street, two days per month so the city maintenance guys can clean the streets.”

I wonder where there are more cigarette butts, chip bags, plastic juice bottles and empty beer cans and bottles? New Orleans after Mardi Gras? Or Harrisburg…any day of the week? For a city that spends so much time and effort on “street cleaning”, we sure do have some dirty streets.

7. “This place is so unified! I love the sense of connectedness and community and pride within this whole city!”

You do hear this in other cities. Other cities do have local pride, you know. It’s not like this everywhere. There are plenty of cities in America that have a unified community which spans all races and cultures and barriers and differences and they all share the same traits- pride in their surroundings. Midtowners seem to stay relatively connected…but Harrisburg, believe it or not is much larger than the area bound by Front, Third, Forster and Market streets.

8. “I moved to Harrisburg from [Insert much bigger, much cooler city here] because of the awesome job market.

Who moves to Harrisburg? There’s a major brain-drain problem here and it won’t be corrected until some progressive companies plant their roots here. Either that or when people start to realize that this is a large town and not a small city. We don’t have to feel so fragmented, yet different factions continue to operate as if they’re the only people in town. Why doesn’t HYP, Friends of Midtown, The Harrisburg Art Association and Jump Street all join together for one annual humdinger of an event? Why don’t all of the little different neighborhood associations have a monthly meeting with all neighborhood associations?

Finally…

9. “I completely trust my elected officials to make the decisions and push for what’s right and best for this city. I will vote for this current incarnation again and again.”

This is where it begins and ends. Linda Thompson was president of City Council before she was elected Mayor. And as much as she’d like to pass the blame of everything that’s wrong with this city to former Mayor Reed, she is just as guilty. The blood of the atrocity of the financial state of the city of Harrisburg is on every elected officials hands for the past twenty years.

Every bond deal, every backroom handshake, every stupid artifact, every dollar misappropriated from one fund to another and every brick of that cursed incinerator was a choice that someone you and I elected made.

When local politicians choose to realize that they are charged with fixing or failing this city, that’s when we’ll see true progress. But now? With the exception of a small handful of standouts, all I’ve seen is a bunch of bullshit posturing and career advancing politicking from the elected officials in Harrisburg. Guys – it’s not about you…it’s about the welfare of this city. And it’s pretty grim these days.