Boozeday Tuesday has moved out of Mike's. That means if you're an old fart who likes early shows (often featuring the best local bands and occasional out-of-towners like the Drams), the best time to catch them regularly is now from 8 to 10 p.m. at the Brick. Tonight's show brings cabaret quartet Alacartoona and surf-rock outfit the Von Hodads, both of which are local. Watch out — the dude from Alacartoona will feel you up during the show, whereas the chick will not.
No Way to Treat Strangers
The LA band Hello Stranger's Myspace blog tells of some unfortunate treatment the fun-loving indie pop outfit endured from local punks. Evidently, these assholes are the perps. If you know them, give them a good dressing down. Here's an excerpt:
The next afternoon we woke up and went into the city, and then craziness ensued. The Ice House is an all ages venue in Kansas City, and it is in this huge warehouse, and there's not even a beverage for sale, just a drinking fountain way off in the corner, and a lot of throw up in the toilets. We played with this band from Connecticut called Meet the Antagonist, and this band from KC called Beautiful Bodies. The singer Alicia who is hot as hell and who I absolutely love, helped us get the show. But all you bands out there, listen up: do not play at the Ice House. We got paid $20 and they weren't even nice. But the kids were into it and some even came out from Lawrence so we were happy.Afterwards, we caravaned with the other two bands and a couple other cars to a party that sort of took place around a fence in an alley. I thnk these people were a little younger than us, and they thought it was fun to take a shopping cart and fill it with people and then hurl it down the hill as hard as possible into a tree. I thought this was a very dangerous game but it still made me smile. Finally we tried to leave, and the boys drove the van over to get me (which was filling up with other people), and they were blasting Salt and Peppa and shining flashlights all around and yelling at me and just basically being a bunch of idiots. But these KC pseudo punks did not think we were so funny. They started putting beer bottles and this tire they had been clutching for some reasonin front of our tires. Then they started spitting in the direction of our van, to which I responded "If you spit a little harder you may actually hit the van", to which they responded by pouring beer on our windshield and the side of the car, to which Ben and Jared responded by saying "You're wasting good beer!!!! We'll drink it!!!"and Ben stuck his head out the window and they started pouring it all over him, and Jared was trying to drive us out of there crushing beer bottles, and then they started screaming things at us--really smart things like, "California sucks!", and they started jumping on the van so we couldn't drive, and trying to slash our tires, and so Jared gunned it and swerved around and they fell off, and then we were about twenty feet away from them and they were still screaming. Jared just sat there dumbfounded and I was still screaming back like a banshee, and I kept sticking my middle finger out the window, until I came up with my own brilliant line, "fuck you you small town fucks!!!" and then they threw a mickeys bottle at the window so hard that it actually scared me, and finally Jared drove away.
But instead of go home, we hit up some bars. We were too tired to drive to Chris's so we stayed at the Econo Lodge but do not stay there either because they chareged us $10 for every extra hour we stayed. Ass holes.
Love ,
Juliette
Sorry, Juliette. If you come back, we promise to do you right.
This entry mentions the Ice House (aka American Ice), an all-ages venue, that, like many of its kind, appears to be struggling. It's not surprising that a band like Hello Stranger wouldn't make much money — that's the kind of band that should be at the Brick, the Record Bar, or, better yet (for them), someplace in Lawrence. The Ice House policy, quoted from an email I received last week:
1st $100 in the door is the house's (this is our daily cost for the building alone!) Everything above the first $100 is split 50/50, house and bands.All bands are split equally, unless prior arrangements are made (with us).
Further:
Bands are expected to sell a minimum of 10 tickets each on 4 band shows, 15 tickets each on 3 band shows. This is the least amount we can do and stay open. Please remember we are not a bar, we have no other way to pay the rent and provide a venue for you to play besides ticket sales!
NO GUEST LIST.
It's good to hear the venue's owners are talking about moving. $100 a day is some crazy overhead. I'd like to see an all-ages venue like The Opolis open here. Located in Norman, Oklahoma (the college-town home of Oklahoma U, just outside OKC), the Opolis is small and artsy; it sells Cokes, water and beer (to those of age); it's comfortable and not at all dirty, dingy, huge or weird, which is exactly what the El Torreon and Ice House are/were. I'm not saying by any means that I want the Ice House to fail. I just want its owners to find a way of making it work that's both good for them and for the bands they bring house. And, of course, one that's good for the fans who fund the enterprise.
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yeah you guys should get the stick out of your ass. and also, kansas city isnt a "small town" dumbasses.
haha! those dudes got punked by the punks. fuck them, i hope they die.
ps. you are worthless.
In response to the other comments, I have to give my opinion too. As for our friends in Hello Stranger, they are a different band than we are, meaning I don't know much about their touring, and what they need, and their expenses, maybe the Icehouse wasn't the best place for them...not meaning that in anyway against them, I had a blast with them and they are EXTREMELY talented and great people. The Icehouse booked our band, a band that has NEVER toured before, but they booked us without question. And for people who haven't been to the Icehouse, the equiptment, sound, lights, and stage were probably the best I've seen around. All the bands sounded great, we sounded better that night than the rest of the tour, and great sound makes for great first impression to new kids. They must have bought $50 worth of our merch, and that in addition to the $20 pay out, was amazing. The money it takes to run a venue of that size and of that caliber of equiptment, the power needs, and paying staff, is nothing short of immense. It just shows that next time we come thru KC, we need to do a bit more promotion, even after the amazing promotion done by Alicia Solo of the Beautiful Bodies. As for the cleanliness, it wasn't terribly dirty, but that's the beauty of it...we're playing a rockshow...(has anyone ever been to clubs in NYC?) If the venue payout isn't enough, then we just need to bring more heads....and our tour was a huge learning experience, a networking opportunity, and the fans grew for us in KC immensely because of the Icehouse show, and we look forward to working with Drew, John, and the rest of his staff again. We were treated beautifully by them and by the kids of Kansas City.
Drew-
1. Ask anyone who has ever worked in Bars, Clubs, Restraunts- cleaning the bathroom is part of the fucking gig. Period. Run a venue= Bleach the shitter. IF you have no interest in running a venue that people want to go to then don't bitch when no one shows up. The bathrooms may seem nitpicky but apparently people do in fact care about that sort of thing.
2. That part of the Icehouse myspace page that talks about bands needing to sell so many tickets to play and the overall payment system is total bullshit. Obviously a small band from CA is not going to fucking draw on ther own and if you are not going to build a bill out of some STRONG local bands to bring the people to the gig, then you deserve both the financial burdens and the public derision with which you have been saddled. Bands SHOULD talk shit about you in thier livejournals or blogs because it's YOUR venue and yet you fail to show even the smallest amount of interest in seeing the shows go well. And let's be straight, posting a calender of events on your myspace page and throwing a flyer in the doorway of the Broadway roasting company means exactly jack shit. As the person in charge of the venue you are at least 50% responsible for promoting the events that you host and 100% responsible for promoting the venue itself as a place for people to want to go.
No disrespect intended here but you should seriously think about this shit because it does matter.
You have to realize we are just a bunch of poor broke musicians, trying to make a place to play, we got screwed on the Icehouse, I read the other posts, and it is sad to me, we do the best we can with what we have, we put our all on the line to try and provide the best venue we can.. and all I hear is " the bathrooms aren't very nice...." ????
I have been in a lot of bathrooms at a lot of places, and I've SURELY seen worse, And the other "link from the whiny band from CA who only made $20... They didn't sell ANY tickets, NO ONE came to see them play, Beautiful Bodies carried the entire show and they acted like a bunch of Prima Donna "Rock Stars" who looked down there nose at us as a bunch of backwards hicks... In short THEY came into OUR place turned up there noses at us and then had the gall to bitch we didn't do enough for them.... We can't help it if no one came to see them... MAYBE their band isn't as popular as they think.... I was just going to let it be but since you felt it was worth publishing this blog I had to respond....
The other bands that played that same night like "Meet The Antagonist" had a great time and can hardly wait to come back.....
If you think our overhead is high, try pricing rent and utilities on commercial space... thats not counting what you have to pay people to work...
ya. the pay system is NOT changing as far as i know. the landlord was making it harder and harder for us to fix stuff up, and like the article about the el torreon shutting down/icehouse opening mentioned 20 practice spaces, ...the landlord spent all that money behind our backs. so i quit, it wasn't going the way we had planned and i wasn't comfortable with the way it was working out. if bands can't make enough gas money with even a small crowd, then what's the point?
ps- i wasn't present for the Hello Stranger/Meet the Antagonist show (i think i was playing/running a show elsewhere), nobody said anything to me about that night until i read their blog, and as far as i know there wasn't any puke in the toilets. i was really bummed to hear how bad it went... overall the whole icehouse experience has me bummed out.
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