{"id":14255,"date":"2023-09-19T17:54:43","date_gmt":"2023-09-19T21:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/?p=14255"},"modified":"2023-09-20T01:50:09","modified_gmt":"2023-09-20T05:50:09","slug":"the-being-oliver-anthony-conundrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/the-being-oliver-anthony-conundrum\/","title":{"rendered":"The Being Oliver Anthony conundrum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>DM has a post up on <a href=\"https:\/\/areaocho.com\/anthony-oliver\/\">the latest doin\u2019s Oliver-wise<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Is economically illiterate. He cancelled his show because he won\u2019t do it unless he is paid $120,000, with the venue only charging $25 a ticket.<\/p>\n<p><em>Don\u2019t buy Cotton Eyed Joe tickets for $99 apiece. Sure as hell don\u2019t buy tickets for VIP passes for whatever bulls\u2013t prices they\u2019re on. Don\u2019t pay $100 for a ticket. If we\u2019ve got to cancel the venue and play somewhere else, we will<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately this kind of economic self sabotage is common:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Complains about poverty<\/li>\n<li>Doesn\u2019t understand money<\/li>\n<li>Demands $120,000 for a 60 min performance<\/li>\n<li>Cancels the performance he agreed to do because he thinks ticket price is too high<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The venue only holds 1,500 people. Oliver\u2019s take costs the venue $80 for each ticket, assuming that the show is sold out. He moved the concert to a larger venue (Knoxville Convention Center) which holds 10,000 people. Now his take costs $12 per ticket. The rest of the costs of the venue, as well as profit for the venue, have to come from the other $13.<\/p>\n<p>Do you think he learned about economy of scale? Or does he still not understand how money works?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>There\u2019s even more to it than just that, as I pointed out in a comment over there:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Mike Hendrix<\/strong> \u00b7 September 19, 2023 at 4:03 pm<\/p>\n<p>While I very much doubt Oliver is unaware of what his asking price might be, his booking agent\/manager\/whatever will be the one setting that, on a whatever-the-market-will-bear basis. 120k per gig is a pretty sweet payday for a mid-level-venue artist, no matter how you slice it.<\/p>\n<p>Back in Dec 92, my band played a three-night stand, two shows a night, at Tramps in NYC opening for Little Richard, billed as a \u201c60th birthday celebration.\u201d I became good friends with Richard over those three nights, who was absolutely thrilled with us\u2013even going so far as to give my manager and myself his home phone number so\u2019s a European tour as support act for Richard could be arranged.<\/p>\n<p>I know for a fact Richard made 60k per night for those three nights. And that was <em>Little Freakin\u2019 Richard<\/em>, the Architect of Rock and Roll (as he called himself), who by then had been one of the biggest stars in the rock and roll firmament for more than forty years. No Johnny Come Lately, one-hit-wonder flash in the pan, he. The shows were all sold out, SRO crowds each show, each night.<\/p>\n<p>I also know a thing or two about venue expenses that people not in the biz may not. One of the bigger outlays for any venue is for security; the number of security personnel required for any given show is set not by the venue owner but by their insurer. Other staff\u2013bartenders, waitresses, doormen, stage management, sound engineers, lighting techs, etc all add up pretty quickly, and that\u2019s before you even get to things like building rent\/mortgage, property taxes, various licenses, electricity bill, liquor and beer, cups and glasses, etc etc.<\/p>\n<p>If the venue had agreed to anything less than 100 bucks a ticket, they\u2019d\u2019ve almost certainly lost their ass on the booking. Do that on the regular and you\u2019ll be well on the way to going under, becoming a FORMER venue. Y\u2019know, like Tramps is today.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>And even that doesn\u2019t <em>begin<\/em> to cover every expense involved here: the venue cleanup-crew; toilet paper for the ladies\u2019 room; bar tools like shaker cups, strainers, speed-pour bottle tops, swizzle sticks, and such; brooms, mops, mop buckets, and bar towels; trash bins; ice machines; audience seating; and so on and on and on.<\/p>\n<p>Many mid-level venues (<em>ie<\/em>, 1500 to 3000 seaters; think House Of Blues or the Agora chain, say), in addition to the house sound system, provide what\u2019s called a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.careersinmusic.com\/backline\/\">backline<\/a>\u2014guitar amps, bass amp, and\/or drum kit\u2014for their shows, free of charge to the artist. If a certain band has a keyboard player, just imagine what it costs to rent a grand piano or Hammond B3 organ and have a crew load, deliver, unload, and rassle that heavy-ass monster into position onstage!<\/p>\n<p>Trust me, it ain\u2019t cheap. NONE of it is; taken altogether it all adds up to a pretty daunting list, most of those costs incurred before you\u2019ve even opened the doors for your first show.<\/p>\n<p>The sad fact is that live-music venues are on <em>extremely<\/em> shaky financial ground from Day One of their usually-truncated existence. Just think for a moment of all the venues you used to know and love that are long gone now, wherever you may be. Here in CLT alone, I can think of quite a few: PB Scott\u2019s; Kidnappers; Tremont Music Hall; the Pterodactyl; Park Elevator (where I once rode my old Shovelhead FLH\u2014apehangers, suicide shift, drag pipes and all\u2014through a tiny loading-dock door onto the stage to kick off our set); the 1313 Club; the Alley Cat\u2026the list goes on and on.<\/p>\n<p>Although I do get his Quixotic horror at ticket prices, Oliver should have taken the money without complaint, and stiff-armed the living hell out of anybody who dared to even <em>ask<\/em> him about what he was making. Accuse him of <a href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/culture\/2017\/07\/the-history-of-calling-artists-sellouts.html\">being a sell-out<\/a> if you will, but as some performer in the early days of the punk era (can\u2019t remember who, sorry) once famously put it: \u201cI don\u2019t understand all this talk about selling out. You\u2019re an artist, you\u2019re TRYING to sell!\u201d The definitive line on that subject comes from Metallica ex-bassist Jason Newstead, during a 1998 interview on eMpTV\u2019s <em>Behind The Music<\/em>: \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/entertainment\/10-times-metallica-were-accused-114148359.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAEKCuM7eIvWzshslqXwXLI4GK0cXaN8aui15pWc4mMkXA7Ppbt3mFf5nyYPgyn2KbaTLv2RzLYXfCR1vzEv1ALiXuEy5sLoSAZ8bh3TPc5RCnddSPtHK3Vc4taEPF7qX-o9Q96xvsswXgU1QUKKQQzpyM1orGlVv6SI8B1kFgzVa\">Yes, we sell out\u2014we sell out every seat in the house, every time we play<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Heh. \u2018Nuff said. It occurs to me that sometime I really oughta do a post recounting the wild tale of those Little Richard shows at Tramps, maybe. Believe me, it\u2019s one hellaciously good story, which led to all sorts of unlooked-for offshoots and bizarre developments, both for the BPs and myself personally. Then again, could be that it\u2019s just too much inside-baseball type stuff for most non-showbiz types to have any real interest in. We\u2019ll see about that, I suppose.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Update!<\/strong><\/em> Much as it annoys me sometimes, ya still can\u2019t help but love WP. No sooner had I typed in and posted that last &#8216;graph above than it hit me that it might be fun to do a poll, so as to bring y\u2019all readers into the mix here. I knew there were poll plugins available for WP, so I found one and installed it right quick, then set up our first-ever CF reader-opinion poll. Exciting, no?<\/p>\n<p>[ays_poll id=1]<\/p>\n<p>Vote early, vote often. For those of you who don&#8217;t give a shit one way or another about any Little Richard guff, the poll plugin is supposed to provide secure and anonymous voting, so you can vote &#8220;Hell no, fuck that noise, you bastige&#8221; without fear of catching any blog-retribution flak from Your Humble Host. If I&#8217;m not mistaken, your choices aren&#8217;t limited to the prefab three responses you see in the poll box; custom answers are enabled, just speak your piece in the \u201cOther\u2014please specify\u201d field at the bottom. Hopefully, it will all work and not break the damned layout or anything.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Oh frabjous day update!<\/strong><\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems\/42916\/jabberwocky\">Callooh callay<\/a>\u2014that first \u201cHELLS YEAH!\u201d response was me testing the plugin, seems to work as advertised. Have fun, folks.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Well I\u2019ll be danged update!<\/strong><\/em> Just came across a good pic of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gettyimages.co.uk\/detail\/news-photo\/little-richard-performing-at-tramps-in-new-york-city-on-news-photo\/1224320708\">Little Richard onstage<\/a> from the Tramps show, as well as a <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.ph\/6pCMN\">NYT day-of-show interview<\/a> with Da Man himself. Good stuff if you ask me, which admittedly you didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Informational update!<\/strong><\/em> To the fellow who has kindly asked for an email address in the poll above so\u2019s he can make arrangements for a snail-mail contribution to Ye Aulde Fundraiser, the addy is over in the right sidebar near the top: mike-at-this-url dot com. Thanks, buddy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DM has a post up on the latest doin\u2019s Oliver-wise. Is economically illiterate. He cancelled his show because he won\u2019t do it unless he is paid $120,000, with the venue only charging $25 a ticket. Don\u2019t buy Cotton Eyed Joe tickets for $99 apiece. Sure&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"easywp-readmore\"><a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/the-being-oliver-anthony-conundrum\/\">Would you like to know more?<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  The Being Oliver Anthony conundrum<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,16,48,118,128],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-believe-it-or-else","category-flotsam-andor-jetsam","category-guitars-and-those-who-sling","category-yikes","wpcat-7-id","wpcat-16-id","wpcat-48-id","wpcat-118-id","wpcat-128-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14255"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14274,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14255\/revisions\/14274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}