So, in Part 1, I described how we gave three bands the opportunity to play a show with us where a couple of their friends heckled us and I was pondering an easy slip out of the club with $300 that I promised to pay those bands – our guests.

The thought of getting monetary revenge was rather appealing.  After our set, we packed up our lights.  We were going to let the other bands use them, but I was in no mood to make other bands look better and pack up lights at 2AM after what had just happened.

But merely taking lights away didn’t seem like it was sticking it to anyone quite the way “inheriting” 300 of their dollars would.

 As I planned my escape out the front door at the behest of the devil on my right shoulder, the angel on my left shoulder told me four things:

1.        The hecklers are morons, plain and simple.  These are not exactly people with the intellectual horsepower or class to matter in any aspect of life.  I can take pride in being a better man, rather than stooping to their level – and it would be a far stoop, indeed.

2.       Word will likely get out that Chip DiMonick “rips off” other bands and we may have a hard time finding bands to play with.  Of course, the unpaid bands surely wouldn’t share the other side of the story about how the mental midgets threw debris at us, or how one of the guest bands jeopardized the timing of the whole night by bringing their drums when they were specifically instructed in writing to not bring them, or how the “decorator” that one of the bands brought in arrogantly tried to tell us that she “was going to limit each band to playing 30 minutes” at our own show for which everyone – including her – would benefit from our generous agreement to split the money that was ours to control!  (Where she got the idea that it was her show to run still has me scratching my skull.)

3.       I can say that every dollar of my net worth has been accumulated honestly.  I want to be able to say that at any given moment of my life.  I can’t allow dipshits to take this away from me.

4.       If I thought things out over time and still wanted revenge, there would be a prime opportunity for us and our friends to give someone a taste of their own medicine – or even more bitter medicine – right around the corner.

The angel won.

I paid the bands.  And I smiled when doing it.

But this whole event did compel us to come up with a new policy of sorts when inviting other bands to be our guests.  The bottom line is this:  if anyone heckles a band at one of our shows – not just us, but any band on the bill – and we determine that the heckler is a friend of a guest band and that guest band did nothing to stop the heckling, that band will not get paid. We will make this policy known in advance so that there will be no unpleasant surprises at the end of the night.

This will give all bands the incentive to shut their asshole friends – or even random hecklers - the fuck up. 

Musicians are a part of a brotherhood.  We need to show and cultivate respect for one another.

We don’t want to discourage bands from playing with us.  Quite the opposite, actually.  We want to grow the brotherhood.  But we just want to make sure that everyone is treated with the dignity that any human being deserves.

Is that too much to ask?

I love being a “night-life performer.”  As a night-life performer, I get to meet a lot of interesting people. 

And by interesting, I mean that some of the peeps I meet are uniquely cool and others are uniquely idiots and total mental midgets.  All of them add some dose of humor to my life and I generally like that!

Some of those that fall into the idiot/mental midget category are hecklers – people who scream “you suck” to the bands, flip the bands off, etc.  In the four years we’ve been playing, we’ve only had two shows where this happened to us, one just this past month.

One thing that is illustrative of the low IQ and class levels of both of these hecklers that have crossed our path is that they both were friends of the bands that we had given the opportunity to be a part of the show in question.  Generally, the band that books the show determines how long the “guest” bands get to play and how much they get paid. 

So you piss off the main band and your friends may not get to play long/at all, not get paid, or both.  Real smart to heckle the main band, right?  Well, again, we’re dealing with mental midgets here.

In this most recent episode, I got the money from the bar owner as the last band was playing.  Based on prior arrangements with the three guest bands, we would pay those bands $300 after we took our cut. 

The hecklers were friends of the guest bands, who did nothing to discourage their behavior, which also included throwing shit at us.       

So, I sat at the back of the venue with that $300 in my pocket.  The remaining patrons were facing the stage.  I was inches from the door.  I thought to myself, “Wow!   It would be so easy to just step out with their cash!”  The scent of revenge was in the air and, damn, it was smelling sweet!

What would our guests do if we didn’t pay them? 

Sue us? 

Fight us?

Threaten to ruin our reputation?

None of those options scare me.

Three hundred extra bucks can buy a generous helping of studio time.

What would you do?

Find out what I did in Part 2, coming soon…

Tickets are $10 in advance and $12 at the door.  Tickets can be purchased from us, so message us ASAP!

All proceeds benefit the police dogs and the show lasts until the evening hours giving you the opportunity to take in as much or as little music as you would like and ensuring that your money is well spent.

We miss our under-21 sinners!!!