Print

[bobcat]

I'll quit whining when everyone is paid.

did you learn after you didn't get paid the first time?  fool me once.

Lou posted up a response just now:

Immediately following Sound Fest I had discussed with my partner Benny Early about whether or not we should make a formal announcement regarding the issues with bands not getting paid at Sound Fest. At the time I was completely against it. I felt that this is a personal business matter and it wasn’t necessary to discuss our financial problems publicly. Maybe I should have known better. I know that you can’t please everybody. Whether its complaints that this band sucks, or this venue sucks or I didn’t get enough free beer there is always going to be someone voicing dissatisfaction. By the majority of attendee reviews and feedback it is safe to say Soundfest was a success. However, the determination of our dissenters and naysayers have made the aftermath so unbearable that there is no interest in doing this again. This of course includes Dave Lake (Seattle Weekly writer) who for one wasn’t even present at Sound Fest but still had the audacity to write an article, which was filled with so many un-truths and mis-understandings that I don’t even know where to begin.
To begin with I don’t hate punk music in fact I love it and all that it’s done for me. Punk Rock music was my best friend growing up and so was the punk community that I grew up in, which I personally feel no longer exists. Today, I feel like this thing that people call a “ punk community ” is nothing more then immature people having a social bond over the fact that they all have nothing else going on with their lives. This brings me to the point at hand. Why did I put together Sound Fest? The simple answer is that me and my partner Benny wanted to do something more for both ourselves and for the music scene in Seattle. I moved out here from Los Angeles in February of 2011 and after spending some time with Benny we had developed our ideas for Sound Fest. The whole point of Sound Fest was to put something together that wasn’t brought to you by Live Nation, AEG, STG, etc. as its tiresome having to feel exploited every time you go to a show. The attendees at these festivals (Bumbershoot, Warped Tour, etc) all look like herds of cattle as they walk in and out of the gates at these events all coming out with empty pockets and looking unsatisfied by their whole experience. We wanted a chaotic event dammit! We wanted people to come get wasted at Funhouse by 7pm and stumble from one bar to another as they made their way to El Corazon, cause that is a GOODTIME! And I feel like we accomplished that aspect of it. Nearly every one who came to Sound Fest continually told us how much they enjoyed their time there and how they appreciated us putting this on, and at the time it didn’t mean too much as both me and my partner never had a moment to enjoy any of it, but I’m not complaining as we knew what we were getting into when we started this, but we never could have predicted that it would be this bad.
What went wrong with Sound Fest?
We didn’t have enough cash to pay the bands. Its that simple…. When we started putting this together we had our many doubts. We didn’t know if we would be able to cover all of our expenses, but we were confident that people would turn out for our event. I know that sounds a bit naïve and it definitely was on our part, but before we come off like a bunch of ignorant fools I’d like to mention that we still took precautions and looked into loans, which we were able to get from some AMAZING individuals. The problem was that the loans weren’t large enough. We tried getting bank loans, but no one was going to loan us money for a punk festival especially in this economy, and we tried every other route that we could think of to help us financially in case we didn’t get the turnout we were looking for and on top of that many of our sponsors went from telling us that they would be giving us a large amount in sponsor dollars to a much smaller amount which put us in an even worse place as we had depended on that money.
While putting this event together we faced so many other issues that it really drained us. For starters we became aware of the fact that a bitter old man by the name of Shawn Stern had been trash talking us to a lot of the bands. Some of the bands could careless as they know me on a personal level and know that Shawn Stern is a well known ASSHOLE in the punk community. So it didn’t really effect us too much with some of the bands but there were a good dozen or so and mostly bigger acts who didn’t know me and were demanding that they be paid in full before they played or some even a month before they even got here. Granted we can’t blame the demise of Sound Fest solely on Shawn Sterns actions, but for two guys with not a lot of financial backing it definitely didn’t help us. I just want to also state that due to contrary belief Shawn Stern didn’t run me out of LA, and I have never done shows in LA where I wasn’t able to pay the bands. Sometimes shows don’t do what you expect them to do any promoter will tell you that, but I’ve always been able to find a way to pay the bands what they were owed in full in a suitable amount of time. That being said the same will happen with the bands that played Sound Fest. Everyone will be paid eventually its just a much larger bill then it usually is doing a bar show.
Another issue that we faced that I feel needs to be addressed was the bands. I find it hilarious that Seattle Weekly got Jello Biafra to join in on the trash talking especially after he took full advantage of us and this is even after he was paid in full. The deal we had with Jello Biafra was that his band would get paid their fee and we would include flights and hotels, but one thing it didn’t include was him booking a second FREE show only an hour away from Seattle and then over staying at his hotel and leaving us to pick up the bill. Its not right, but its not something Seattle Weekly is going to write about either, and why? Cause the artists are always the good guys, right? In addition to those additional costs we had to deal with bands who forced us to pay double for some of their flights as they didn’t book with us until the week of the festival even though we had been hounding them for their flight info for weeks in advance. When you get down to numbers all of these costs just continually add up. I should also mention that many of the bands went and booked other gigs in both Washington, and Portland with out letting us know they were doing so! Which is just completely wrong since this wasn’t just a show it was a festival and our ticket sales depended on the entire Northwest region to show up in order for us to pull this off! Some of those acts include- The Blasters, American Steel, Reagan Youth, Roxy Epoxy and many others. I do however want to say that The Avengers, and Swingin Utters were the only bands who contacted us and let us know before hand that they would be playing the northwest region that same week, which we agreed to based on the fact that they would be the only acts playing elsewhere in the area that weekend, but that wasn’t the case and though it was mostly the bands agents that booked the gigs I find it hard to believe that these bands weren’t fully aware of what they were doing or where they were playing? That’s the problem is people give too much sympathy to the bands. I am in no way trying to justify not paying them, but I hope by learning all the facts that you will put yourselves in our shoes for one minute and say “ Hey! That’s pretty fucked up of them!”
Not only did we depend on these bands to come and make Sound Fest their one off Northwest show, but we also depended on them to promote. As again we don’t have the reach of the bigger promoters we are just two guys and everyone who worked with us on this event knew that this was the case. We constantly hounded these bands to help us out in promoting Sound Fest and a lot of the smaller bands did but the bigger bands were the ones with the reach and a lot of them weren’t even capable of putting up a show listing on their Facebook. Its pathetic that these bands make so many demands for their high price guarantees and bottles of champagne backstage only to come and do half the work. I am sorry but your only job isn’t to just come and strum a chord! You have a responsibility to also help promote yourselves and take part ownership of all events that you are apart of. Its just not right that small time independent promoters like ourselves should always be taking the risks especially when the risk is in supporting that particular acts music. Some of that responsibility needs to be put on the band and it isn’t.
I want to finish this up by saying that its been a hellish year for me and even though a lot of the bands weren’t able to get paid in full we are still working on a daily basis to get everyone paid. We didn’t take off to Africa with Stiff Little Fingers guarantee and nor are we trying to put all of the blame on any particular person for our current financial problems. The reason for this letter is to simply present you with my side of the story as it differs a lot from what you are being told. A lot of what people are saying about me on the internet simply is not true and I’m sure most of its coming from Shawn Sterns entourage of idiots as he has often proved to me in the past that he is a very small man. Regardless, you can believe what ever you want and my only goal right now is to pay off these Sound Fest bills and move on with my life. I would appreciate it if you all did the same. There are a lot bigger problems in this world then some stupid punk festival that went bad, and its really not worth crying about unless of course your wanting to get your name in the Seattle Weekly.
Thanks,
Lou Medrano

[ChrisCrusher]

did you learn after you didn't get paid the first time?  fool me once.

Lou posted up a response just now:

Where was this put up?

I don't really understand what you mean by the top little zinger there.  I'm sure it was a good one (I don't doubt your ability), it just flew over my head.

[ChrisCrusher]

okay, I just saw the original post.  He has some good points on the issues of the headliners playing nearby and maybe messing with ticket sales.  I will say though, from a bookers perspective, if you don't want them to do that, you put it in the contract, EXPECIALLY when you have 10's of thousands of dollars on the line.  Beginners mistake I guess??

I will say, him complaining about ticket sales is garbage, and ESPECIALLY bitching about bands not promoting to help with this.

Case in point: the first two nights at the Comet.  Night one, Go Fight Win pretty much packed that place out by themselves, with people who paid $10 at the door cash in hand.  Night Two, The Paul Collins Beat was billed as the headliner, but oddly enough, wasn't even there or on the bill or in the itinerary, even though they were still being promoted on the website, THE NIGHT OF THE SHOW.  No money was charged at the door, even though the place was packed yet again, mostly with people brought in by the local bands.  We had been promoting it as a $10 at the door show.  Sure, $3-800 wouldn't have saved their asses, but definitely would have gotten a few more bands paid.  Why was the ball dropped completely on this show?

For the most part, at least from the attendee's perspective, everything went well.  But seriously, it's not hard to put together shows with bands that have all played hundreds to thousands of shows, give them an itinerary, and have it go off without much of a hitch, especially when you have experienced clubs/soundmen/stage managers running shit.

But honestly guys, it's all the bands faults they're not getting paid for services rendered.  Blame the bands.

[LindseySuicide]

the locals did promote well, which is why their shows were well attended. the nationals pretty much didn't promote shit at all, but if they had, it's more than likely they would've gotten people to do what they do for punk rock bowling/the fest/etc., which is fly across the country to go to a rad punk rock festival. lou and benny did what they could with their resources, so they were able to post flyers in some of the cities in the northwest, but it's ridiculous for these huge acts to require all this money and then not do one bit of self-promotion.

jello biafra drives a fucking BMW. he's hardly hurting for cash, and he demanded all his money up front before he even went on stage, and then still bitched about everything to the press. that guy can suck a fuck.

[ChrisCrusher]

jello biafra drives a fucking BMW. he's hardly hurting for cash, and he demanded all his money up front before he even went on stage, and then still bitched about everything to the press. that guy can suck a fuck.

To be fair, he was chased down to do an interview...he in no way searched out the interview.  In fact he didn't do the interview until he heard that the smaller bands didn't get paid.  He did his business, he got out in good shape. 

In the article, which would be more credible to the average reader?  Jello Biafra is standing up for the bands, or Chris Crusher?  You need a name to make a story reputable.  I'm glad Jello stepped up.  He honestly wasn't going to.

[dan10things]

Do huge acts ever do promotion for shows outside of their towns? I'm pretty sure they don't, beyond plugging it on their website and fb. When someone like Lori from Infinite brings one of these bands in, Infinite does the flyers and flyering, takes out the ads, and does the marketing to the press, blogs, etc. I know, I'm still on their press list.

They are called Promoters for a reason. The don't just book a show, the are the primary promoter of it. For a festival as big as they pulled off, the one crucial point they failed on that probably made the rest of it fall apart, was they didn't promote it well. They should have hired a promotions company for a month or two to do it for them since they didn't know how to do it themselves. Promoting a big event involves a lot more than flyering and it's super time consuming, I know 'cause I do it for the Pinball and Arcade show. You need one person dedicated to just promotion and a team of people under them. You need to do thousands of flyers around the Northwest, thousands of handbills, you need ads in multiple publications, you need to send out 100s of press releases and do ticket giveaways in The Stranger to hype it up, you need to hook the press up with the bands for phone interviews in the weeks before, you need daily Facebook and Twitter updates, to post to forums about it, get bloggers writing about it, etc. That brings the people and sells the tickets and helps you pay the bands. It doesn't matter how good of an event you put together, if you drop the ball on the promotion part of being a promoter, the people won't show up. I probably should have volunteered to help them, but I had too much going on and knew I was going to be out of town that weekend.

And this is something they would have learned if they started smaller and built up an audience, reputation, and worked out all the kinks in putting on a festival beforehand on a smaller scale.

[bobcat]

sure are a lot of smug motherfuckers up in here. 

done whining yet?

[Dougie Felchtone]

Big difference between whining and having a discussion.


Personally I applaud Lou and Benny for their attempt. It's a damn shame it turned out the way it do though.

[dan10things]

sure are a lot of smug motherfuckers up in here. 

done whining yet?

I'm not whining or smug. I just see the mistakes and what could be done to correct them if they ever do it again. This is a nw punk discussion board, were discussin'.

[Ceej]

I just hope that the local bands arent butt hurt if they dont see coin. "WHAT?!?!? Stiff Little Fingers got payed but not MY band?". I was in New York when this was all going down. If I was here I would have went. Seattle hasnt had so many cool bands in one place(that I can remember) since king dome warped tour. Before all the weird bands started playing warped tour.

[rwthw]

Strictly speaking as an attendee, before the fest even started I figured that the huge spread of venues would have been a problem. My 3 day pass limited me to about one show a day and that was strictly the big acts. I would have loved to see Cunt sparrer, or cheer on my buddy(ies) in Random Orbits, but they were on in or around the time Reagan Youth was on, oh, and being on the other side of Downtown didn't help. I caught the last 10 minutes of Roxy Epoxy.

I figured that a few bands weren't getting paid enough either. I talked to Duane Peters before US Bombs went on stage, aside from being "fuckin' high and drunk as shit man", he was in a hurry, and obviously so, 20 minute set and they were gone.

I pretty much ended up paying 33 bucks a day to watch one show a night. Since El Corazon is practically halfway between everything, I wasn't about to go around looking and paying for parking at several different places.

I would be psyched if they do it again sometime down the line. I would suggest next time a kickstarter project is done or something =p

[bobcat]

I'm not whining or smug. I just see the mistakes and what could be done to correct them if they ever do it again. This is a nw punk discussion board, were discussin'.

Out of all the people i wouldn't expect to pull the 'i wasnt there but let me pull some shit out my ass' card, it wouldn't be you Dan... but it was.

Fuck you very much.  We had a street team of 12 flyering shows and postering...  I was out 4 nights a week and most of the other crew were out NIGHTLY.  If you went to a good show in the 4 months leading up to Soundfest there is a 90% chance you would of had a flier in your hand entering or leaving the venue.  But you didn't.  We had teams in Portland, Vancouver BC and Victoria. Newspapers? hahahahah Print media is dead, and advertising is over the top expensive especially for a DIY festival.  Fuck the Stranger.  Why is that even relevant?


Everyone else:
If your band didn't get paid, take the hit and walk along.  If he's good he'll make up for it.  You aren't starving are you?  If you went into playing music to make money then you are a dumb motherfucker.   I've been burned many times and i'm sure you all have too.  Quit wasting your energy towards this, he tried something and it failed.  comments on punknews and the like are nothing more than anonymous assholes waiting in the wings because they have nothing else better to do. 

This board sucks.  Go out and do something.  Be something. 

[ChrisCrusher]

This board sucks.  Go out and do something.  Be something.

Says the #8 top poster.

[dan10things]

Fuck you very much.  We had a street team of 12 flyering shows and postering...  I was out 4 nights a week and most of the other crew were out NIGHTLY.  If you went to a good show in the 4 months leading up to Soundfest there is a 90% chance you would of had a flier in your hand entering or leaving the venue.  But you didn't.  We had teams in Portland, Vancouver BC and Victoria. Newspapers? hahahahah Print media is dead, and advertising is over the top expensive especially for a DIY festival.  Fuck the Stranger.  Why is that even relevant?

I'm just going to ignore your childish insults and whining. Like I said, promoting a big show includes a lot more than flyering and postering. I said that not to belittle the DIY efforts of Soundfest, I'm friends with you and Benny and think it was a nice attempt with not enough planning. If it happens again, there are things that really could have been improved. I do promotion for a big show yearly that's grown over four years from an attendance of 800 to 2,700, give me a little credit for having the experience and background to know what I'm talking about. It definitely has been a growing process for me learning what works, where to spend my time and money, and to develop contacts within the press. When you put on a big event like this, you have to know what you're doing or get someone that does to help on the promotion end, or you just won't get enough people to show up.

You say the print media is dead, but it's not, at least for my show it reaches more people than postering. The Stranger and other print media is still totally relevant to putting on a big event.  I can't tell you how many people told us they heard about the NW Pinball & Gameroom Show through the Stranger, the Seattle Times, the Seattle Weekly, the Tacoma News Tribune, the Everett Herald, etc. Not always in print, sure, but also through their websites, ticket giveaways, promo emails, etc. My ad budget is tiny, so I work sponsorship deals and trades for free or cheap advertising, and got a lot of press by setting up interviews, sending out press releases and talking to radio, writers, and TV. You have to spend some time and money on the promotion end trying everything you can, but it definitely all pays off in more tickets sold.

One of the most glaring failures I've seen for new businesses and events is failing to plan for advertising and marketing. You can have the most rad festival, bar, or small independent business in the world, but if everyone doesn't know about it and keep hearing about it, people still often won't show up.

[dead end yob]

Fuck you very much.  We had a street team of 12 flyering shows and postering...  I was out 4 nights a week and most of the other crew were out NIGHTLY.  If you went to a good show in the 4 months leading up to Soundfest there is a 90% chance you would of had a flier in your hand entering or leaving the venue.  But you didn't.  We had teams in Portland, Vancouver BC and Victoria. Newspapers? hahahahah Print media is dead, and advertising is over the top expensive especially for a DIY festival.  Fuck the Stranger.  Why is that even relevant?

Honest question: what was the promotion plan to get people to fly in/travel to soundfest.  It seems based on what you said that it was promoted regionally; but fests like this can only really survive if there is a buzz nationally with people willing to travel for it: see punk rock bowling, the fest, chaos in tejas, riot fest, etc.  A second point is that a lot of the acts were announced relatively close to the fest; a lot of big fests announce acts out about nine months out, the reason for this is to allow for promotion and to get those who may travel to do so.

As someone from outside Seattle, most people where I live did not know about it until the month of the show, and I only live a hour away.... much less a plane ride or long drive away.

[Sifl]

With this being a new fest, the bigger bands probably didn't give a fuck about promoting it.  They got a guarantee and that's all that mattered. 

[ChrisCrusher]

With this being a new fest, the bigger bands probably didn't give a fuck about promoting it.  They got a guarantee and that's all that mattered.

The bigger bands promoted as best they could by posting it on their twitter/facebook/webpages...what else are you going to do living a thousand miles or more away?  It's not their responsibility to promote it anyways, it's the PROMOTER's job.  It's also the promoters job to pay guarantees when they are given.  There are plenty of bands that weren't expecting money on this, and that's fine.  But when a promoter tells you they are giving you X amount of money, you sure as hell better hold them to that.  This isn't like a Monday night at the Sunset where there just wasn't enough turnout to pay the bands.  This was a festival that guarantees were put in writing MONTHS before.

[Matty]

From Lou's response:

I should also mention that many of the bands went and booked other gigs in both Washington, and Portland with out letting us know they were doing so! Which is just completely wrong since this wasn’t just a show it was a festival and our ticket sales depended on the entire Northwest region to show up in order for us to pull this off!

That's a pretty outrageous expectation considering where we're at in the country. Seattle isn't exactly "just down the road" from anywhere in this country outside of Portland and getting here is a tall order for most bands. I highly doubt that most of the bands on the bill flew in for the show and I think it's pretty ridiculous to expect a band that has to drive all the way up here from, say, California to ONLY play Seattle. You'd have to pay a pretty generous guarantee to make that financially feasible for most of these bands and whatever the story is here, that's not what happened. Given the lineup that was at Sound Fest and the number of nights it went on, I think it's pretty absurd to suggest that (just to use one example) American Steel playing ONE show in Portland kept everyone down there from coming up for any of the Sound Fest shows...would Lou be slamming any of these bands if they just happened to be on tour when they played Sound Fest?

[dead end yob]

From Lou's response:

That's a pretty outrageous expectation considering where we're at in the country. Seattle isn't exactly "just down the road" from anywhere in this country outside of Portland and getting here is a tall order for most bands. I highly doubt that most of the bands on the bill flew in for the show and I think it's pretty ridiculous to expect a band that has to drive all the way up here from, say, California to ONLY play Seattle. You'd have to pay a pretty generous guarantee to make that financially feasible for most of these bands and whatever the story is here, that's not what happened. Given the lineup that was at Sound Fest and the number of nights it went on, I think it's pretty absurd to suggest that (just to use one example) American Steel playing ONE show in Portland kept everyone down there from coming up for any of the Sound Fest shows...would Lou be slamming any of these bands if they just happened to be on tour when they played Sound Fest?

Blackout dates are pretty common with festivals; especially ones that are flying in bands.  Bumpershoot does it, SXSW does it, that is why there are a lot of "unofficial" shows with bands simply playing under different names, and whatnot.

[Brian]

Folks, it was a punk show, move on.

[ChrisCrusher]

Folks, it was a punk show, move on.

You don't see anything wrong with this statement. 

To me it's like saying, "He's black, of course he's on crack."

[BrianMyFatAss]

punknews responds to lous response -

http://www.punknews.org/article/44683

[TahoeJeff]

Guys, Shawn Stern is a well known giant asshole in LA...which totally explains why Punk Rock Bowling has been such a success the past 10 years! Nobody wants to work with THAT guy!