Monday, September 8, 2008

ROLL OUT THE BARRELS

so we got redtagged Saturday night....long story short, a tenant moved in at the beginning of august who was not told about the fact that bands use the space to practice in and she's sandwiched in between Blues and Chango Malo. She wasn't happy and that is understandable BUT a reasoned response would be for her to say to the property manager "i was not informed of this, am not happy, and am now breaking my lease because or this"

she is not reasonable however. So her plan is to make it horrible for everyone else and make them leave, first bailers: us. This is what went down

had a show last night with the Intelligence, RCougar, and the Subway Vandals...it was a small fun show. No debauchery, No hijinx. Parents were there to see their son's band play (multiples as in more than one set...plus cousins and siblings).
Well right before the last band played, the unhappy neighbor came up to me and basically asked to speak to the lease holder...who was not there but she has his number, of which I informed her of...to which she said "I know I called him"...well what do you want me to do then...since conversation is hard for this woman (she mostly is that type of person who is good at talking but not very good at listening... wait that's wrong she's not good at understanding...she's good at overhearing conversations though) her husband(I guess) basically informed me that he would appreciate it if we kept people away from their storefront(that they live in). I said I would and no one from our deal had been hanging out there anyways...to wit he proclaimed "Well our light (one that comes on when motion is detected) has come on a bunch of times" to which I replied "well this is a busy street and I really don't have control over who walks down it or passes by your place" to which he started getting vexed and screamy and I maintained composure and let him know I would be making sure no one would bother them. End of story right?

nope...so they're hanging out in front of their place making sure that no undesirables are loitering around their end of the building. Someone comes up to me and asks what their deal is and I explain and say basically I don't have control over who wanders around this neighborhood (which is right across from the biggest homeless park in our fair city). Well ol big ears and small brain hears this and wanders up to me (with hubby in tow) to say "I overheard your conversation and just wanted to object to what you said" I really didn't understand what I had said that she might object to (i made sure not to call anyone names, or be disrespectful at all in my speech on this night...I think it was the hangover) anyways I asked her what she objected to and she began to tell me "You have to have control over these people! You have to have control over what you're doing here!" I attempted to explain she misunderstood and that I had control over the situation I was creating, but not over just random people walking by. This only made her and her husband scream even louder about Control like they were some Tribute duo to Janet Jackson. I informed them that I wasn't about to engage them in conversation if they couldn't act civilly and basically quit talking to them and went about my business. Well what would you expect them to do...they called the cops and complained about noise.Why noise all of a sudden.... because if they would have complained about what they complained to me about, the cops would have laughed at them.

Remember those parents who came...well one of them as she was leaving (with her two daughters or one daughter and her friend) was basically shaken down by the neighbor lady. This woman (who was there for the show) was older than the neighbor lady and doing nothing but walking to her car which was parked within 20 feet of the battleaxe's door. That's the mentality we're dealing with here people...oh yeah this was around 10:30pm as well.

So the cops came and told me we had to stop cause they got noise complaints and they weren't going to leave till we did. I told them I would go inside after the song that was playing was over and inform the band of this. Song ended, I opened the door, and the band said "Thanks, that's all... we were the Intelligence" I look at the cops and they shrug...you could tell they weren't interested in being there. The cop that seemed in charge went to talk to the neighbors while the other one stayed by our space. Everybody filed out and began leaving or getting ready to leave. The main cop comes back and basically tells me that the neighbor lady is demanding we get a ticket and since this is the second time in a month (she's who called the cops on us for a show in mid August) their hands are tied. But they also tell us that we should fight it and it'll pretty much get tossed out. Which we plan on doing but here's the problem....until our court date if we make noise of any kind, and she decides to call the cops, we get fined. This is a spot we moved into for band practice and that is what it even says on our lease. The redtag officially kills that until we have the court date (which I won't even know when it is until after I enter my plea on Monday). You see how this notion doesn't, as Manowar said, make us "wet like a young girl in her prime"

so we're bailing.... all touring bands that we had scheduled to play here we will try our damnedest to get you shows other places and will be in touch with news...any all local shows we had booked (basically sept 12th and the 19th) we ain't doing those now, SORRY!

we might get another spot in the future but really I don't see a need for it...the all ages thing is cute but since most of the kids would rather go to where their peers do (living room or dry river) it's not really needed...and there's plenty of bars where all these bands can play too...what tucson really needs is a scaling back of venues and bands cause the crowd there is for this is slim

sorry to be such a downer

adios
mark beef