I'm sorry, but we're going to have to cancel the show. Now... I liked your set, but The Owner was kind of put off by the fact that you only played for an hour. Don't get me wrong, I dug it, but The Owner wants to get a full night's worth of music. Learn a few covers, you know, just 10 or so covers, and we'll talk. Now, you can always play another Tuesday night for free and we'll see how this goes. It really left a bad taste in our mouths. Don't get me wrong, I like originals, I love music, that's why I opened this place, but The Owner says that covers bring people in the door. Cover songs keep this place open. Now, I like music, and I opened this place so that (your town here) would have a good venue, but I also have to pay the bills. Besides, The Owner really is the final say, so I'm not trying to be a dick here. I'm just a pawn, man... you know?Yes, I know. I think I get it better than you do and, no, we don't want to play your shitty little hick bar again. Oh, and that disassociative Owner/Subordinate mumbo jumbo is transparent like glass. It doesn't take a middle school dropout to "dig" the real "gist," "man." Transparent, dude. Transparent, man. You and your buddy bought in, you saw this folded club and bought it. You changed a light fixture or two and called it the New Shit. You told your friends, your bar skanks, your illegitimate children, that you would be opening the only "decent" club in town, the only place to see a "real band." You would know, as you have a vague understanding of the music industry and occasionally watch a Behind the Music on VH1. Don't lie, man, you can save a sinking music industry. You own an Epiphone Les Paul and a Crate Half Stack, you and Jerry and Steve and Randall used to be in a ripping band back in the 80s. Shit, man, you played EVERYTHING. Twisted Sister, Firehouse, Thin Lizzie. You used to rip all over Deep Purple. You still have that Metallica shirt, you're going to break it out... beer stains and all! Now you have the power and the will, man! You have a fucking club, man! That same band it out there now, covering Nickelback and Staind and dying... dying... to be discovered! Shit, if they could just write three or four originals they'd be huge, man! They've proven their worth to the world, they can play those trite radio hits without even trying... and did you see those drunk sorority girls making out to "Hotel California?" This was the best idea we ever had. Let's have another Busch Light and yell for "Free Bird" because, unlike that uppity little band that played a short set of their own songs ("What the fuck? When was that?" "Don't worry about it, no one came out."), these guys will actually play it! Oo-hoo! Can you believe it! They've been playing for THREE FUCKING HOURS and show no signs of quitting! What a blistering rendition of that God Smack song that was so big three years ago... or was that Alice in Chains? No, they just said it's an original. FUCK! THESE GUYS ARE SO GOOD! They can write their own songs (unlike that pesky original band) and I can sing along with them because they sound so familiar! Let's book these guys every Saturday of the fucking year. Let's give these guys a $500 guarantee just to plug in. Goddamn, this is so much safer than running a risk or two. Never mind the talk of house shows and underground forces of nature, threatening the very fabric of our sterile and predictable downtown scene. This is (your town here), not (some larger or supposedly "more hip" town here)!
***
I hope you know you sold your soul to a monster. I hope you go home and listen to Real Music and feel the cold pain of a darkened universe, knowing that you could never pull from the aether such beauty. I hope you meet an underground musician someday, shit broke but with a fulfilled soul, and wonder where you went wrong to deny yourself such pureness. Broke, but free. The cliche and bumper sticker say "independents do it without chains."
You really did, you sold your soul to a monster... and for what? You didn't quit your landscaping job or your electrician job or your job as a cable guy or whatever the fuck you do. This place will fold in six months, returning to the festering bog of which lousy venues are born. Now here you are, telling lies to a struggling musician who may or may not be more talented than you for the simple fact that he has the cajones to write his own music.
It's not about skill. It's about being in the Phylum Chordata. Someday you might join us.
