The Fubar Fiasco

Dec 14, 2009 News
Written by: John

The Fubar show on Friday December 11^th was meant to be a good show to promote our Birthday show, pick up a few new fans and possibly make a little money. None of which happened but we were successful in getting in the middle of a bar fight, loosing money, and successfully playing to nearly no one in a packed bar.

Let me make this clear before I begin, this is in no way supposedto reflect badly on the Fubar. We really enjoy the club and hope to play there again, but there must have been a full moon that night because if it could go wrong, it did.

Another comment: The show was divided into 2 parts, the early show and late show. We were scheduled to be the opening act on the late show, starting at 10:30 pm.

The evening started promisingly enough. We showed up at Fubar around 8:30 and had trouble finding a parking spot, always a good sign. When we finally did, and made it inside, it was packed. You could hardly walk. The music was loud and the crowd loved it. So we sat back, relaxed, and had a few beers before our load in time of 10pm.

This was also the last time we will ever cover ticket sales for anyone, including close personal friends. We were trying to save our buddies a little money by buying their tickets a head of time so they didn’t have to pay the door price which was $2 more. So we settled up with the bartender and waited for our friends to arrive to pay us back. As the evening progressed, phone calls and text messages came in informing us they people weren’t showing. And by the end we were out a grand total of $136! Never again. Part of me feels like I should require them to pay us back, but I seriously doubt that will ever happen.

We continued to drink and try to have a good time, despite the money loss, as we watched 10pm come and go. By 11 we started to wonder if we were even going to be playing this show. So we took action and started to load in our gear. It had been sitting in cold cars for nearly 3 hours already and I know that’s not good on my guitar strings, not to mention the drums. Another main reason to get our gear was to get it set up before last band of the early show was finished, so we could keep the show going, and hopefully keep the people.

We walked a few blocks and grabbed some drum stuff and made it back to the club, blue lipped and cold, when the door guy turned us away. He said it was too early to load in and there wouldn’t be enough room for us. So we shivered our way back to the car to reload it.

A good friend of ours, Moe, from Scene of Irony who came to the show to support us, didn’t like the idea that we couldn’t load in. He is good friends with the owner of Fubar and told us to load in and he would take care of the door guy. So out we go again in the cold to lug our stuff back in.

We got the majority of the drums in when we noticed that Moe and the door guy were not getting along anymore. As always, I have to defend my friend, but I did see the door guys point of view, it was his job to watch the door and Moe doesn’t work there, so the door guy has the right to tell bands whether they have the right to bring their stuff in or not. From Moe’s point of view, it was nonsense that we couldn’t bring in our stuff when there was clearly enough room to put it. Obviously, the door guy was letting the “power” get to his head. One thing lead to the next and the two decided to settle it the old fashioned way. Bottles were broken, punches were thrown and girls got involved, but no one was really hurt, luckily for the door guy, Moe is twice his size.

The early show ended around midnight and we were ready to load our stuff on the stage when we heard, “Shows over folks, go home”. All we could do was sit back and watch as 200+ people walked right out the door.

We played our set to the few people who were left. It would have been a good show if people were there. We had a few friends there to support us and a couple surprise appearances, which made it a little less lonely.

Then band after us, a two piece White Stripes style band, had even less. No matter hard you try, it difficult to get your friends to stick around at 1am when they were planning on seeing you before 11pm.

All in all it was a late night, and we are looking forward to the birthday show at the Way Out Club on Friday December 18^th. Hopefully that show will run little smoother.

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Tags: Fubar, Scene of Irony