Date: November 30th, 2007
Venue: El Mocambo 2nd Floor
Series: Live Wire/Redpipe.ca Out of the Garage Series
Bullshit: we all go through it. The term generally refers to any sort of obstacle, or any sort of hindrance that comes between one and one’s goals in life. As individual human beings, we have different levels of tolerance for different kinds of bullshit. Certain people have a much smaller threshold for bullshit than others, and throw temper tantrums whenever things don’t go their way. Some have the ability to exercise diplomacy, measured caution, and eloquence in adverse circumstances. Still others manage to cunningly avoid having to deal with the toughest parts of bullshit by playing their cards right in the first place. However, no matter which category of the above you choose to put yourself into after giving yourself a thorough look in the mirror, chances are that when someone pushes enough of those buttons, shit’s going to hit the fan.
Not that we had fans at the show, though. Enter the last show Soul Plane will ever give Supernova the time of day for…
Let me get this out there right now: I am not a hater. I am not writing this to smear whatever name Supernova has built for themselves in your books. I am not writing this to bitch and whine about why our show didn’t go as planned, although I’m still confused as to how a H.E.A.D.L.I.N.I.N.G. band can get their set time pushed back an hour and a half (Supernova’s policies give headlining bands the timeslot they choose regardless of ticket sales – these are usually bands that have already proven they can draw a substantial crowd) and their performance set cut short by a song. I am not writing to threaten, demean, degrade, or slander anybody’s anything. I merely want to lay out the facts for those who care to find out about them.
I can’t even begin to express the frustration that comes from not being able to reap what you sow. Leading up to the night of the 30th, I had emailed all the major newspapers that circulate free of charge throughout the Toronto subway system (24 Hrs, MetroNews, Eye Weekly, Now Weekly) and even the Toronto Sun about putting Soul Plane’s show in their concert listings. This process was a lot trickier than it sounds – I dealt with confirmation calls and emails for nearly every paper just to prove I was a human and not a spam bot designed by some sex toy company’s IT department trying to put up some stupid ad for a product, and at least a dozen follow-up calls which resulted in me getting acquainted and almost friendly with too much of the staff at these papers. I also had the more-daunting-than-it-seems task of convincing them I was 100% certain about this listing and that the show was indeed going to happen. After much deliberation, this is what appeared in all five newspapers:
Soul Plane -- Nov 30th -- Headlining at the El Mocambo (2nd Floor), Toronto, Ontario -- Supernova.ca Presents LIVE WIRE '08 for Redpipe.ca's Out of the Garage Series -- 10 15pm -- $10 advance, $15 at door.
For the first time in my life, I had a promotions team put together for an event. Flyers went up all over the
I went out of my way to arrange for a video camera to be on set, so that we could get a recording of the gig so that the shitty video of the old Soul Plane on Youtube of us at the Toronto Night Market could effectively be rendered obsolete. I had delegated filming and photography to a select few of my friends who promised to make the extra effort to come out that night despite how busy they usually are on any other given Friday night.
To say the least, I worked my fucking ass off for this show, all to have it shot to shit by Supernova’s general disorganization, incompetence and poor management skills. Soul Plane has definitely had its share of problems with Supernova in the past, but we were willing to overlook all of that and even go so far as to blame ourselves for the trouble we went through, because Supernova always seemed intent to put us in the spotlight and feature us in shows they either set up or scouted out for us – but no more. Now allow me to address Supernova as an entity:
As a band, we don’t ask for much. As a headlining band, all we ask is that you give us the basic respect and decency to let us play our set during the time that was agreed upon (as per Supernova’s own policies). Up until the night of the 30th, it was confirmed by several members of your staff that we would be playing between 10 30pm and 10 45pm, regardless of number of tickets sold (once again, your own policies regarding headliners). I know this policy has been exercised before – July 4th (check the blog – Show Reviews Pt. III): John Shiltz was headlining that night, and his crowd was minimal… still you made him play at the time that both parties had originally agreed upon.
When we arrived at 9pm, we were informed by a helpless Andrew (of Supernova) that all the sets were pushed back at least an hour, because when the doors opened at 7pm that night, no one was there. Isn’t that supposed to be “tough fucking bananas,” though, as per your own rules? Shouldn’t these acts that didn’t pull a crowd still get forced to play a shitty set time because of just that? I remember when we played at the Docks for Supernova over the summer for the finals of the Band on the Run series – they refused to give us a set time until we told them how many tickets we sold, and we couldn’t sell tickets to people without a set time – and “tough fucking bananas” is exactly what a member of the Supernova staff told me when I pointed out the flaws in their system. We ended up playing at 2 30pm that day, and still we were diplomatic enough to reproach ourselves rather than Supernova’s terrible organization for our terrible crowd.
Tonight was different. Tonight, as advertised, the crowd started getting real thick, coincidentally for right around the time I had advertised that Soul Plane would be on (10 15pm). Who the fuck do you think they were there to see? Tonight, Andrew had the nerve to tell us that if our fans were really loyal, they would stay an hour and a half just to hear us. I didn’t even bother telling Andrew that leading up to tonight, I did every fucking thing I could to make it so that our “fans” weren’t synonymous with our “friends” as is the situation with several of the dead-end bands working with his sad excuse for a company, and that as a result no one, friend or foe, would stick around for a fucking hour and a half to hear a no-name band, especially not the people who came out after reading the listings or picking up a flyer somewhere. Common sense should have told him this, but apparently common sense isn’t so common on Supernova property. They let the act that was on before us (don’t get it twisted, I’m not taking anything away from any of the acts that night, in fact, I thoroughly enjoyed most of them, especially the one I’m referring to now) stay on for over an hour just because they had the crowd captured, with promises that each song that came on would be their last. Seriously, that was Andrew’s half-assed excuse. I couldn’t believe it either… if that’s the way you want to do it, why not put them on the bill as the headliners? Don’t put SOUL PLANE in big-ass letters that cover up 3/5 of the flyer you sent out promoting the event if it’s that easy to shaft us. At any rate, Soul Plane ended up having to go on at midnight, playing to a crowd sparser than most schools during summer vacation. Normally, I wouldn’t have minded… had we been able to play our last fucking song of our set.
I couldn’t believe it when we were cut off. “Sorry guys, we only have the El Mocambo rented up until 12 30am.” What? What the fuck? We’re supposed to be the HEADLINING band on the bill, you retards. How the fuck do you make us wait a year and some change to play a set you advertised us to be HEADLINING for and then cut us off before our last song? What the fuck is that? This was despicably unprofessional. Set times are set times. Supernova fucked around not only us, but our friends, our families, and what could have been our fans had they just held up their end of the bargain and put us on when we should have been, at 10 fucking 30. It’s not that fucking hard, you clowns, you ARE running a God-damned business here, are you not? What piece of shit business ethic is this? This was robbery.
Tonight, as a band, we were thoroughly disrespected, and it’ll be the last show we ever do with Supernova. Even after all those aforementioned mishaps with them, we thought we could work with them, maybe even draw crowds out to shows they set up and that way, everybody gets to eat. But they didn’t want us to eat… they only care that they do. That’s fine, we’ll bake our own cake elsewhere, and when it’s done, please believe we’ll think twice before passing Supernova a slice.
But that’s us. Once again, I didn’t write this to change anyone’s mind, or sway anyone’s opinion. I did this to express and illustrate as colourfully as possible our band’s personal issues with Supernova, and the path we plan on taking from here away from such sad states of affairs. If Supernova has been working out for you and yours, then great, keep doing your thing. I write this only to show you the atrocities that Supernova is capable of, but it doesn’t mean it’ll happen to you. I’m only saying that it could, because it did to us, just about three times too many, and for those exact reasons we can never do business with them again. To quote Blythe after the shitshow:
“What the hell? That sucked. Seriously – I’m not journeying three hours for anymore Supernova bullshit, Yui. That’s a definite no-no from now on.”
Noted and agreed upon, Blythe.
And oh yeah… there is absolutely nothing about the sound guy Supernova hired for the 2nd floor of the El Mocambo that suggests he has a day job… but if he does, tell him not to quit it. He hasn’t had any idea what he’s been doing behind those boards there since Soul Plane’s first show on April 28th of 2007. Fucking moron.
Good thing we’re going on tour…
