aphistory
#78 01/1995
#79 02/1995
#80 03/1995
#81 04/1995
#82 05/1995
#83 06/1995
#84 07/1995
#85 08/1995
#86 09/1995
#87 10/1995
#88 11/1995
#89 12/1995
Once every few months or so, Jason would come plop down in my office and go on about how he felt the music industry and the music press didn’t take AP seriously enough, and that we deserved a lot more credit than we were being given. He always felt we were just given lip service by the rock-industry elite in New York and Los Angeles-and, even though I thought he was generally right, I still knew the industry was keeping one eye on us regardless, ’cause we usually knew what was going on before they did, and they would usually just cop our ideas and our new band discoveries and claim them as their own. (Out of all the corporate magazines, Spin was the most notorious for that.)
So, as AP headed into its 10th year of existence, Jason started telling me that we needed to celebrate somehow, but we needed to
celebrate “big.” He wanted us to throw a party that had all the bands we’d supported over the years show up and play and give a big ol’ Happy Birthday salute to AP. Jason felt we deserved it and that the bands deserved to show up, since we’d broken so many of them since we started back in 1985.
Oddly enough, as soon as we started kicking around the idea in house, the world-famous Cleveland Agora Theater and Ballroom called us up with a similar idea-yet they were offering something we couldn’t pass up: We’d choose the bands we wanted to play the party; they’d do the rest. My God-what better deal could we have gotten?
Over the next three months, Henry Loconti Jr. and Lisa Mattingly from the Agora, along with our then-ad director, Carla Nocera, busted their asses to put together what would become a two-day, 14-band birthday party for AP. Their hard work would result in our getting more press than we’d ever received in our hometown, and being treated as royalty for a few days-or at least that’s how we felt.
Now, it sounds really cool, putting on a concert, but trust me: There’s a reason why concert promotion may be the scummiest, most backstabbing area of the music industry (besides commercial radio). Just because a band is your friend backstage, that doesn’t mean the band’s booking agency gives a shit about you, and in some cases, neither does the band’s management. As we went down the list of bands we wanted to play our party, we found out quickly who our real friends were and who was, you know, “unavailable” (read: who didn’t give a shit about playing our party).
Add to that a local concert-promoter war between the Agora and our city’s big, established concert group, and things only got worse. We heard back from bands’ managers that they were really sorry, but they couldn’t play our show because the bigger promoter threatened them with never booking their band in Cleveland again if they played this show with the Agora. It was just insane. This was a party for AP, not a huge Woodstock ’95 event. It got so bad that our second-night headline act, Big Audio Dynamite, pulled out at the last minute, claiming scheduling conflicts, after we’d already announced them on all the posters and tickets; but we later heard from management that they were actually concerned about repercussions from the bigger concert group.
If it couldn’t get any worse, the Agora people thought we had made a decent agreement with the big rock radio station in town, the infamous WMMS, to let it sponsor the show in exchange for on-air plugs and other promotion for the show. In the end, all WMMS did was try to claim it as their party, sponsored by AP. Huh?!
There was a lot of worrying, and there was no way we could’ve pulled it off without Carla’s hard work. The Agora folks scored big by being able to rent out from the larger promoter, the outdoor and on-the-riverfront Nautica Concert Stage (where the Warped Tour usually played, and which held about 4,000 people), and we even got underground-rock poster-art icon and fellow Clevelander Derek Hess to create our poster art.
When day No. 1 of the show finally arrived, it couldn’t have gone off better. It was a strong lineup of XC-NN, Prick, Medicine, Catherine Wheel, Girls Against Boys, the Verve and Helmet. Publicists from record companies both indie and major came into town and ended up making it a working vacation. The bands couldn’t have been nicer, and the crowd was really good. We ended up that night ahead of budget and looking good, and we even got some love from NPR, of all places, who’d shown up to cover the event.
Day No. 2 was a different story. The lineup consisted of Shiner, Gene, Luna, Soul Coughing, Jawbox, Everclear and headliners the Flaming Lips. (Smoking Popes were supposed to play, but they canceled, being on the verge of a breakup at the time). Looking back, if we could have canceled it, we just might have, because without B.A.D. showing up, it killed our turnout (keep in mind that the Flaming Lips in 1995 were most famous for appearing on Beverly Hills, 90210). It rained, the crowd was about a quarter of what we’d seen the day before, and the show lost a chunk of money. This was our party, and we took it as a personal affront that more people hadn’t come out. Then we had to remember what I’d pointed out above: We were in Cleveland. If we had been in NYC or LA, it probably would have been different.
Despite the good times with the bands, the publicists and a great first night, the next day I swore never to get involved in a concert-promotion opportunity again. It’s just full of BS, and it really uncovers the side of the music business you least want to see as a fan.
Of course, lately Jason has been asking me what’s going on with a 20th-anniversary concert for next year. Fucking hell... ALT
TESTIMONIAL
JASON PETTIGREW/Senior Editor:
I was elected to MC the anniversary gigs, because when it comes to looking like a moron in front of vast numbers of people, I’m the person at AP best suited for the job. I could write 5,000 words about this, but here’s the Cliffs Notes version: I remember the Verve’s gear packing up in the 101-degree heat, which made their little bitch guitarist Nick McCabe run offstage, ending their set after eight minutes. I pleaded with singer Richard Ashcroft to go out in front of the crowd and explain what happened. Ashcroft, a gentleman and a thoughtful soul, obliged me; McCabe called me a cunt and stormed off. (I hope at this very moment Nicky is in his bedroom, suffering a slow death from social-anxiety disorder.) Medicine kicked the crowd’s ass with more shoegazey noise than a truckload of My Bloody Valentine bootlegs (Later, guitarist Brad Laner told me he had never received so many overtures for sex in one city.) Helmet put on a typically furious set that made me smile. The next day, I decided heavy drinking would make me loosen up a bit. Well, it was kind of a force field: Art Alexakis from Everclear wanted to kick my ass for dissing his band (that wasn’t true: I was dissing him); Jawbox completely raged; and at the peak of my drunkenness, I came out to sing “Bus To Beezelebub” with Soul Coughing, flopping all over the stage like a beached carp. A few months later, an AP intern handed me a bootleg cassette of Soul C’s set from the show. You can hear two guys talking over “Bus,” saying, “Man, that guy is a dick,” and “He sucks. I hate him.” Mission accomplished.
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