One Day at a Time Vol. II at Black Iris, 10.14.24. Source: MJ Grimes
This past September, I had the privilege of enjoying a local show. There wasn’t any stadium-filling headliner. Tickets were $15, doors were at 8PM. By most respects, it was the same show that I’ve booked, attended and moshed at many times over the past two years. I knew everyone in every band, and have put most of them on a show countless times. Except for the little detail that it 775 miles north of where I usually go to shows.
The experience, aside being marked with fun and friendship and impulsive financial decisions, was surreal. I’ve something of a reputation as a control freak, most of all at shows; my current involvement in promoting hardcore shows was largely brought on by me somehow working my way into doing box office for a fest in a South Tucson backyard. These days, shows are more social outings than concerts, complete with ten minutes at the beginning and end of me saying hello and goodbye to everyone. None of this was here in Salt Lake City, aside from a solid 20 minutes of running a merch table. I felt a certain sense of calm that I haven’t at a show, least of all our own, for a long while. For once, the lack of control was a source of comfort, not stress.
In Tucson, there is enough for me to stress about. This past year alone, I’ve seen too many of the spaces we love so much get shut down. To name a few: the Blacklidge Community Collective (three of our shows), Blondie’s (four) and Black Iris Lounge (six shows, including Haywire and Two-Piece) and the Global Justice Center1 (twelve, including Lie and Start Today) hit me particularly hard. Every day I remember all the stories I’ve heard about venues getting shut down because of hardcore shows. I remember what my dear friend Logan Greene at Groundworks told me once—in a certain lens, every venue will inevitably stop booking hardcore shows. I remember that none of these times were any of our faults, not for any fights or gross mismanagement on our part, but for the menial: the price of rent on 4th or a city permit to serve alcohol. I don’t find much solace in this.
I won’t pretend like I have the healthiest relationship with hardcore. I’m long familiar with how people tease me for my show-induced, omnipresent states of stress and/or frustration. I know that many of my friends have markedly different opinions on sobriety’s place at these shows, or what order a certain set should be in, or what time doors should actually be, or all the littler things. I’ve heard the take before that the most well-informed people in hardcore tend to be those who are at once promoters, artists and audience-goers. I couldn’t possibly attest to the validity of this statement. I do not want to pretend as if I am an—let alone the—authoritative voice on how shows should be run. But for the longest time, I wished that people would know the stress of putting these shows on. Audience members, and to a much lesser extent musicians, only have to worry about the show themselves. On our end, we have to worry about every day leading up to a show, those ever-crucial two hours before and after a show, and maybe even every day afterwards.
It’s only with the recent distance that I’ve been able to appreciate these remarks for what they are: one part constructive criticism, four or five parts concern by some of the most important people of my life. We book shows on a fundamentally different basis from most others, maybe even between the three of us. In the past two years of Still Cold being an entity, Yousseph, Genesis and I have disagreed countless times, and we will disagree countless more. I don’t think this is necessarily bad; we draw on the best of us in spite of our occasionally differing priorities and values.
But some lines must be drawn. For one, I draw the line at building a venue—with the tacit approval of city government—to displace a homeless encampment.
I draw the line at charging local photographers for unaffordable press passes.
I draw the line at delaying the fact that headliners have dropped off of shows any longer than necessary.
I draw the line at delaying set times to artists and performers until hours before a show.
I draw the line at abdicating transparency between myself and audience members by refusing refund requests.
I draw the line at enabling my own security, the one or two times we have hired security for our shows, to escalate situations and assault audience members.
I draw the line at withholding legally-binding payout agreements to artists after the fact.
I draw the line at being a reason why one of the most innovative hardcore bands of our generation breaks up.
I draw the line at any version of hardcore that leaves artists and audiences, most of all local Arizona artists and audiences, behind.
On this, all three of us agree. I hope that more bookers can come to agree as well, but we can only lead by example.
Our music will always be sneered upon, and that’s okay. It’s something like Kat Moss said once: is for anyone, but not everyone. Sometimes I still wonder that in the heat and worry of some nights, maybe hardcore isn’t for me. It’s only when that familiar rush kicks in that I remember that this is my place, at least for now. There aren’t any newspaper spotlights calling me “the Maestro of Mosh” or a ten-year-long resume on promoting events (yet). I don’t know if I’ll ever have the money to book Yung Lean, maybe even the money to book Your Arms Are My Cocoon. I certainly don’t have the money to book seventy acts across three stages, though I often wonder what we could put on for our community with that budget. Maybe I’m just being envious towards more successful counterparts, if your definition of success is one rooted more in the rapid commercialization of heavy music scenes wrought by vapid social media trends rather than, say, a sense of community service. If you subscribe to that idea of success, then sure. But the envy is nothing against the honor of taking part in the act of creation, no matter how silly or punky or DIY. If you care about being sneered upon, most of all by your friends, then pick a different fucking scene.
I’ve long since understood that to most people, this is just noise. They’re not entirely wrong, but past a certain point, this is more than noise. I really think that this scene has saved my life. I do my best not to care too much about the littler things like people crowding the stage or men not leaving the venue bathroom’s toilet seats down, although maybe it would behoove some people to care a little more. If people are spending their Fridays and Saturdays in their rooms instead of doing God-knows-what outside—or worse, doing nothing alone at home—then it will be worth it. If even one 17-year-old stumbles into a mosh pit and falls in love with this in the same way I did three years ago, then it will always be worth it.
This past weekend, I had the privilege of booking a local show. There wasn’t any stadium-filling headliner. Tickets were $5, doors were at 5PM. It was a Halloween cover show that I had booked with my friends for my friends. It was the most stressful thing I’ve done this past month, and I would do it all again a hundred times over.
For those I love, I will sacrifice
– Indecision – Hallowed Be Thy Name
Special Booking Shout-Outs
I am 1/3 of Still Cold Booking. All of our shows can be found @stillcoldbooking on Instagram.
Pull up and say hi.
Other Tucson promoters:
Phoenix:
- Mantooth / @niletheater
Yuma:
Finally, some of the spaces I love:
- Temporarily closed, but still. ↩︎