It's Pay-to-Play at the Local Swap Meet for You, Assbait

Yeah, I manage bands professionally. Sometimes not so professionally when the charlie supply is low and one of these trust fund crybabies calls me up because they want to get out of their pay-to-pretend-they-have-talent contracts.

And by the way, if I don't pay you for your latest gig beneath that offramp off highway 134, it's because I need that money to hire an army of questionably female hookers to rut with just so that I can forget my own existence and sleep at night. Wondering what it's like being Spike Anderson? Well, probably in college you got to experience that hilarious prank where your buddies get you an escort for your birthday only to wake up and see pictures of her teabagging your forehead because she was really a transsexual. Then they send the pictures to your friends and relatives and it winds up on the Internet and you're ostracized from your community forever and every night you wake up in a cold sweat, swiping at your forehead because you feel phantom scrotum there. To combat the nightmare you buy a Dolce & Gabbana messenger bag and tell everyone on MIRC that you're bisexual but that only leads to a computer virus on the PC at the library and weird charges on your credit card. That's pretty much it.

The point is, fuckos, you've got to stick together when you're a shit band. Having friends who loudly and frequently reassure you that you're great allows you to ignore all your doubts about your life or choice of career. And let's face it: you have plenty of time to alienate one another with your various social defects once you're stuck in a shitty van driving around Seattle's trendy truck stop district with your shitbag bandmates looking for bikerdope and a reason to say fuck it lets go acoustic. Comprende?

The music scene now is a different animal than Grandpa Jizzstain was used to. While he was getting paid to tag herpes-encrusted groupies and yawn through a set of shitty Moody Blues covers at the Rainbow Room, you're stuck playing a garage sale in Pico Rivera for all the magic markers you can lodge up a nostril. Next thing you know your surfing Craig's List for anonymous sex, kush, and a part-time drummer that hates money.

Non-consensual prison love? Sure, one minute its a shared quip with you and your sleigh bell player - in between bumps off an Gary from Ohio's ass - and before you know its bloody amphetamine shits in the corner of your Public Storage converted bedroom/jack closet. And now "Geoff" from Minneapolis is howling into your keyboardist's didgeridoo right before he fires up his '90 Honda Accord and takes off with your PS3 and hog bucket. Once in I told Diana Doom - of AIDS Taco fame and also the holder of my Husker Du jacket while I sold PCP Roadblock to Redondo skins outside the Coconut Teaser - only use Craig's List for moving massive amounts of hydro and for gift wrapping anal warts to twinks. Its a slippery slope. Oh, "but its free!" you say? Yeah, and so are your shows. Besides, your shitty distortion jangle pop abomination of a band will need the DSL money to spend on high grade amyl (none of that Hawaiian Gardens shit) and on the best nipple clamp specialist Dom from the LA XXpress the El Ray can buy. I'm filled with the knowledge and yet you shove past me with your latte into a Thursday Matinee at Boardners.

Kids these days think they're too good to hire a manager. They figure "hey. let's book our own gigs and keep the extra 30% cut." Well 30% of 0 means pay to play and jacking bottom dwarfs in the back alley, Loyd London. Get fucked.

You need a real manager and not some ex-convict who has seen Jesus and heard his commands to help you get your music out for a $600 one-time upfront meth payout. I don't care if that guy brings all of his buddies from the work detail of cell-block 3A to your gigs, you aren't going to get that residency at the Draft brewery any time soon. Also, at the gig he's supposed to bring all his buddies to he himself will refuse to show, as he's probably too busy riding the snake inside a stall of the Y on Slauson. True story.

So you'll find your entire career has been nothing but a series of final shows at venues just before they close down and the management has to sell the place and become full-time sperm donors to keep their skag habit in line. And I would know. That's all I did for a job when I was living with step-mom during the winter of '86 while managing Julie Cloaca and the Unemployment Lines.

You've heard my gospel now feel appreciative, poser.