Why All Booking Agents Are Evil

So many people I meet on the road have dire misconceptions about having their band booked by a third party. Some people may wonder why an article on a booking agency would be of any particular interest. With all earnest candor, I believe musicians tend to stay extremely ignorant of the concepts at work within a touring band. Though honestly, not to retrace any vital steps in my explanation, ignorance may actually be a rather ideal situation. If you can find continued existence without dealing on any business levels, there's obviously not a more perfect position. Often this means you either have a fat trust fund or are an extremely dedicated individual that already has lots of friends and contacts. In all the tours I have ever done, I've never once been told when, where, or how long to go out on the road. There are people involved in independent music who provide a genuine service, and still have a love for the music itself. For whatever reasons, booking agents often take a lot of flack for their position, and many probably should. A large portion are schmooze kings and queens who have little dedication to the bands they represent, but as with any occupation (minus A&R reps), there exist some who are respectable and honest, but rarely get a chance to discuss their philosophies. One such notable individual is Boche Billions whose involvement with bands like the Jesus Lizard, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Pavement, Six Finger Satellite and Southern Culture on the Skids has laid a path to provide an outlet for extremely efficient, well planned tours, and has garnished the respect of having some of the best live acts around. Seeing as Boche probably won't be allowed a MRR editorial column in the next 400 years, I thought I would let him defend some of his own conceptions and philosophies about the music industry. I pulled him away from his normal cartoon viewing one Saturday morning for the following exploration into the intriguing, pressure-filled world of running a company as far up in the high numbers as The Billions Corporation.

To commence, I wanted to ask you a somewhat loaded question, and surely you won't take offense to this, but why do you think it is that all booking agents are evil? What do you think creates that perception?
I think you are referring to a relatively select group of people who have that opinion. It's certainly not widespread throughout a giant cross section of the population because most people are unaware of our existence, and many have no opinion whatsoever.

Do you think that it's mainly just kids that have these opinions?
I think it also spreads out into the territory of bands. I think there are a few places that you would find someone holding a strong negative opinion about booking agents. It would be either kids coming from a DIY, punk rock kind of perspective, who think that anybody who works professionally in the music business is unnecessary and parasitic. Then there are certainly plenty of agents who are disliked by promoters who work full time with them. Generally speaking they don't dislike the concept of an agent in general, because of course an agent is necessary for them to be able to do their job properly. Nobody wants to run a club or promote shows that does business directly with bands all the time, because it's just a very inefficient way to get things done.

Sure, without consistent contact strange things tend to happen, but with an agent there's a bunch of unrequited love with that too. Not getting a show you want, that is.
Well, you won't find a promoter disliking good reasonable agents. And then of course, there's bands, and most of the time a band is going to dislike an agent for one of two reasons: either it's because they dislike their agent, and they can't get a better one, or they're someone who would like to have a booking agent, and they hate some agent because they can't get him to set up their tours.

I wanted to ask you to unveil a little bit of an origin theory here. As the story goes, this guy named Dave Viecelli that started out as an anarchist, crazy-like derisive hippie guy sleeping on Steve Albini's floor, and then started working with the Jesus Lizard and branched out from there. How close to the truth is that?
I would say it's not that close to the truth by any means.

That's the story that is always told whenever I'm around third parties.
The actual story would start in '77-'78 when I was about 16. I was pretty much a normal mainstream music listening kid from a nice home who would occasionally get into trouble. Started listening to punk rock about then, kind of moved into a very different circle of friends in high school, then started hanging around, playing guitar, getting involved in putting on local punk rock shows and things like that. I probably didn't actually start doing anything until about 1980, but probably listening to punk rock from '77 on.

So did you ever play in a band yourself? Did you ever have a punk rock band?
Yeah, I've been in punk rock bands.

What was the worst name of a punk rock band that you've been in? Or you can tell me the best. It might be synonymous.
Well, the last band I was ever in was called Big Fish and I was actually the singer of Big Fish.

Like Reel Big Fish without the reeling?
(Laughs) Uh no... And then there were a whole bunch of different bands. The first band that I ever played in was sort of like this weird bunch of people who were called The Bunny Game. That was probably the best band I was ever in, but I don't remem-ber what I did. I think that was the band where we used a tiny little toy Casio organ all the time.

There's the Hard Copy sell.
I played guitar in the Palindromes, I think.

Did you ever have a band that released a 7" or anything?
Actually, no.

That would be good to delve into those archives. What's the next step in the evolution?
In 1984, Negative Approach, who were one of the first punk rock bands on Touch and Go, were about to go out on tour. They were trying to figure out who was going to go out and manage the tour because Larissa [Strickland, Laughing Hyenas] who at that time was in a band called L7, not the current L7, a much better L7, couldn't go out on the road. She and John [Brannon] from Negative Appraoch were a longtime couple, and Corey and Lisa [Rusk, then husband and wife, co-owners of Touch & Go Records] suggested me. I wasn't in school at that time, and not that hell bent on finishing my degree anyway. I'd been putting on shows for mostly different Canadian bands and some American bands in a couple of bars. So Larissa calls me, and it's summer, and I had nothing better to do, and I was like "fuck yeah" because I hadn't traveled very much. So we went out and the tour routing was kind of funny because it started in Michigan and Ohio and went northeast and down the East Coast and then after New Orleans we were supposed to go up to Memphis and then down to Texas. Along the tour, everybody was being driven crazy by John. This band had actually gone through several line-ups with this particular line-up together for maybe six months before that tour. The band decided to say "fuck you" to John in Memphis because they knew it was the closest they were going to be to home for a long time and it made more sense to go back to Detroit from Memphis than Albuquerque.

Well, that makes sense in some form of twisted logic.
So they broke up and I came back, but the guy that played bass in that band the next year joined the band Angry Red Planet, and when they started touring they called me. I started helping them with the booking because it just seemed like the natural thing to do. That was the first booking I was doing. That was in '85.

That was all really before hooking up with any of the guys from the Jesus Lizard?
Oh yeah, long before. That was before I had even met Scratch Acid.

What's the bridge then between Negative Approach and you meeting Scratch Acid?
The first time I met David Yow and David Sims [from Scratch Acid] was when Corey, Lisa, our friend Gil and I went to New York in '86. I think...my memory for dates is total crap. It was the first time that I went to New York City. In late '86 Touch and Go moved to Chicago, and Corey tried to convince me to go with them, because they knew they needed somebody to work at the label in addition to themselves. But at that time, I had a rather cozy situation going where I was a cab driver for a few years and, later a dispatcher...

...which is kind of like a booking agent.
Sort of. Anyway, a year later he was bugging me again, so in January of '88 I move to Chicago. I moved into Corey and Lisa's house, and helped run Touch and Go. I started all the Touch and Go direct retail accounts. I was the guy who sold the first Rapeman single. Sold the whole pressing direct only to store accounts without telling them what it was. Totally blind. I would call them up and say "I've got this single and you can have up to ten of them if you take all ten."

And did most stores do it? That's rather hard to find these days.
Oh yeah. I was just ready for a change of pace. Steve [Albini, Rapeman/Shellac] and I had become pretty good pals, shooting pool all the time and everything else. Nate [Kato, Urge Overkill] moved out, so there was this empty room, so I lived there for three years.

I don't want to turn this into the Boche vs. Steve Albini article, but you guys had a falling out.
We have not spoken to each other in four or five years.

Without too much slinging of the mud, what happened?
It's hard for me to kind of cut it short. He does a lot of nice things for people, and I can say a lot of great things about him. However, he can find a reason for anyone who makes money in the industry to be evil, except him and Corey Rusk. Somehow, Steve thinks that what I do is dishonorable, but if anyone presses him for ideas on booking agents, I think he would probably recommend me before anybody else, at least he did for a long, long time. There's absolutely no problems between me and Corey. I don't know what it is, [Albini] knows how I do business and he knows enough people that I know...

...that he would have seen the respect and dedication.
Yeah, he should know. He can't think that I do scummy things. A very touchy subject was my negotiating the deal for the Jesus Lizard when they decided to leave Touch and Go. Steve was heard as saying that he felt that the way I conducted myself was extremely fair and honorable and very respect-able. We were very mindful of Corey and his opinions and we kept Corey very much involved. It wasn't just "hey buddy, so long."

Corey's always told me if you're going to have a booking agent, Billions is the one that will handle everything honestly.
Right, that's kind of it. I don't know why [Albini] thinks that somehow the service I perform is less worthy or necessary than the service he performs. It's the same thing. A band can learn to record themselves just like they can learn to book themselves. Granted, it's a more technical, higher skill.

From Boche who was doing punk rock shows in 1984 to the Boche now, what do you think your feelings of that person would have about what you're doing in present function with Billions? Do you think you would have had a strange reaction to a person like that?
Well, my guess is if the guy I was in '80 saw the guy I am now, I would probably harbor some of the same suspicions that some of the kids you referred to harbor now. The idea concerning how someone gets to be that "big", you know how it happens. It's luck. It's hard work. It's a lot of different things. It's being able to have good relationships with good people who you enjoy working with. I've been extremely fortunate in that area. We just don't have episodes of people freaking out and people firing people and people running all over the place suing people. It just doesn't happen. By and large, 99% of the time, it just goes nice and smooth, and everybody's happy most of the time.

Do you think that a lot of booking agents out there don't really ever get their shit together enough to be able to sustain a decent reputation? You see a lot of new agents get 20 bands in two weeks and then just fall apart.
Yeah, there's many ways that you can basically screw up. A lot of people decide that they want to be a booking agent and that it's an attractive thing to look at in many respects. Booking agents, in many respects, are in short supply. I would also say that good workable established managers are in short supply, too. But, there's a million record labels out there, and there aren't enough booking agents, so when someone begins booking, what they quickly realize is they've got to make a certain amount of money to pay the rent. If you've got a bunch of bands that don't have anything going for them and they're going out playing $100 shows, you realize the only way to make money is if you do it in volume. I need to have 20 or 30 bands. I would have never thought that we would, but we have 43 on the national roster. Three years ago, I would have told you we'd never have that many, but the thing is that with Tom [Windish], Ali [Hedrick], and Meggean [Ward, all Billions employees], and with this new software that we're using, we have built our abilities to handle work beyond what we could have been five years ago, even technologically.

Is it that great concept of technology not providing more free time and relaxation, but just allowing you to do more work?
Yes, that's it. I had a meeting a few days ago where [Windish] was talking about expecting to be much busier this year than last, particularly because he is now going to be managing Low. I said, "Tom, to do this job right, you never know how much more work it's going to be. You've got to be more cautious with your time than ever before in terms of any new bands you take on, because this is going to take a lot of time, and I will not have you doing this in the name of this company." When we get in a more settled atmostsphere and find that we have more time, and all systems are running smoothly, let's say six months from now, I don't necessarily want to run out and pack that time up again. I'd like to maintain some flexibility. Instead of using this time to book more bands as well as book bands now, I'd rather reinvest that time into finding more ways to spend time helping the other bands we work with now. Let's stop doing some things by rote practice, reexamine some things, and utilize some new ideas for our existing clients. Let's increase the quality instead. We just don't need to have more clients. If we can better manage our time and find more good things to do with it, that's great. I don't think we need to have more clients.

I may be getting too far from the central radius here, but it's astounding that say with Ali, she works all day, then a lot of times with the volume and frequency of shows in Chicago by Billions bands, she could end up doing band related crap from 10 in the morning until 1 at night.
Oh absolutely, and that's the thing a lot of people don't realize. You hear people saying "oh there's that booking agent guy, always hanging out with the band backstage drinking." Yeah, you're enjoying it to some extent, but it is part of your work. With the notable exception of this year's New Year's Eve, I never stay home when someone we book is in town. This New Year's Eve I stayed home, but we had so many New Year's Eve shows going on I couldn't have been everywhere at once anyway. So I decided instead to honor my wife Theresa's wishes and had this dinner party that we normally do, but we didn't do last year because we all went to D.C. Otherwise, I go out.

Getting back more into this stigma that people have with independent music when connected with booking agents, does it bother you at all if you are indeed ostracized by the whole punk rock, all ages, Maximum Rock and Roll scene?
You'd like to be able to have relationships with as many people there's reason for you to have relationships with. I don't find that I run into the problem where I want to do something with some kind of DIY all ages scene in a particular town with Pegboy or Man or Astro-Man?. That doesn't happen very much. I think that sometimes with those people it can be frustrating when you do try to set up shows. I've got no problem with people having different perceptions or having values that are maybe not particularly well informed, but what bothers me is when people don't do things well. That's what a lot of people don't realize. A lot of people think the big promoter is an asshole or a scumbag. Just because he makes a living off what he does doesn't make him a scumbag. If you're going to do something professionally, you're probably going to need to get paid for it. That doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. Without the time or dedication, it won't do it so well. Like Seth Hurwitz [a DC promoter], for example, is a hell of a character, and I'm sure there are people who think he is an unconscionable prick. There are certainly people in the DC scene that think he's Satan, but the fact is that he does business 95% of the time honorably. We have a good relationship with him. What we like about him is that he knows how to put on shows right and he knows how to put together a club. And that stuff is valuable because we do our share of holding kid's hands through promoting shows, but what you end up getting out of that whole punk rock attitude is a kid who ends up thinking that everything's cool, everybody's a good buddy, and nothing's at stake and they go do things irresponsibly. They take one show they can't really handle and then they bail on their responsibilities. They don't live up to their agreements, and you know that happens a lot. That's frustrating because my job is not to deal with people who are gonna think I'm a cool, popular guy. My job is to make good shows happen for bands.

What do you tell a kid when he calls up and says "Hi, I'm a huge fan of the Jesus Lizard, and I've got this armory, and we always have great shows, every band always likes us. We had The Oblivians, Unwound, whoever, but I can only afford like $300." What do you tell a kid at that point, who seems very honest and enthusiastic?
In some cases, I'm not going to be able to talk to someone right away, and they may leave a couple messages and we certainly always take down their information, and whenever I can talk to them I do. If I picked up the phone and someone said that I would tell them the band's situation. For example, the band's not touring for six months, or they're touring and the show in your town's already done, or I would ask them to tell me about their situation. One of the problems is that we might have an established relationship with somebody else in their town and that makes it kind of difficult to just suddenly, after five or eight years, to go give them to someone else. However, I'll take down their information, and see what we can do. If they stick around and are doing this for a while, we'll probably be doing some shows together one way or another. But so many of those guys come and go in a couple of months and I'm never anxious to jump out, unless this guy fills a hole, then I'm not going to be anxious to do a show with a guy who's young and obviously of limited means and limited experience in the first couple of months he's trying to do shows, because he may well not be there by the time the show happens. And that's the thing you worry about. When it comes to money, it's just a very pragmatic approach. If someone says they can only afford $300, and I'm confident that situation is the right place for the band, production is decent, the room is decent, then as long as they're cutting me a good deal on the back end, and I'm confident the band is going to draw there. I will certainly say, "The Jesus Lizard rarely plays for a guarantee of less than $1500 and it's usually $2000 to $4000." I won't very often say that there's no way, because there are still situations in which we still book door deals on occasion. If someone says to me that I can have a $500 guarantee plus 80% of the gross after $1250 or just have 90% of the door with no guarantee, if I know the band is going to fill that room, I'm taking the 90%. You don't have the security of the guarantee, but if you have faith in your ability to draw, and you know the promoter's going to do his job to let people know you're coming so that it's no big secret, then you go that way. Assume the risk. I have no problem assuming risk, you just need to be able to know what risk you're assuming. Some of our best shows have been from kids with extreme enthusiasm.

Since we're talking about punk rock aesthetics, why should all bands play all ages shows for 5 dollar door cover or less? Why do you think people have that attitude, and do you think it's relevant for all your bands?
Again, I think the key is that you're talking about a very small segment of the population that holds those beliefs. It comes from bands like Fugazi. There is nothing wrong with doing shows on that kind of basis. I have total respect for an operation like that. It can work. What people have to realize is that most bands that are really good are full-time endeavors. There aren't very many bands who tour on a regular basis and who put out records on a regular basis that are of any value whatsoever. Most bands take three weeks off from their day job every year to tour. Being a musician, you're an artist. You're full-time, it's a real thing. When you're a kid it's easy, rock 'n' roll is one big party. As if anyone who gets to be in a rock band is just incredibly lucky. And in some respects it's true. It's a hell of a lot better than a lot of jobs. But it is a job. There is work involved, and there are down sides to it. It isn't just one big party. I think that's where people get hung up. As a kid you think, "God, can you imagine if you could be in a rock band and that's all you had to do?" So you kind of think people should already be apologizing. If, on top of that, you add the, "we think our ticket price should go up and we should be making more money and we should do this and we should do that," I think some people perceive that as insult to injury.

Yeah, definitely. It's the amount of bands out there trying to get shows and exist. It's often difficult to make anything happen yourself.
I don't view it that way. I see how hard people work, and obviously some work harder than others. Does the Jesus Lizard work harder than Pegboy? Yeah. There are differences in those respects.

Boche, what band in the world could you say that against Pegboy and not have it be true?
Uh, that's pretty tough. I mean there may be a couple here and there. (laughs)

Now, I'm really gonna get beat up. I shouldn't have ever said that one. They're all big, ugly guys.
You know the title they wear at Touch and Go? "The Laziest Band Ever."

Before Pegboy squashes me for making fun of them, do you think there is an inherent problem with major labels? The Jesus Lizard and Southern Culture both drew extremely disparate channels, but both have been kind of brought up and weaned on independent music. Do you think that there indeed is a market beyond that initial independent level at its most extreme? Do you think there is a potential for bands who start on those channels to break out into much wider outlets?
While staying independent?

Well, no, not even staying independent, but do you think there is an appeal for things like that in more mainstream music?
I think that any number of bands cans start up through "independent channels." Southern Culture and The Jesus Lizard are very different bands. In many respects, they are very similar people in that they are by and large adults who have worked hard and who have reasonable expectations to responsibly carry out what they need to do. They both started out on indies and are now with majors, but had very different experiences with indies. Actually, that's not entirely true. Scratch Acid had a horrible initial experience with Rabid Cat, and ended up on Touch and Go. As everyone knows, Touch and Go is the greatest punk rock oriented independent label ever. On the other hand, some bands have had a long series of bad experiences with labels which were just ineffectual or went out of business right away or lied to them or whatever else. By and large, Geffen has dealt with Southern Culture more graciously and more respectfully than Safe House ever did. As far as audiences go, it depends. For example, Albini would make fun whenever Rick Sims (The Didjits) would be agitated at Touch and Go trying to creatively market the band. Steve would just mock him. He would honestly say "do you think there's anybody out there who could possibly like the Didjits who don't already know them and have heard them?" I would just stare at him and say "yeah." Steve seemed to think that anybody who would like the Didjits is already in the core audience reached by Touch and Go routinely. I think that there are all kinds of bands that could conceivably sell ten or twenty thousand records whose music just isn't available enough or promoted well enough to do that. It's like this weird thing where Steve likes to think that all the good people with diverse musical tastes in the world are a subset of the population that exactly mirrors him. If you look at the Didjits and Green Day, can you really honestly say the Didjits couldn't have done 10% of what Green Day did? I don't think so. So who's right and who's wrong? Is the massive popularity of Green Day a passing thing? No one said that if you looked at the five thousand hardcore Didjits fans. I surely wouldn't argue that if the Didjits got a half million fans that all of them would be as dedicated and stick around as long as the five thousand. However, I do think it is possible to interest many more people in it. So for the Didjits to want to go from selling 5 or 10 thousand to selling 50 or 100 thousand wasn't futile or stupid. I don't think that all marketing is trickery. Everybody does something that is marketing. It's a question of where you want to arbitrarily draw your lines. If you really want to be puritanical about it, Man or Astro-Man? has got all that stage shit, and all that crap and they do all that bullshit. Well, what is it? A-it's fun, B-it's part of the entertainment and C-it's marketing. It's something that identifies these people as purveyors of a unique entertainment product.

How is your relationship with major labels? A lot of people are interested in the bands and keep up with the Billions roster. I know the first Southern Culture record did great. In fact, it possibly did better than anyone expected, but the second record doesn't seem like it's received the same attention. With the Jesus Lizard, it seems like there was almost more interest in the band before they had signed and put out a record than there has been since they actually released it.
I think both are different situations. Southern Culture's new record is actually selling faster than Dirt Track Date, but it doesn't look like it is. Dirt Track Date had been out for like three and a half months actually, and it hadn't sold anything more than about fifteen thousand copies and we have scanned thirty three thousand total. In the first three and a half months, Plastic Seat Sweat has sold between forty five to fifty thousand copies. What happened is this really fucked-up thing that goes on in the music industry where Southern Culture got lots of national press last year because it was obvious that the band was this well-loved underdog that was on the rise and was selling some records. People were excited to write about the band. Now people listen to the record and like it and say that they'd like to write about the record, but now Southern Culture has got to prove that they can sell records because they can't afford to go out on the line with a positive piece about a band that's not going to sell. And that's what goes on. So we have this problem where we haven't been able to get national press precisely because they were underdogs before and got lots of press and now press and radio are sitting back with their arms folded. It's ridiculous. And, of course, it means that it's a longer, harder, much more difficult road. Southern Culture is definitely in one big fight with Geffen right now, but that's part of what goes on. You have to remember that the major labels are all about business. There is no puritanical relationship with the label. And whether you can be friends, it's all about whether the label is equipped and skilled to accomplish what you would like to do with your music. There are a couple of important things to realize about major labels. First, do not forget that they are funda-mentally a company that is trying to turn music into a profit. They are primarily interested in either flat-out profit or bands that will enhance their reputation. Also, you've got to understand that they're not there to be your buddy. Now given that, I don't think that major labels are just stocked with all these disloyal, ne'er do well bloodsuckers. There are lots of people on majors who develop real relationships and who really do get excited about some music on a personal level. Are there people who just sort of drift from job to job as the offers change? Yes, of course there are, but there are also other reasonable people who you can deal with on a reasonable basis. And, like anything else, it's not black and white, it's gray.

Do you think there would be a point where you would tell a major label that it's a headache to work with them?
In Southern Culture's case, no. There will never be any regret for having signed a major label deal. Dirt Track Date has now scanned over 225,000 copies, and there's just no way they would have done that without going to the majors. Let's say that Plastic Seat Sweat stops dead at 50,000. That's still enough to keep them touring which is where they really make money. There's just no way it's a bad situation. With the Jesus Lizard, it's a different thing. Certainly, timing-wise there was a problem with Shot. Again, it's a press thing. The Jesus Lizard don't get radio, so what they are going to get is press. They've always received great press and for seven years, lots of the same big and small press have said mostly the same great things about them. So when they switched to Capitol, some people thought there was a perceived hypocrisy there because people thought David Yow had said things that got twisted into this false belief that the Lizard were like Fugazi, Jr. And they never said that. Basically, what they said was, at the time, there's no place they'd rather be than Touch and Go. There was no place that made more business sense, but we got to the point where it made more sense to be somewhere else. They were hitting their heads on the ceiling. They weren't going to be able to sell more records on Touch and Go because they needed to be revitalized. They needed to stir up, and make a record that was a little different. A new way to market the band to a different audience. So that's the reason we went with Capitol. Has the Jesus Lizard made more money in the last two years than if they stayed with Touch and Go? Yes. So, you know it can be a mistake? No. Did Shot sell worse than the last Touch and Go records? Maybe very slightly. Basically about the same. It looks a lot smaller because you're playing in a much bigger pond. And the difficulty was instead of the press coming out and saying the same great things, it was like oh, here's the band that said they would never sign on a major label and so people thought the Jesus Lizard suddenly shat in their own soup. A lot of the music press is just copycat bullshit. Now, I still can not think Shot is a bad record. It's still very simple, very clean, it's just cleaner, it's a technically better recording than Steve ever managed. If you listen to say Head or even Liar, you're dealing with a little Yugo compared to a Lincoln. It's a bigger, brighter, more expansive, more ballsy recording. There was an aesthetic to the stuff Steve did, but it was an aesthetic that was carried out despite technical mediocrity. They would never have been able to make this new record with Andy Gill [Gang of Four] if they were on Touch and Go. The money wouldn't have been there.

You started off as Billions and Billions, was that from the Carl Sagan book or McDonald's?
No, it was actually sort of a joke. Boche is a name I've had forever and ever, Billions was like a nickname Nate [Kato, Urge Overkill] gave to me not long after I moved to Chicago because I liked to play cards and go to the horse track (I don't do that stuff much anymore, but I used to do it a lot) so he thought it made them seem more romantic and intriguing and he thought Billions would be a good gambling nickname for me. So it sort of became this other nickname, and then it sort of became a full name [Boche Billions] and Billions and Billions actually became a father and son company like Smith and Smith. That was actually the way it started. That was actually the initial gag, but even I forgot it was that in time. It just became this kind of dumb name so when I incorporated I thought, "well, I want to change it, but then again I don't want to lose the one name we've sort of established some sort of track record with."

I'm glad that at least this interview allows you an opportunity to state your philosophies directly.
The other thing you might want to put in is the fact that I get between 30 and 60 packages in the mail every week. Bands that want to tour with our bands, more frequently bands that want us to book them, that kind of thing. I say there isn't a week that I don't get at least 30 or 40 packages and often more than that. I do listen to at least a couple of tracks off everything that I get. I really want to stay connected to the possibility of some unknown band doing something great. It's just it takes so much time...I may have the stuff six months before I get to it, because if I spent time listening to each and every one of those sixty packages every week, guess what, I can't do any work for the bands, and if I write letters to all those people or take those people's phone calls again, I can't do my job for the clients I represent.

What about if a band personally invited you to a show?
There would have to be a reason for me to do it. So some things get to the head of the list if they come from a manager we already work with recommends. Like the Quadrajets. Did it take me six months to listen to them? No. It was recommended by somebody we worked with. People have to realize it may be a while before we listen to it and if they call I'm not going to pick up the phone call. I already work on the laptop at home evenings and weekends. I only have so much time. You can't blame people for not understanding, nobody can see how busy I am. You know, they think that's the only package you got that week.

Everyone likes you when things proceed flawlessly in the background, but when you fuck up, not even the hot dog boy will be your friend. Hey, speaking of fucking up, our last directions to the Grog Shop in Cleveland were totally screwed up.
Yeah, alright, I'll see what I can do about getting that fixed.

Requisite Outro
A lot of people don't realize what's going on with booking a band. For instance, I know when I had just gotten out of high school, living on my own, working, paying my rent, I booked a band from Florida and they needed a $250 guarantee and I thought that was the most presumptuous, absurd request in the greater existence of evolved man. I didn't have to answer to anything, just get by making salads, running sound and going to school. I just sat around watching fucking science fiction movies and didn't really have to deal with reality of sustaining myself as a musician. But I do hope that some people see the logic behind running a band efficiently and financially, within the realms of screwing no one over. I really think the business side of independent music, if that's not a contradiction in terms, is based on ignorance, and I think the corporate record industry likes to keep it that way. Bands should learn the business side of things if for no other reason than to know who's screwing them over and how often. I really think it's the most pure when a band can function and control all facets of the bands to do, but from my feeble attempts, it's been impossible to do this and not have other elements, like practicing and playing, not completely falter.