Sean Cranston, drummer for local band The Further Unsound, recently tweeted his outrage and disdain over current music industry business practices:

“”You gotta pay to play” – every music venue and promoter ever
YOU PAY ME mother fuckers”

Reaction from the industry was decidedly mixed.

“Dat boi dont know shit from shit” said local old coot DJ Think Noise. “Back when I was in the game, we’d play two sets of shit we hated for five hours at a time, literally for the peanuts that fell on the floor. We’d play Carl Perkins, Bill Haley, hell any old shit that you kids love nowadays. I myself dressed and sang as Billie Holiday on several different occasions.”

TB: “Wouldn’t that make you, like, over a hundred years old?”

“Old enough to have porked yer great grandma you damned mod rocker! Now this was durin the first world war mind ya, so we did it for scrap iron…”

“DJ Think Noise is a fucking sell out” claims local hardcore legend xxSteve. “We didn’t ever even get a nickel. We got in the van, played every VFW from here to Cranston, and got our asses beat a hundred times by bouncers and promoters non-stop for our troubles. That was fuckin hardcore, before all these sissy bands with their ‘we want half the door money’ and ‘at least give us a free beer!’ came along. We did it all for the beatings.”

“Yeah, xxSteve is fuckin nuts. But don’t print that cause he’ll probably kick my ass for saying it.” claims latino (that’s right, we’ve got a minority panelist now!) 90s indie rocker Jose Ninos. “There actually was a golden age, though I’m afraid it’s probably not what Sean envisions. We got some of the door money, and we’d get free pbr or rolling rock all night. Man, the late 90s were high times for indie rock. But that’s just not the way it is today.”

Local blogger Scott Koenig agrees with the latter statement; “Yeah man, you so gotta pay to play these days. It’s like being an intern without even having the prospect of getting a job in a few years since you’ll be so fuckin burned out. Take me, I run a useless local blog. And yet, I get paid in some form by every band I blog about!”

TB: “Would you care to expand on that”

SK: “Um, I reserve my second amendment rights…”

TB: “Mr. Koenig, there’s irrefutable evidence that the nature of this ‘pay’ you speak of has in the past come in the form of sexual favors.”

SK (turns to lawyer Saul Steinowitzenbergin): “Um, I again plead the, uh, sixth comandment?”

TB: “Mr. Koenig, there are witnesses and damning testimony! Did Mr. Cranston provide any quid pro quo for you to write this article!”

SK: “I did not have sexual relations with Mr. Cranston”

TB: “How about oral? Was oral sex involved?”

SK (turns to Steinowitzenbergin esq., who nods him on): “No gloryholes whatsoever were involved.”

TB: “Who said anything about gloryholes?”

SK: “This interview of myself is over!”