“I Got Screwed Over By Sean Agnew And All I Got Was This Lousy Blog”
I book concerts for a living. I used to work for the largest performance hall in downtown Philly, a nonprofit that relies heavily on private and public support just to meet its operating expenses. The cost structure there is such that, between the unions and the maintenance and so forth, the margins are razor-thin or nonexistent. Artists perform there for the acoustics and the cache of it all, not to make a killing. And yet no matter how many times I would explain this to other parties, they were always convinced we were “getting away with something”.. if only it were so.
The truth of the matter is, philly’s #1 DIY promoter was making more cash “hand over fist” (and under table) running shows in a local church sanctuary, than I could ever have dreamt of in the ritzy symphonic hall.
Ruh-roh. Get ready for a bitchfit-outing doozy, after the jump.
People send us links all the time, and we love that. What we especially love, though, are the links to blogs that are pretty much all about how one person really, really hates one thing. They don’t come in very often, but when they do, it’s usually a deep, dark truthful mirror into not the intended’s, but the author’s soul. Case in point: The City Electric, a blog about how this one booking guy tangled with R5 Productions’ Sean Agnew, oh-so-thinly veiled as a treatise on “the business.” When this one came in yesterday, we had two thoughts: 1. Who is this guy, what is his axe to grind, and how much you wanna bet he’s not working at the same place anymore? (You’ll see why in a sec.) And 2. Like whoa, this is inside baseball. If you don’t know or care about the booking world, you won’t care about this. BUT we did do a little research. (Look who’s working on a snow day!) And we can inform you of the following: We’re figuring that the blog is the handiwork of one Jeffrey Parks, previously employed by the The Kimmel Center, which puts the Roots and Bright Eyes references firmly in place. (Note the “previously”: We’ve been informed that Parks is now Director of Performing Arts Programs for the Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts (RCCA) in Camden, NJ.) So why the cloak and dagger? We have no idea. But man. The internet? Fucking bananas.
In that spirit, we offer a platform for Agnew and Parks to do a point/counterpoint here on the site. Let’s do this like men, shall we?
UPDATE: Agnew Responds!
