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Dept. Of Full Disclosure: Inside Danger Danger’s Weekend Meltdown

danger danger houseWe’ll be honest with ya: We banged out that post about the Danger Danger House closing down its shows in like under five minutes. But key players in the West Philly scene marinated in that shit all weekend, informally kickstarting a web campaign that may or may not still be going. Through it all, we learned a lot about our DIY brethren in West Philly. After the jump, we examine the long Internet trail of the WEST PHILLY PHILEBRITY-DISSED-US MELTDOWN.

OK, first things first and full disclosure: Over the last year or two, Danger Danger has become a kind of shorthand here at Philebs about everything kind of dumb about the West Philly scene. And that is totally not their fault. For us, while we do place a high cred value on any DIY enterprise — after all, we are one — the axe we have to grind against Danger Danger centers mostly around crappy noise bands, not having your shit together, driving your neighbors crazy because you’re young and white and think that throwing shows in your basement is some kind of higher calling, and you know, everything else that made the Philly music scene suck throughout the 1990s. Again, this is not Danger Danger’s fault, it’s just a silly prejudice that Philebrity has milked the shit out of since day one. More full disclosure: None of our staff has ever even been to Danger Danger. See? This is just how much of shit we do not give.

So when we made the post, we didn’t think much of it. We’ve been clowning these guys forever now, inadvertently giving them more press than they’ve ever had anywhere else, so it didn’t feel like, you know, a special day or anything. But fallout was swift. First, we got a couple angry emails from DD principals: One was idiotic, but another, with one Russell Brodie, actually turned out to be really quite productive. Russell pleaded his case so well that by the end of the exchange, we actually began to feel bad. More than any output we’d ever seen from the Danger Danger posse, Brodie’s positions about the house, its shows and its place in the community articulated the upshot of all those basement shows and awful e-flyers: They are/were doing it for the kids. Take a look at your average Penn student, and you begin to realize how culturally impoverished and strangled the “kids” are. Positively Biafran, we tell you. We made peace with Russell, and wished him well on the new Danger Danger Gallery — the group’s new “legit” space, which we believe to be currently undergoing renovations.

But just as we were smoking the peace pipe with Russell, we quickly learned another thing: If the Philly Rock Scene is one big high school (newsflash: it is), Danger Danger House is the Trenchcoat Mafia and for some reason, this dumb post on Philebrity was their fucking Columbine. They were mad as hell, and they weren’t gonna take it anymore. New commenters came one by one for days after the post went live, all to tell us how WRONG we were and how much we SUCKED and so on — to be fair, some more articulately than others. One guy, by the name of Michael Anton Parker, produced a response so thoughtful (and longish) that again, we were taken aback: Danger Danger meant something to people, and it wasn’t very neighborly to shit on it. We still thought/think that Pony Pants suck balls, but hey: To each his own. Perhaps that was the big lesson here.

But like we say, even as we were, in our hearts, having a very special moment with Danger Danger, the fury, as Yngwie Malmsteen might say, was still fookin’ UNLEASHED. Adam Katz of the band Red Rocket tried to post comments about how our esteemed editor was a cokehead pedophile who — sacre bleu! — suffered from impotence. He didn’t explain whether or not this was actually a blessing in disguise, but when we flagged the comment and shut down his user account (not something we do often), he took his bit to a bastion of much higher discourse: MySpace.

danger myspace grab
Guys, guys, come on: We see no reason to drag John McCain into this.

Classy! At this, we were finally like, enough’s enough. We emailed Russell — at this point, the only person from Danger Danger we were talking to who made any sense — and said, look, we don’t wanna be too sabre-rattling about this, but this is libelous. Sorry. In exchange, we published an update to the original post wherein we took back the bit about them being trustafarians — which was always more of a gross cultural generalization than it was supposed to be any kind of verifiable fact. But for some reason — actual, literal broke-ness, we suspect — this thing in particular made the Danger Danger people LIVID. “Trustafarian” apparently is their N-word. Be careful when using. But in the end, we think that this did appease the kids: They posted a similarly worded retraction to ours of the cokehead pedophile claim on MySpace and even invited us out to that night’s show at Queen of Sheba. We didn’t go because that night was Sweeney’s birthday (his 48th) and we’d purchased an eight-ball and five Thai babies.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Fishtown, Patricio Bernardo Martins De Gouvea‘s phone was ringing.

DANGER DANGER PERSON: Hey hello?
PATRICIO: Ughh yeah…who is this?
DDP: Oh its R***n.
P: How are you doing?
DDP: Alright. I wanted to talk to you about something that happened on Philebrity.
P: Okay what is it?
DDP: It’s about the Danger Danger house.
P: Yeah so…
DDP: Umm you know I’m a part of the Danger Danger house right?!!?
P: Yeah…so…
DDP: Okay I’m having trouble understanding this comment about not bathing.
P: You know its a joke. You know…a joke.
DDP: Hey I’m not pissed I just thought…blah blah
P: Well you’ve got to grow some thick skin if you’re going to be in the public.
DDP: He’s threatening legal action but that’s cool you know we’ve got a lawyer.
P: Alright soooooo. Is this a big deal? Its kind of funny.
DDP: No I’m laughing I’m just…you know…its funny.
P: Okay well I got to go but maybe I’ll go to the show tonight hopefully I won’t get sucker punched.
DDP: No, no, no I’ll protect you
P:……(rolls eyes)….alright bye

So what have we learned here? Well, a few things: One is that it’s not nice to be dismissive of other people’s microniched subcultures, especially if they have the self-righteous belief that they’re somehow saintly for doing whatever it is they do. Another is that it’s important not to generalize: In the final analysis, for every completely fucktarded Danger Danger show with Red Rocket or whoever, there was another one with Bondo De Role or somebody else we actually loved, and in this regard they are/were no better or worse than any other venue you might read about on this site. And finally, though it was DD’s request in one MySpace bulletin to “Just keep our fuckin name out your mouth,” well Danger Danger House, we just don’t think we’re going to be able to do that. We’re linked forever now, and you might as well get used to it. God knows we’ve done enough getting used to you.

Previously: Landlord At Danger Danger House Finally Tires Of Post-Structuralist, Avant-Garde “Each Child Is Special” Rock

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 1:41 pm.

  • Patricio

  • http://bostodelphia.blogspot.com C. The Impaler

    Those of us who tinker around a bit with glitch and culture jamming sound, who were surprised to find Philadelphia’s “reputed” experimental/noise scene/network to be seriously lacking in substantial discussion and way over the top on self-promotion and insistence on ‘artist’ identities, we salute you Philebrity. We salute you for having no idea who Michael Anton Parker is, or really caring. Seriously. Wait, maybe I’m thining of John Cecil Price. Crap.

    Patricio, you pick the arena and weapons, and let me know how a battle royale between the Danger Danger mob and Rochester’s A/V Space scene would play out. If you don’t know, you missed out.

  • pxb

    I love it when the small potatoes get fried. Good job to both Philebrity and Danger Danger! Who is this Michael Anton Parker enigma? I wonder if his ears are red?

  • Patricio

    C. Rochester’s A/V space was an art gallery that held shows under donations and was byo. In other words, it was a house show. I was there in its inception through to when Heather was kicked out/left to when Cameron became a part of it on through until I moved to Philadelphia in early ’05. Saw almost every show during that time and it was about 8-10 shows a month sometimes. Even when I was back home to visit I would stop by the space.

    Unless you played bad garage rock or punk you couldn’t get a show in Rochester’s one and only alt-club. A/V opened doors for avant music whether it be local stuff like Carbon Records bands or national & international stuff. Shit I saw Jazzkammer there!?!

    Why I talk about A/V in the past tense is because they were shut down. The “venue” had no neighbors as it was in a building surrounded by other building that were emptied after 3pm and a huge parking lot in the middle of a forgotten Rochester neighborhood. The reason why it was shut was the city of Rochester was racking up murders at house parties so any “entertainment” without a license was shut down. No house parties. Anymore.

  • Patricio

    Also, what did I miss out on if the batle royale never “played out” between Cedar Park’s Danger Danger and Rochester’s farmers market A/V Space?

  • http://bostodelphia.blogspot.com C. The Impaler

    I figured A/V would’ve shuttered eventually as the Eastman students got their degrees and moved on. Was A/V open around the same time as Analog Shock had its back room, or was A/V formed in part as a result of Analog Shock shutting down? And the Public Market neighborhood isn’t exactly a forgotten space (besides the Wise or Frito-Lay plant, I can’t remember). It’s not the crescent, or even the 19th Ward. It’s like the South Wedge without the hipster district.

    Your take on Rochester wasn’t entirely how I remember it. I saw Temple of Bon Matin at the Bug Jar. And Pengo and Coffee were able to play there with guests at least a half dozen times, till they were “banned”, yet were able to play there a few more times under different names. I think anyone who had friends in Nod were able to get someone to smooth things out and “another chance” with Filardo or whoever was booking the Bug Jar before then.

    Best noise show’s I saw in Roch were at Monty’s. Pengo doing their extended Queen loop and some “touring festival” where every act had like 2 minutes to perform, best of the bunch: Unconditional Loathing.

    No idea if you’re going to know what I’m talking about here, but Rochester also had Chuck and Chad’s shows on WRUR before their management went on a Napoleonic FCC freak out (at XXI’s behest). They were important too. Headspace moved to WITR, but hasn’t been able to keep its schedule and I think they’ve replaced him. Maybe I haven’t been looking hard, but I haven’t found any radio like that in Philly (FMU and Princeton are not Philly), even a podcast.

    That said, as far as the run of the mill Rochester sound, the Veins actually were pretty good. Low Ton was something different, and actually brought in a lot of stoner rock or whatever you want to call it that would’ve just skipped the Rochester ramp. And paid too many covers to see what color Meghan Taylor’s hair was on a given month.

  • Patricio

    A/V popped on the scene around a year, maybe less, after Justin shutdown Analog Shock to work for Secretly Canadian or just move to Bloomington, Indiana. About the neighborhood of the Public Market, I knew only one person who lived north of University Avenue and it was like Alexander and Main so it was totally on the cusp. Virtually anyone who moves to Rochester lives south of University, north of Mt. Hope, east of Alexander, west of Culver. It comes in the handbook.

    The situation with avant/noise shows at the Bug Jar changed I guess about 5 years ago or so. With the exception of Herman, none of the employees wanted “those kinds of bands” playing there anymore. The shows pulling in nobody was another reason but only secondary. You would have exceptions and I think the Bug Jar didn’t mind for a while because they played during the week and often people didn’t show up even for big shit on the weekdays. When they (Pengo/half of Carbon Records) got banned from the Bug Jar it meant the death of noise shows because nobody else was booking them. Filardo didn’t book shows until Justin from Analog Shock was fired so this was during Justin’s booking era. Some of the guys were really nice, like Charles, some not so much. Shit I was a 20 year old kid yeah but still I can’t even count the times on one hand that I would be the only one watching Pengo. Its like shit sometimes I think I’m your only fan after stuff like that and also having to defend the band to those “haters”. People really loathed them in the Rochester scene.

    Monty’s was the other joint. From my history 95% of the shows were lame gutter punk, cover bands and Rochester metal acts. Monty’s I thought sucked and not because I was called a fag a couple of times by locals in there either. It had shitty sound, shitty bartenders, shitty stage. It would feel crowded if 7 people stood up to watch the band.

    Both WRUR and WITR had some good (and some bad) programs on. A personal fave was my friend Andre’s show Radio Romantics on WRUR.

    The Viens I never really liked, Low Ton was a good solid metal/rock band. God I haven’t seen Andy (from Low Ton) in ages. I remember one time watching this Tortise-like band and Andy kept yelling between songs “go back to Chicago”. The band was like we ain’t playing in this town again.

    You paid the cover at the door? I would usually tell Doug E. Fresh I was there to see Bobby T.

    Wait was Meghan Taylor that bartender/singer who wanted attention but couldn’t because…

    …you know what I think I pissed off enough people. I’ll stop.

  • http://bostodelphia.blogspot.com C. The Impaler

    I’ve never been one to weevil out of a few bucks by saying I know so and so. On one hand, just not cool enough. On the other it’s sorta counter productive for the performer. “yeah, we packed them in, too bad everyone was comped, we won’t be seein’ you.” Then again at one point Will Taggert may have been taking all the money and running at Monty’s.

    I think I knew Andre. French or otherwise Euro guy, who was at UR, then did a stint at the Eastman House (Selznick program?), right? How’s he doing? Andy was fun, pretty much a nice guy. El Destructo dug Pengo, at least Pengo seemed to treat Mex as their personal open bar after shows from what I saw.

    You’re forgetting the “white pants ghetto” and 19th Ward, for new settlers too. And there you have your Annual Manual, the actual handbook for Rochester settlers. Nothing wrong with everything between Culver and Brighton either.

    I think the Bug Jar also got a bit less flexible with booking after Lux opened up, and took the “art crowd” with her. It seemed then they started pushing more mass appeal DJs to attract people then.

    Meghan did bartend at the Bug Jar and other places. She was in a string of bands and had multiple profiles in the City written up by her ex, Frank Deblase. Like a lot of people who weren’t cemented into the Filardo Garage Pop 4 Life clique, she eventually moved to New York.