77 Wars

Well, this is just an update, because I am trying to shovel the trash out in my physical and virtual spaces. I was just going to delete this post, but then I looked up “safari sam’s” on google and actually found comments from people who were sad it closed. Well, you know what? I played records there 3 times for events in the late-night, early night, and then one brunch event and it fucking sucked. The mixer was a piece of junk, the turntables were fucked up, the sound was shit, and the bands were ALWAYS FUCKING TERRIBLE, every time I was there, TERRIBLE. They always said “Well, there’s no pay right now, but we’ll be paying DJ’s in the future, and we’ll hook you up with some drinks”. “Some drinks” turned out to be two measly drink tickets and they never bothered to offer any food to us.

You know why Safari Sam’s went out of business????? Because for every half-decent show they booked, they booked about 45 bands that sucked a big bag of ass and people who worked or played there generally told me that they felt like they got fucked. Of course kids are gonna miss an all-ages venue, but you know why it was all ages? Because they needed to have the most possible people showing up and didn’t want to exclude children from giving them their $5. And something that really annoyed the shit out of me was that I would get texts and e-mails from them asking if they could borrow equipment, like mixers or amps or needles for the tables… WTF? No way was I going to lend my stuff to someone who couldn’t even take a little care of any of their own stuff. And then I talked to one of the old managers and apparently good old Safari Man still owes a lot of those hourly people a lot of money that they’ll probably never see. If you want to know how to run a small, awesome, all-ages venue, then go talk to Jim down at The Smell. It might not be making anybody rich, and the bathroom might never look disease free, and “the smell” of feces might be wafting in from the alley, but I have a great time every time that I’m there and there is never a false promise of anything to come, you just get to see good bands for free or cheap and you can even grab an inexpensive snack from whatever home-made vendor shows up that night. I miss Safari Sam’s just as much as I miss kicking bums out of my old workplaces at 3 in the morning.

Well, the the post below is what I had written about one of the times I played records at Sam’s…

May 15, 2007 @ 18:32

seriously, i have no idea who these bands are, but it’s free. my friend ted and i and are playing the records before and between sets. 1/2 price beer, free door, 1/2 price food before 9pm. ok? ok. come get wasted god damnit. Map of 5214 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90027

i will list the playlist and band reviews sometime tomorrow. maybe tonight if i’m not too sleepy/inebriated.

well… the bands were all terrible except for naughty bird, which wasn’t that great, but they are fun. otherwise it was a 20 year-old emo fest. not what we had expected. as for the playlist… not important at this point. ted and i had fun and got pretty drunk. then i went with my girlfriend and my friend stephen to the shortstop. we got more drunk. i got super drunk and was telling people to shut up, but not in a funny way. i think, perhaps, i should stop drinking large amounts of hard liqour…