Everclear
hasn’t played in Austin this summer.
By now they should have played twice — once by themselves, once in a package
deal, and both times for cheap. The skeletal blueprint for the undoing is
simple: KNNC (KNACK) wanted a show with Everclear. KNACK probably had a show.
101X wanted a show with Everclear. 101X tried to work out a show. Then KLBJ
piped in wanting the band as well. Nobody got a show and the band never came to
town.
Getting the details to fill out the above outline is like trying to find the
historically verifiable elements in an Oliver Stone flick. The independent
facts of the matter have been filtered through too much ego. Nobody wants to be
the bad guy, but something happened that kept the band from making it to
Austin. In its most harmless form, the story is simply a matter of metaphysical
impossibility. Everclear’s frontman Art Alexakis couldn’t be in two places at
once. In its more probable form, however, the story is about the ongoing battle
between local radio stations, with the worst-case scenario resulting in at
least one station threatening to pull the Everclear’s record from their
playlist.
KROX, better known as 101X, tried to get Everclear into Austin as part of the
“Summerland Tour” package, which also included Paul Westerberg, 7 Year Bitch,
Spacehog, and Tracy Bonham. 101X program director Sara Trexler recalled, “Both
KNACK and 101X have been very supportive of Everclear. We have a very good
relation with Art. In fact, I talked to him at the Q101 festival. He said he
would only play a show for KNACK if he could also play a show for us, within a
short period of time — like in two months. He wasn’t going to do it if it
meant one this year and one next year.
“Basically, what ended up happening was we were gonna do a show and there were
a lot of other conflicts. He couldn’t do the show on the day we had available.
Art said, `Look, I’m not gonna be unfair to you. I’ve made this agreement that
we were gonna do both or neither one.’ So, what happened was they did neither
one.”
It’s all very benign, until Trexler is asked if KLBJ was somehow involved in
the deal falling apart. “I’d forgotten about that,” she answers. “[KLBJ station
manager] Jeff Carrol did kind of come in and freak out, which is really bizarre
because I wouldn’t consider Everclear a core artist for them.”
Everclear manager Darren Lewis’ story is a bit more sterile. The band never
invoked an everybody-or-nobody clause. Things were very black and white: both
stations wanted to bring in the band, but both shows were, for different
reasons, logistical impossibilities. “As I recall, KNACK wanted us to do a show
at the beginning of June,” says Lewis. “They asked if we would be available;
but we were never able to do anything with them because Art had a prior
commitment producing a band called Frogpond for Sony. He only has a certain
number of days off and… they had tried a bunch of different dates. I think
the KNACK show was happening on more than one day and I think they were trying
to get us on one of those days. We kept going back because they had more than
one day, but we were not available on any of those days.
And the 101X show suffered a similar fate? Again, by Lewis’ account, the
Summerland Tour “never got close to being done. With [101X] we ended up not
routing it to our tour. We just could not get into Austin. We only had a
certain amount of days that all of the artists were available, but we were
unable to make it.”
Logistics schmogistics. KNACK general manager Richard Rees figures the
stations have nobody but themselves to blame. “Oh, yeah. We were early on in
the record,” says Rees. “Went to the label. Went to the management. They said
great, we’ll come back and do a 101X thing six or eight weeks later. Everything
seemed cool by them. And then my understanding is — and I haven’t talked to
Jeff Carrol, so I don’t know this for a fact. Then Jeff jumped in and they were
like `You know what? Fuck it.’ And I appreciate the band’s position from that
standpoint. The band pulled out because it gets to be a headache for them too,
watching us idiots fight over a band. I don’t want to speak out of school. I
don’t know exactly what was said. All I know is the last word was `Jeff’s
pissed. Screw all of you.'”
Rees candidly refutes Lewis’ claim that due to prior obligations Everclear
never even began making tentative plans to do a show for KNACK. “That’s
complete bullshit on his part,” charges Rees. According to the station,
Everclear was all set to play as part of a series of shows on consecutive
nights at Liberty Lunch at the beginning of June. “There are too many things
that completely contradict that. The labels are smart enough, especially
Capitol, to where they’re not even going to start committing even tentatively
with the band until they’ve talked to management. It would have carried on too
far.
“They would have come to us from the first get- go and said, `We just can’t do
it. End of discussion.’ But, I know for a fact that [KNACK deejay] Andy’s [
Meadors] girlfriend is a good friend with one of the guys in the band who
flat-out said, `I’ll see you in Austin in a couple of weeks.’ So the band knew
about our date. There was never any doubt. If he’s mentioning it to her, cool.
That means it’s all panned out. I mean, the agent wouldn’t have confirmed the
date without the manager. And even the band said, through the grapevine, the
show was in a couple of weeks. They pulled out on us literally, say ten days
before the series.”
Hate to make a profit out of Meatloaf, but two out of three participants
acknowledge that KLBJ’s Jeff Carrol was involved in a negative capacity. If
plurality indicates any type of truth, then Carrol obviously played some role
in annulling the show or shows that may have been in the works with other
stations.
Like KNACK and 101X, KLBJ wanted to bring in Everclear for an exclusive show,
the “Cash Bash.” And like the other stations, Carrol has his own take on what
happened. “My understanding is that one station was talking to management and
one to the label, and it was causing a lot of confusion. So instead of doing
something politically bad, the band decided to come back and do a non-exclusive
show later on.”
As for the notion that Everclear nixed any Austin appearances because he
threatened to pull their record from KLBJ’s playlist, Carrol just chuckles.
“That’s ridiculous,” he says. “If you stop playing the record it only hurts
your radio station. If anybody made that threat it would only be an idle
threat.” (Some people, namely Trexler, think Carroll might have that kind of
pull. Of him she noted, “Jeff is certainly powerful enough and record companies
want their records played on his radio station, just as they want on any
station, that Jeff could create some uncomfortable situations for people. He’s
been around, he’s got a lot of contacts and a lot of people like him.”)
Did other stations make KLBJ the scapegoat for their own problems or
inaccurately blame Carrol for something that was the collective fault of
everyone? He says yes. Still, he writes off his being the sole cause of
anything bad with one tactful shot: “It’s quite obvious one of those stations
is fighting for its life.”
Because everyone had to have the band, nobody got them. In theory it’s
supposed to be a win-win-win-win situation: Listeners get the chance to see an
up-and-coming band for cheap, the band gets to play in front of a potentially
large audience, record companies get to put their acts in front of music-loving
consumers, many of whom are anxious to spend their disposable income on CDs,
and in the name of listener appreciation and positive PR, radio stations get to
plaster their logo all over the event. Everyone goes home happy.
That’s the idea, anyway; but as evidenced by the aborted Everclear shows,
theory and practice don’t always coincide. When radio stations start becoming
concert promoters… well, it’s that whole “best laid plans of mice and men”
thing.
First, recognize that there’s no such thing as a standard deal in promoting
concerts. Promoters, venues, record labels, and stations can work together in a
variety of ways when booking and publicizing a show. That said, generally what
happens is that a promoter, like Direct Events or Lunch Money Productions,
agrees to pay a band “x” amount of dollars — their guarantee — to bring them
to town. That promoter then might approach a radio station and hammer out an
arrangement offering free tickets to the station for giveaways or even let the
station attach their name to the show in exchange for lower advertising prices
or some variant of that.
But it’s becoming increasingly popular for radio stations to approach labels
in order to get bands they like (and have in heavy rotation) to come and play;
or often a record company will approach the station and offer them a “better
rate” on a live show with a band the label is trying to break in a certain
market. The difference between these and the garden-variety shows is that these
shows become radio promotions. The station still has to work with venues and
promoters, but now it’s they who put up the money (if any — oftentimes a band
will plays this type of show for little or nothing), and it’s the station who
now has not only its image on the line, but also a financial stake in the show
as well.
What’s the advantage of getting stations to take the concert reigns? It
doesn’t take a genius to figure it out: Get the band to give up its guarantee,
then go to the radio station and offer them a show with the band. The station
wants to promote itself vis-a-vis a band they like, and the band does it in
order to play in front of a potentially large crowd and get airplay. “It
turns into blackmail,” says Rees, describing the implied arrangement. “I mean,
let’s be blunt about it. It’s not a better rate, let’s not kid around here. The
record label supports the cost of getting the bands to shows, while the radio
station in turn helps those bands sell albums by spinning the latest singles.
Do labels expect airplay for the `favor’? Oh, yeah. It’d be kidding ourselves
to say there isn’t a give and take. It’s all part of promotion. It all comes
down to labels really wanting to promote their bands to the maximum exposure
that they can.”
Not all of Rees peers’ are willing to put things so bluntly. To Sara Trexler,
it’s not a question of shady ethics so much as simply serving her station’s
business interests to push a show that they’re promoting. “I’ve never had a
record company ask me to play a record more,” says Trexler. “But let me put it
to you this way: If I have a show coming up and Lush is one of my bands on it
and I’m playing “Lady Killer” ten times a week, my listeners are not going to
hear it enough to know who Lush is. So, when they hear the promo `…and Lush
is coming,’ they’re gonna go, `I don’t know this band.’ So it’s in the interest
of the radio station to support the acts they are bringing into town if your
trying to sell concert tickets.”
Jody Denberg, Trexler’s counterpart at KGSR, 101X’s sister station, reiterated
the same idea. In fact, substitute “The Philosopher Kings” for “Lush” and
Denberg’s words are almost identical to Trexler’s: “Let’s say I’m playing the
Philosopher Kings and I’m giving it nine or ten spins a week. Then I found I’m
getting a `low dough’ show with them. Well, then it would only be to my benefit
to start playing that band 20 times a week to try to get the listeners more
excited about the show. If I’m gonna go to the trouble of promoting a show or
making a show my own, then why wouldn’t I wanna spin the record more?”
Let’s not be na�ve about the fact that radio needs to make money. If the
stations don’t stay liquid, they don’t stay on the air, at least not in their
current format. But in a market the size of Austin, where four or five stations
now compete for the same audience, staying solvent requires staying in the
front of the listeners’ minds. Stations have to promote themselves, but these
types of promotions do determine, at least to some small extent, what gets
played on the radio. Whether it’s driven from the top by a record company
pushing a band, or from the station merely trying to protect its investment —
that is, taking steps to assure that a promotion with the station’s name all
over it is a success — the end result is that the listener is being force-fed
certain music.
If anyone is “winning,” it seems like it should be the band. Hypothetically
speaking, the Philosopher Kings’ airplay increases in the market. Listeners
start recognizing the band. Then the band comes in and plays for $1.07 in front
of scads of listeners who like the show so much they go out the next day to buy
the Philosopher Kings’ CD. Hurrah for the band, right?
Consider the Southern Culture on the Skids show that was part of the series of
concerts that KNACK brought to Liberty Lunch during the first week of June (the
series of shows of which KNACK wanted Everclear to be a part). All parties
involved judged the show to be good for them, and it played out according to
form. It was a cheap show, SCOTS got in front of a large crowd, and the
audience dug it. KNACK got to put their name on a quality production and the
Lunch was able to turn a reasonable profit for a Wednesday night show.
SCOTS frontman Rick Miller concurred explicitly that the Austin show was good
for them. SCOTS was happy to come perform live where their record was picked up
early on and had already received good airplay. But Miller concedes, “We didn’t
get paid for it. We didn’t see a penny. If there was money, it was for like air
fare. We flew in from Minneapolis, then turned around and flew right back out
to Seattle to meet up with our driver and continue our tour.” The band takes a
break from their normal touring schedule, doesn’t pocket any money for the
effort, and has possibly worn out their market. Who’s gonna pay upwards of $10
or $12 to see SCOTS anytime soon when they just saw them for $5? And this was a
good show.
“It sucks because we still make our living from the road,” added Miller. So
why do it? “It’s part of the new payola… It’s hard to justify, but we will do
it for a station because they really have played our records.”
So, again, who are the winners? Everclear hasn’t played in Austin this summer. n
This article appears in August 2 • 1996 and August 2 • 1996 (Cover).