The hightlight (or lowlight) of my Friday was a meeting I had that afternoon. As I've always said the most annoying people in the music business are the ones one the very fringes and once again I was proven correct. The organization I work for is in the process of purchasing a 900 seat theater at 47th and King Drive. I've been on the committee for a few months because I'm probably the only person here that has any concert promotion experience. So Friday I was in a meeting some of my co-workers a a few guys in to pitch their services to us.
One of the guys claimed to be a promoter from NYC. Of course he had "just flown in from Paris on the red eye that morning." He starts talking and said based on the location (it's near where the Regal and the Checkerboard
used to be) he said he would have no problem getting Mick Jagger to come "hang out" when the Stones were in town and Clapton when he was in town. I'm thinking "the only guy still alive that those guys were into is Buddy Guy which is why they usually hang at Buddys club." That's when the the red flag slowly started going up.
Then he started telling us how he was going to set up special shows and have the artists do a weeks worth of lectures after the show. He drew up a list of artists and I looked at it and said "it's going to be long shot to get any of those people" And he goes "I can make calls tomorrow and book all of them."
The list he put up was:
Bill Cosby
Justin Timberlake
Kayne West
Alicia Keys
;lol:
Then someone brought up the Hispanic market and he claimed he could get Buena Vista Social Club.
Number one those guys are all like 80 years and number two I've worked with Cuban artists before and it's extremely difficult to get work visas and shows often cancel multiple times so it's pretty much not worth the hassle.
I pointed out that in a club it's good to have multiple revenue sources (bar ring, restaurant, gift shop etc) and we have a culinary school so it would be a logical tie in. Then the guys "great point, I can get Charlie Trotter in on the deal.)
Not sure if you guys are hip to Charlie Trotter but at his restaurant here it's a fixed menu that costs 200 bucks per person for dinner.
That's basically when I stopped participating in the meeting because it was obvious that this guy was so full of shit his eyes were triple brown. Then he said he would call Irving Azoff (google if you don't know who he is) and get Live Nation or AEG involved. He also said we could film the students and the artists doing their thing and sell it to VH1 and MTV. Of course he also casually mentioned he could book Janet Jackson and get Carlos Santana to do a show and then do a series of lectures about guitar playing.
Somebody brought up the split and he informed us it was 20% to the artist, 20% to the venue and 60% to the promoter (him.) I briefly considered busting him out and saying everybody in this meeting is an educator and are probably dazzled by your star power but my experience tells me you are full of shit, but I figured it wasn't worth it.
The best part was when he said with a straight face "I can definitely book three nights with Lady Gaga."
I was thinking "in an era when nobody buys music anymore Gaga sold 1.1 million units last week and could easily sell out Soldier Field. (70,000 tickets.) I felt like pointing out that her production alone is probably about 8 semis and her band and "people" probably require about 8 buses.
Now this would have been amusing if it was a 30 minute meeting but it wasn't, it was two fucking hours long. When I got out I emailed my old boss who is the president of talent and touring at Live Nation to see if he knew the guy and he said "don't know him have never even heard of him."
I've gotten the downstairs pretty much unpacked and arranged, but upstairs is a bit more of a clusterfuck. My studio and my office have both been unpacked to the bare operating minimum and I still haven't finished putting my bed together. 
