CHARITY BEGINS AT EIGHT

I propose that, from now on, we all make the harrowing decision not only to go to more shows featuring local music, but to show up early enough to watch the opening bands. I know, I know, utter madness. In Detroit, and I'm sure most other places in the world where logic takes a backseat to the absurd, showing up to a dingy backroom bar or shitty art space for a midweek “8 p.m.” show on time will have you staring at the walls for hours waiting for the action to begin and crawling out quite drunk past two if you attempt to stay for the whole program. “Punk time,” they call it. “Lazy fuckwits who have no consideration for the bedtimes of working people,” others have thought. While often the phenomenon of a local show starting late and dragging on can be chalked up to a lack of professionalism among the bands or a bar trying to get as much coin as possible out of the clientele, it is often a more sad and romantic notion: If we wait, the audience will come. And the audience living in these burgs of the absurd knows this, therefore they’ll show up later and later to avoid this punk show purgatory.

So yes, I’m asking you bands and bookers to start early if only to persuade these people to show up on time to catch the opening, often local bands. These bands are also called “support," much the same way a jockstrap supports the testicles. The headliners would be “the testicles” in this scenario. I have two reasons you should want to blindly waste a night on bands foolish enough not to be super popular or “blowing up on your socials.” The first reason will be painfully clear to anybody who has tried to go see live music that is popular, blowing up, or blown all over your socials: The live music industry hates you. I’m writing this months before it’ll get published, but I’m pretty sure Ticketmaster and all the big touring conglomerates will still be overcharging and screwing over any audience willing to spend way too much to have a whiff of a chance to stand around for hours in their charnel houses of sound. Sure, the stoned asshole who takes your $10 at the door down at the local bar is odious, but do you really think he’s worse than getting the service-fee screw job in order to experience some national act phone it in at a hockey arena? You’re a snob about eating locally and shit, why not extend that to standing next to the bass player’s mom to watch the third-best nti-speed ska band in town?