Photo Credit: Paramount Studios
As I was packing today, I came across an old VHS of my favorite love story, Harold and Maude. The first time I saw it was my freshman year of college; we'd ordered that, Nekromantic, and Bottle Rocket from the Facets of Chicago catalog. Surprisingly, of the three films, Harold and Maude made the biggest impression on me, because Maude is freaking awesome. In fact, after seeing Maude in action, I became certain that whatever in the hell else might happen in my life did not matter one iota so long as I turned out like Maude by the end of it. I felt that way for a long time, but over the years it got lost. In its place sprang up a seemingly endless succession of career shifts that only led to leapfrogging across industries, too many lateral job moves, and no actual recognition and advancement. After decades of this capitalist merry-go-round, I've been forced out of a career I loved and was good at about by homophobia, ableism, and fascism. With nothing left to lose, I decided to change my life, and I'm doing it.
This reminder of Maude coming at exactly this time is a good omen, as far as I'm concerned. Maude was vivacious, daring, loving, carefree, and utterly herself at every moment...which was miraculous given the horror she'd endured. If Maude can be awesome and live in a tricked-out train car, then anyone can. Even I can, and this past year, I've realized it--there is absolutely nothing stopping me from doing my own version of that. This is why I now have I have three career goals: scoring enough interesting and worthwhile freelance gigs to support my bohemian existence, getting my memoirs and my play written, and jumping at every opportunity--no matter how wild it may be--that brings me closer to Maude.
As I've reflected upon my life of late, it has occurred to me that I'm off to a pretty good start towards Maude-ness--at least in the shenanigans and political activism departments. My current experience of fascism is in itself very Maude-like, but it certainly isn't anything I'd hoped for (or even expected to experience in my lifetime). What gives me hope is that in addition to being fantastic and the most epic cougar who ever lived, Maude is a Survivor with a capital "S." What I can't help but notice though--in both Maude and myself--is that sometimes that even the most justified of shenanigans can end up having consequences that must be survived. I learned this lesson particularly well on my last night on the job as road manager for the Wailers.
We were playing a gig in Marseille, and absolutely none of us wanted to be there. It was foggy, rainy, and chilly, and the entire band had some form of a head cold or sniffles. By then, we'd been playing the French countryside for three weeks and we all just wanted to go home. Fortunately, we were set to have a rest day in Barcelona the next day, followed by a music festival in the city the day after that. I was so absolutely psyched to see Barcelona/not France that I'd begun consulting my Frommer's about what to do on that day off. To be honest, I don't remember too much of what happened before or during that gig. What I remember best is what happened when I went to settle the show with the promoter. Promoters are the folks who produce and promote live music events to make money.
Promoters are slime, period. I've literally toured the world over and I've met maybe five who weren't absolute fuckers. Fully half of the show settlement meetings I had involved the "big man" promoter placing a gun, or a knife--or once in Brazil an actual machete--on the table between us to intimidate me. Yet somehow, I always got every single penny of our guarantee plus our percentage of the split, and they looked like chickenshit overbearing assholes. On at least two occasions in the Pacific Northwest, promoters tried to pay us in bricks of marijuana. I actually had to fight with the band about accepting money instead of weed bricks those times, but I sure as hell got our money.
I was pretty hardened and blase about dealing with promoters by the time we had gotten to France, but it was a really rough go. First of all, I wasn't the only "road manager." Our French tour agency had sent along the Franco-Algerian tour agent Ben-Ali to keep things moving. At first, this was both good and bad. It was bad because we had conflicts over who was actually running the tour. It was good because Ben-Ali speaks French and I don't, so I needed him. Lucky for me, he was a veteran of the French-North African reggae scene and easy to get along with. He graciously taught me a lot about how things worked in the live reggae business in France. Luckier still was the fact that prior to working in reggae, Ben-Ali had spent twenty years serving in the military with the Algerian Special Forces. When a promoter even threatened to step out of line, Ben-Ali would shoot him a look that would melt stone, and the guy would straighten up. By the time we had gotten to Marseilles, I had become accustomed to our working arrangement. I was going to miss Ben-Ali after he left because this was the last night of the French leg of our tour.
All of this was on my mind when Ben-Ali introduced me to the local promoter, Jean. I smelled trouble immediately. The narrowness of Ben-Ali's eyes told me that he was thinking exactly the same thing. Jean was a 6'3" homme who looked a lot like Quentin Tarantino, but his forehead was more bulbous and his eyes were beadier. Upon those beady eyes sat a pair of John Lennon glasses, through which Jean peered at the world like a hungry weasel. He had on Levi's denim jeans, a motorcycle jacket, and Levi's denim shirt unbuttoned to reveal a filthy white Heiniken T-shirt--he was practically wearing a Canadian tuxedo, and I had a tough time taking him seriously as a reggae promoter because of it. He sent a few associates running around frantically doing his bidding while he tried to convince Ben-Ali that nothing was wrong. As they were talking in French, I couldn't understand exactly what was being said. I could plainly see that the body language was contemptuous and cagey as fuck, and that put me on alert. Ben-Ali pulled me aside to explain that there was a problem with the venue. We were not playing at the venue that we had been contracted to play, and Ben-Ali couldn't get a straight answer as to why. Unfortunately, we didn't find out exactly what was going on until it came time to settle the show.
Settling the show means collecting your band's money from the promoter. You and the promoter go into a locked office and sit down with the contract sheet, the ticket drop box, and the cash box and go through the contract line items until you ascertain and collect the total amount your band is owed. In any settlement negotiation, there are four numbers you need to keep an eye out for: the guarantee (G), the break-even point (B), the split point (S), and the venue capacity (V). G is what your band is guaranteed to make for playing the gig--it's the performance fee. B is the dollar amount at which the promoter's expenses are completely paid. S is the dollar amount after which the promoter splits a percentage of the profits--in our case, 35% was customary--with the band. The last two numbers are determined largely according to V. Larger venues cost more but generate more profit. Smaller venues can be profitable if the guarantee is proportional to the venue size and the promoter has made good business decisions. If not, you'll have a shitshow on your hands when it comes time to settle the guarantee.
What eventually I discovered in Marseille was that a series of increasingly poor business decisions on the part of Jean Tarantino was fucking with my band's money. The first big red flag appeared when I tried to track the guy down to settle the show. You NEVER let your band go on stage without settling the money with the promoter first. Your only leverage in negotiations is the band's performance commitment. If you can't settle the guarantee and the band's share of the split prior to your band taking the stage, then you can keep the band from playing until the money is ironed out. If you wait until later, you may not get all of your band's money. I learned this principle on my first night as road manager and never forgot it. Therefore, it was exceedingly suspicious that all of my attempts to settle the show before the band played were put off. As Ben-Ali was the only French speaker, he was the only one who knew what was going on. The second red flag was that Ben-Ali was quietly nervous and definitely angry but hiding it from me. He'd been on the phone off and on with the tour agent all night, and was waiting on...something? Ben-Ali is not a person of whom you ask personal questions, so I knew better than to pry. Finally, about half an hour before the end of the show, Jean Tarantino collects us to go and settle the show.
The third red flag was the hall of vice we had to walk through on the way to the not-an-office place where we were settling the show. The stairwell reeked of nicotine, THC, mold, and human piss. The stairs poured us out onto this lugubrious, filthy hallway lined on either side with skeezy-looking people. The fluorescent lighting flickered madly and darkly because the bulbs were almost burned out. The entire scene was lit like a Blumhouse film, and it made me incredibly anxious. Along the wall to my left kneeled a few women giving blowjobs to what looked like paying customers. Along the wall to my right were folks helping each other shoot heroin. I kind of marveled at how they separated out so neatly into a row of junkies on one side and a row of prostitutes on the other as we moved toward the office. At the far end of the hall glowed a large, dim rectangle of glass above which was illumined the word "Sortie" in red. It was an exterior exit. I had a really bad feeling by now and longed to keep on going and leave that fucking nightmare behind me. But the money beckoned, as money often does.
Jean Tarantino took us into some broken-down, awful-smelling upstairs VIP/dressing room on the second floor that was torturously far from the exit door. He sat us down on a filthy white Naugahyde couch and began to spread the settlement items out on the enormous glass coffee table. I had my contracts with me, for comparison, and so I spread them out as well. As soon as I had mine spread out, Ben-Ali looked at them. Then he looked at the promoter's paperwork and hissed, "Merde!" I had caught what he noticed. The venue name on my contract, Dock Des Suds, was different from the venue name on Jean's contract, Espace Julien. My venue capacity was 2800 people. His venue capacity was 1000. I now knew exactly why Jean had been so cagey. Before I could think about what to do next, Ben-Ali got into it with Jean. As they bitterly argued, I looked at the numbers. The guarantee was the same, but the break-even and split-point were way off- to the tune of at least 10K in potential split profit being lost in translation between the contracts. This fifth red flag was a very bad sign. I'd encountered shit like this during the Latin American leg of our tour and it always meant one thing: the gig was part of a money-laundering scheme, and this one seemed to be going badly. And I now had more red flags than Beijing at Chinese New Year.
Live event production is practically a money laundromat if you do it right. The whole point of laundering money is that you plan to take a loss in exchange for clean-seeming money that has been "legitimately" earned. It is hella easy to lose a set proportion of your dirty money from producing live events, because the losses are evident and glaring when you look at the box office receipts, and the law doesn't pay too much attention to things like reggae shows that LOSE money. Sometimes your show fails--that's showbiz! No need to look further.
Now what we had here was almost certainly a money-laundering scheme. I honestly didn't care so long as my band got ALL their money and I didn't get, well, macheted or whatever, in the process. Their crime-ing wasn't really my problem. My problem was that Jean Tarantino seemed to have done some middle-management double-cross shenanigans of his own in switching the venue. Jean said that he switched us to a smaller venue because we were not even close to selling out the Dock Des Suds and he had only made the decision to do so that day. Jean then claimed that he was trying to minimize his losses because ticket sales had underperformed. Our guarantee was based on a much bigger venue size than we played, and he felt it was unreasonable for us to stick to the contract terms because of the enormity of his losses. He had more than broken even, but he wanted us to forgo our share of the profit past the split point because his loss was so great.
Ben-Ali had finally gotten ahold of our Parisian tour agent and discovered that no new contract had been sent from the promoter's bosses confirming the new venue and updated contract terms. Moreover, the head of the Parisian promotion company was not aware that there had been any changes made to the venue for the Marseille show. To them, the show just looked like one massive financial loss and that is just what happens sometimes with reggae. Of course, the lack of an updated contract sent to the tour manager or my band's agency plus all the signs advertising the gig at Espace Julien had disproved the basis of Jean's story. All these things together meant that this guy had kept the paperwork officially about the larger venue but was trying to settle us on this fictitious contract he'd forged during the first part of the show for the smaller venue we actually played.
If you're thinking "what the clusterfuck?" right now, you aren't alone. So do yourself a favor and ask yourself a question: Doesn't a large venue have considerably more costs for utilities, staffing, security, rental fees, and insurance than a venue half its size would? Of course, it certainly would. So add up all of those costs for the large venue. Then add up all the same costs for the smaller venue. Now subtract the smaller from the larger and you get, in this case, a 35K franc cost difference. As far as the home office in Paris is concerned, that money is gone and there's no point looking for it. But if you were clever enough to lower your costs by switching to a smaller venue without home office knowing about it, then you have 35K francs in your pocket that your boss won't ever look for. THAT was Jean's scam. And the truth is, I couldn't have cared less. But then he had just tried to fuck us out of our percentage of the split. He was greedy and stupid, a combination which offends me to the core. THAT made me furious.
By now, the room had grown very quiet. Hunting-rabbits quiet. Ben-Ali and Jean Tarantino were both peering intently at me, hostility festering behind their eyes. Jean, however, was also spooked. He looked at me and knew that I knew. Ben-Ali asked me what I found. I showed him my figures and the two--substantially different--contracts. Then, I sat back and waited, longing for a martini and some popcorn. I watched scrutiny, contemplation, and finally, comprehension dawn across Ben-Ali's features. His eyes narrowed, and I waited...the explosion that followed was truly spectacular.
It was a sight gag, to be honest, and I had to fight not to laugh. Jean Tarantino was a tall, scrawny drink of water. Ben-Ali was 5'6" and built like a Sherman tank. He always had this sort of taut, springy power to his step, like a panther spoiling to lunge. And lunge he did. They raged at each other across the table, and then around the room. Screaming and hollering. As they grew louder and started to break things, I became acutely aware of the broke hookers and junkies just on the other side of that flimsy door. Finally, Ben-Ali shouted something in Algerian and...stormed out of the room with his phone. I was shocked.
My shock turned to horror when Jean Tarantino closed the door...and locked it. He casually turned back around to face me, grinning evilly. I had no idea what he said, but it probably involved the words "American cunt." I've heard that exact phrase in at least 6 languages because nearly every single promoter called me that at least once during every single settlement negotiation. Except in America, where I was just "cunt." One of the greatest tragedies in my life is that I am too smart for my own good and too clever by half, but I have absolutely no idea this is the case and it gets me into trouble often. Maybe it's the Maude in me. I was oh most certainly in trouble now.
As he sauntered over, he opened his coat and pulled out a 9" hunting knife. I swallowed hard and froze. A faraway tinny rattling and thunking sound cafe seemingly from out of nowhere. That just made Jean Tarantino walk slower. My eyes started to sting and my sinuses clogged and it got hard to see and smell. I knew my Jansport backpack was within arm's reach and speculated that if I waited for the right time, I maybe could grab it and sort of shield myself...I knew that you sacrifice your non-dominant forearm as a shield to take the first slash it would bring the attacker so close you could gauge out his eye. All of this shit would only be possible if I could move, though. And maybe in the movies. I could hear the blood roaring in my ears as Jean Tarantino got about five feet from me. Then, there was this massive crash-smashing behind Jean. He whips around to watch as Ben-Ali literally barrels through the broken-open flimsy door. Ben-Ali stops on a dime and steadies himself the second he is fully in the room. Then his eyes fell on Jean Tarantino's knife.
I've seen Ben-Ali's eyes go narrow in rage. I'd never seen them go wide with absolutely divine fury and loll back into his head before momentarily shooting forward and fixing on their target. I hope never to again. Ben-Ali leaped and was on Jean like a wrathful tiger. He closed the distance between them with one stride, shoved Jean Tarantino AAAALLLLL the way 180 degrees around, and then lifted him in the air by his Levi's lapels. Because of the height difference, Ben Ali was literally holding Jean Tarantino aloft overhead and choking him with his own denim jacket, but it seemed to take no more effort than a light upward arm stretch. As Ben-Ali played complete wicked hell with Jean Tarantino, I looked back at the table. At least 50k of the 77k francs lying there was ours, and that asshole had threatened to kill me. Without thinking, I swept the entire pile of cash into my open Jansport as I rose to run out the broken, splintered door. I hear a crash of glass and a thud behind me, and this makes me run harder. As soon as I get out the door, I pause in horror. I knew I would have to make it all the way down this 25-yard-long hallway of iniquity with a partially-open Jansport backpack full of 77k francs to reach a sortie that led I knew not where. Boy was I fucking grateful when I heard Ben-Ali's accented Franco-Algerian bark behind me, "Are you okay?"
I showed him a peek of the money inside the 3/4 closed backpack cradled shut in my arms like an infant. "I got our fucking money," I hissed, "Let's go."
Ben-Ali looks at me and says, "Run you cunt!" as he began to run. I was running, too. We ran as carefully as possible.
Speedwalking that gauntlet felt exactly like trying to navigate the hospital hallway of murderous demon fetish nurses from Silent Hill II--God knows it had the same lighting. We had to move fast, stick to the center, and keep away from the vice crowd along the walls, but also not draw attention to ourselves. Jean Tarantino never emerged from the office. I tried not to think about why but instead be thankful I wouldn't be getting a skewer to the back. We were approached by two vice denizens on our tortured flight, but Ben-Ali menaced them into backing off. The sortie loomed before us...
...and then the most horrible realization I had ever had in my life up to that point befell me: I had no idea where the Rastas were or how long it would take to gather them up. Usually, it was an hour of herding all 12 cats into the tour bus before we could leave. But for however long it was going to take to find them, I would be carrying around 77k francs in Espace Julien as I searched. If Jean was only stunned instead of something worse, then he might wake up. That would turn my herding of cats into a game of cat and mouse.
All I could think of was holy fuck. We are done for. I am going to die in this shitty nightclub, in this armpit of a major French city, because I was murdered by a complete fuckstick of a human being ONE DAY BEFORE I CROSSED BARCELONA OFF MY BUCKET LIST. I was ANGRY when I shoved that tempered-glass door open and we burst into the night. Ben-Ali pulled the door shut behind us.
The sortie had let out atop a staircase training down to the ground level. The night air braced us; it was cool, quiet, and clean-smelling. The stairs let out directly onto the sidewalk. That much was a relief. I looked down at the street below and almost shouted for joy. There I beheld the most stunning and gorgeous sight I have ever in my life beheld. There, right past the bottom of the sidewalk stairs, was the open door of our tour bus, which was parked there, on, and waiting. I barbarically yawped with glee at the sight. Ben-Ali and I ran down the stairs to the bus. Junior, our soundman, was waiting.
"We all here and ready to go."
"What?" I asked in utter disbelief as I mounted the stairs into the bus.
"We all feel sick after the show, so we all came right to bus."
"Everybody is here and accounted for?" Ben-Ali asked in utter disbelief.
"Yesssss! We go now!" A very testy Gary, our lead singer, hissed exasperatedly.
"Alright." Ben-Ali headed up front to tell our exceedingly Welsh driver, Adrian, to hit the road. I headed back to Fams and the manager to do the night's books.
As I walked back, I felt exhausted and wanted nothing more in the world than my own bed, in my parent's house. I'd seen a LOT of crazy shit in my time with the Wailers, but this one spooked me. Jean Tarantino wasn't the only person making exceedingly bad business decisions. There was general miscommunication and sloppiness from beginning to end on several parts of the European tour. I'd come to tolerate the ritual display of arms by macho promoters who were trying to psych me out. They were always so shocked by my flattened affect and businesslike demeanor, that their intimidation tactics usually devolved into mild sexual harassment. Wash, rinse repeat. It was just so tiring to deal with all the time.
But this whole charade? This whole charade had been a different animal altogether. I had already come to resent the fact that I had endured ridiculous amounts of toxicity and abuse from the promoters AND the band, and that nothing I did was ever enough. The continuous stream of dangerous situations that the tour agents so casually threw me into and expected me to handle had honestly become too much. But it wasn't until this night that I recognized these facts. I'd come close to being killed by a small-time criminal who was too stupid to cover his tracks because my bodyguard/co-manager picked a fight with him and then ran out of the room, leaving me alone with him. What if Ben-Ali had been even ten seconds later breaking that door down? What if Ben-Ali had gotten hurt and I'd have had to navigate that hell hallway while being chased by a knife-wielding Jean Tarantino? What if the bus had not been miraculously waiting and even more miraculously ready to go because everybody was already aboard?
It was pretty clear to me that my luck had limits, and that whatever luck I had was being wasted by the bad decisions of people with money and power in this situation. In fact, I was certain that luck had zero to do with my having survived this ordeal. I chalked up everything from Ben-Ali breaking down the door until us escaping onto the waiting bus to divine intervention. Yep, things on the road were now so rough that it was taking divine intervention to keep me safe. As I approached the door to the back area where the manager and Fams were, I realized it was time to sortie. If I wanted to live long enough to become Maude, I needed to live long enough to do it, and that meant getting off the road and moving on to whatever was to come.
I quit that night. The only part of Barcelona I saw was the airport, but at least I was alive to see that much. I've never boarded a plane with that much joy in my life. I hope never to again.
At least I can say that like Maude, I survived an ordeal: I'm a survivor. I promised myself that from that point on, I would be certain that whatever shenanigans I do that bring unintended consequences upon me should be more worthwhile than keeping a dysfunctional band on the road. I'm pleased to admit that although I have certainly gotten myself into trouble since that time, it was for a far worthier cause. I regret nothing.
