S*D with Leftover Crack in Providence

This show was not as fun as we had hoped. Originally, we found out Leftover Crack was playing Club Hell, about two months before the date. We wrote John (the owner of Club Hell), who is a great guy. He has liked us for a few years, and we had come within 50 people of selling out Club Hell when we previously headlined there in November '07 (attendance was around 300).
So he said yes, and gave us the co-headlining spot (which means we played right before Leftover Crack). We were really happy and it was awesome for him to do. So about a month later we got an email from someone we had never talked to before (I believe his name was Chris), who had apparently booked the show under Degenerate Booking (we had no idea it was someone other than Club Hell). The flyer had our name on the bottom, really small. We're not egomaniacs, but it was misleading for kids who were attending, so we asked Chris why the flyer was set up in that way. Apparently we were on second or third out of five bands.
Simply because we were told otherwise, we asked John (Club Hell owner) what the deal was. We never really got a response back, but eventually another band emailed us and asked if they could use our equipment to play for ten minutes after we got offstage. This show seemed increasingly unorganized so we called Chris, who we had just found out was the booker.
He assured us this band was not on the show, and that we were actually back on as co-headliners, which was great. We filmed the video "The Birth Of RILOD" specifically to promote this show, released it, pushed the hell out of it. So the night of the show, we arrived, told we not co-headlining again. Asked the people there to double-check, they were super nice about it and found out we were headlining. Leftover Crack showed up, we talked to Alec and Brad Logan and they asked to use our equipment to play their set, to which we said "Of course!" All of them were super incredibly nice (Leftover Crack is one of our favorite bands - but we weren't sure to what to expect from a band who has actually said in a song that they want to cook police officers in a stew!*) and their merch girl was also really really nice - we shared a piece of cake with her. Two of our superfans, Cat and Nicole, had brought a cake there for Cat's brother's birthday, as well as penis-shaped cookies and a "Tom Wells" doll.
The first three bands played. The audience was cold for the first band (Agony), but the second band had a lot of people there for them (Eddie and the Louvers), and the third band (Mouth Sewn Shut) was well-known by some of the crowd. By the time we went on about 280 people were there. We got a fairly cold reaction from the audience. No one seemed to hate us or anything, but they didn't know us, and people don't dance to stuff they don't know. After we played, many many (new) people told me they thought we were really good, so I hope that was an indicator. During "Ataxia", another one of our fans, Mike Bowers, came up and finished our set on the drums while Christian stayed in the front and sang with us (and about 10 fans who came up onstage).
Leftover Crack went on and, of course, they were amazing and the energy was insane in the place. They were just ridiculous.
Sousa had thrown up after we played so he had left a little early, and I had left in a seperate car after we loaded up our stuff when the show was done. When Tom went to get our money at the end of the night, Chris (or maybe it was Peter?) the booker, told us we'd get no money, and that our spot was our payment, because we were expected to bring in 150 - 200 people.
The limit in Club Hell is 350, so that means that a band that WASN'T headling was expected to bring in more than half the crowd? The truth is that we were never told of an expectation to bring a certain amount of people there. Yes, we brought 300 last time we played - but it was our headlining homeshow, where we picked (and could vouch for) all the opening acts. This was different - if someone asks us to bring a certain amount of people to a show, and we say we will - we always will. End of story. If we promise to do a certain amount of presale tickets - then we will. End of story.
But the truth is, if we're opening for a national band, I'm there for the new audience. I'm not there to tell our existing fans, "Hey, isn't it cool that we're playing with this big band?"
We're there to get fresh people to see us, and that's our concern. If you ask us to bring a certain amount in and we agree -then that's a different story.
But on this night, no one had asked us anything. We thought we were getting a great opportunity because we had done so well for Club Hell in the past. We were wrong.
We were also told by the booker that we didn't fit the bill. I disagree, as Leftover Crack is a direct influence on us, and if you listen to LOC's songs "Nazi White Trash", "Gay Rude Boys Unite", "Gang Control", "One Dead Cop", and their older songs*, "Infested", "Born To Die", "500 Channels", and "Crack Rock Steady", and then you listen to our songs, "Nothing's Left, "VBW Song", "I'm Crazy, and "Ataxia", then you will be able to see that a show with these two bands makes a lot of sense.
After asking for at least gas money for our van and trailer, he gave us $80. The show charged $12 at the door, with a final headcount of 280 - meaning we got about 1/42nd of the door.
We're not usually too into money. But we have to pay to rent our practice space now, and we had to buy a new van when our old one died. Right now we are in debt about $7,000. It's not a ton, but we do need to pay it off, and we constantly get stiffed at shows. So that sucked. I hope we work with Degenerate Booking again, and if they want us to bring a certain amount of people, to let us know beforehand. We had no idea anyone besides Club Hell was running the show, and we were switched twice on what placement we had on the bill. It's a mistake that we weren't really told everything, but people make mistakes. It happens.
We also hope we can play with Leftover Crack again sometime soon. They are an awesome band, and ridiculously, ridiculously nice guys.
Bradley Stevenson of the Rhode Island League Of Decency was also in attendance, handing out anti-Senior Discount flyers. I dedicated "Ataxia" to him.
- Chuck Staton

*Yes, I know that the line I used is from "Crack Rock Steady", which is a Choking Victim song, and that some of the songs I listed were Choking Victim songs, but Leftover Crack is really just a newer version of Choking Victim.

SET LIST:
Nothing's Left
Smile
I'm Crazy
Tom's Not A Virgin Anymore
VBW Song
Ataxia