Well, now I have heard it all. It's one thing for venues to ask opening acts to sell tickets to cover the guaranties of their headliners that don't draw or for venues to ask bands to sell tickets for the privilege of playing at their venue or for a promoter to ask bands to sell tickets so the promoter will get paid without having to do any promotion at all but what I just recently heard makes all those other reasons pale in comparison.

So let me ask you, if you were in a band and a promoter/booking agent asked you to be a support act on a tour, you would probably do it. Right? Now, what if you were then told you were going to have to pay the promoter for privilege of being a support act (remember the headlining band will be using all of your equipment). Would the offer still look good? What if you were told you would have to pay roughly $100 a show? Understand that the booking agent/promoter has lined up an entire tour (28 dates) for the headliner and each of these shows the headliner is guaranteed say $1000 per show. Why would any band pay a promoter $2800 to play on a tour where the headliner is going to be making $28,000? Now, realize that you will be on tour and you won't be making anything off the shows you play but you will still have to eat and you will have certain expenses. All that money will come out of your pocket. So now you are paying roughly $5000 to play a tour. Something doesn't seem right.

Promoter/Booking Agents have finally stepped in it, up to their eyeballs. This is the type of political tyranny that punks use to stand up and fight against. We need to stand together in order to take down the fucked up people who believe this is ok.

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