October 30, 2008
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Rolling Stones $2500!!!!! Cha-CHINGGGG!!!!
Happy Birthday Rene!!!!!
1 EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
2 Just a bit of reveling.
3 It’s allowed.
4 So yesterday I was talking with a couple of old geezers from the Turtle Island school of Now, and one fellow jocked about how the upcoming Foreigner tour was sponsored by AARP, which is a retirement program for old geezers.
5 They gaffawed at the absurdity, stating that AC/DC was still on fire as well.
6 There was a time when talk of Foreigner and AC/DC would have ignited a lust for gold in my white-boy American heart. When times were good, and we were all oh so much younger and youthful and more prone to beauty, we deified rock legends.
7 I not only LOVED those bands, I also profited heavily on their concerts, often taking home anywhere from $1000 to $1600 per concert.
8 ‘Cuz I wuz in da UNION mang.
9 Those grand Day-on-the-Green concerts worked magic for anybody and everybody who worshiped rock as the TRUEST form of getting up there with the Creator of the Universe and various seraphim.
10 Absolutely SONIC concerts back-in-the day. And I was getting a pretty high-end 20% of the commish by selling what is now referred to as “merch”.
11 In the bay area, we grew up with rock, and with making silvery coin off its indulgences.
12 Peace, Love, and Profits.
13 And next to the Band and their toadies, we were the next best paid recipients of all that glam.
14 Now this was back-in-the-day.
15 Or back-in-the-days.
16 Not sure which.
17 Didn’t matter. There was mind-control-gone-bonkers going on in those heydays.
18 Only baby, I wuz in da UNION.
19 So I got to work selling hats, shirts, posters, and all the other boushit that the masses would spend to see their favorite rockstars.
20 Name the band, I made HUGE money off them. U-2, Pink Floyd,The Who, Journey, Foreigner, Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen, Nirvana,The Grateful Dead, Metallica, Toto, Wham!, New Kids on the Block, Old Kids on the Chopping Block, Duran Duran, J.Geils Band, Guns and Roses,The Rolling Stones, Santana, and on and on and on and on.
21 Those were just off the top o’ my head. There were lots. And I got to work all of ‘em, cuz I wuz in da UNION.
22 The money was absolutely ridiculous, and kept POURING in because we knew how to handle large amounts.
23 In the early days, nobody really kept books. We’d just work our asses off and trust that whatever they told us we made wuz what we made.
24 Cash.
25 Taxes? We filled out some half-page form that never really came back to us.
26 We didn’t really even ask why it never seemed to be recorded in our income tax.
27 We’d just be given what I used to call an “accordian of money” consisting not of ones, fives and tens, but of 20′s 50′s and 100′s.
28 About ten inches when you accordianed ‘em.
29 We’d go count it and see that we had made $1200, or $1150, or $1575, or in the case of the Rolling Stones, $2500 in two days.
30 VERY often we’d be short, at least according to our own calculations.
31 Nobody ever said a word.
32 The small team would sometimes be anywhere from $600-$800 short, and NOBODY would say a word.
33 Why would we?
34 Skimming from the top? Maybe. Someone sure was, but to us regular workers, we weren’t about to bring any of that up. Some guy hands you $1700 cash in a paper bag and tells you to have a cold beer and go home, you do.
35 A few old geezers would look at everybody askance, but to the normal guy, we’d just wanna go home, have a cold beer and a Jack Taco and count our blessings.
36 Literally.
37 Yesterday after a long, LONG day helping out with our night rally, I got home to an envelope from Centerplate, the newest executors of our splendid gig. I worked the Giants/Yanks last year for these guys, who are pretty sharp and with it.
38 It was a note that I had been fired from the company for non-payment of union dues.
39 Well, just recently the Teamsters took over our union. In the past several years, the good days ended, commisions dropped dramatically, and I became their guy who would set up new stands to see how the public would react.
40 I had previously been “grandfathered” for Niner games, being consistently offered stands that would make anywhere from $400 to $800 on a single game.
41 Now I was experimenting with making MAYBE $100 and working twelve hours.
42 Glory Days.
44 So my priority for paying dues dropped to about zero. They were right. The last game I worked was the Giants/Yanks, and I made out okay, but nothing remotely close to the Glory Days. I consistently made a grand every time either the Stones or Springsteen would roll into town.
45 No more.
46 So I’m thinking of giving some money to the retirement fund and hitting some winery in search of Foreigner, or AC/DC.
47 Glory Days.
48 Moving on; Back on Top: Yesterday the Heidi Chronz completely rocked. I was in the theater and the students just reeled and rolled with the stories, finishing me off with rousing rounds of applause.
49 What I thought for a while was a tumor in my head shrunk to nothing and I realized it was simply that I had slept wrong. Glorious sessions each period.
50 Had a rally last night, which was bad and then good, but came home in a SWEET mood.
51 So the end of yet another great day, and to that I say, happy birthday Rene, to a long and lasting go of it. You da best mang!
52 Peace.
~H~
