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This is the Green Room?, a common question asked by touring acts coming through the Canopy Club, is also Smile Politely's collection of personal tales of Mike Armintrout's interactions with musicians.
Aside from the occasional listen, I never really got in to the Wu Tang Clan or any of the 324 solo albums that spawned from the group. I always, however, appreciated and respected them in the world of hip hop. I’ve heard some say that Method Man’s show in 2006 was the best hip hop show ever at the Canopy, but the same can definitely not be said for Ghostface Killah’s 2005 show.
There was a day when I avoided big "rawk" shows like the plague. Now I don’t mind them all too much, but big bands like these generally bring big egos which bring lots of headaches to my world on show days. That being said, I’ve learned that I cannot avoid them forever, and I seem to be working them more and more all the time. Over the last few years I’ve promoted some club-level shows with bands that have either gone on to be much more or already had a following larger than the show they were doing for us. This is called an "underplay". Jack Johnson, Fallout Boy and Maroon 5 are just a couple examples. Seether is another one of those bands that reached a much broader fan base than 1000 or so tickets a night.
Or rather, they dated people who had already reached it.
In the last seven years I’ve promoted four shows for DJ Logic. One with his band Project Logic, another with Dirty Dozen Brass Band, another with Bob Weir & Ratdog and one with the John Popper Project. As a fan, I've seen another six of his shows. The best of these was at the Canopy in December of 1999 with Soulive and Project Logic. It was scheduled for Foellinger Auditorium but neither band was really on a national level yet and when the school was ready to cancel due to poor sales, Ian Goldberg at the Canopy said he couldn’t let a good show just not play. I was one of only like 35 people who’d purchased advance tickets; it was an amazing night of music.
September 1994 : Sordyl's House of Music (Springfield, IL)
At age 16, I took my first electric bass guitar to Ralph Sordyl's House of Music in Springfield for an electrical check-up. I explained my issue to the not-so-attentive employee. Despite my best efforts, he was disinterested, to say the least. I heard the jingle of the door chimes and naturally, I turned curiously to see who was coming in behind me.
Headed towards the counter and staring right at me was a man who was, putting it nicely, a total disaster.
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