Wow.  First off, I don't think metal is stupid.  I think many, not all, metal heads are stupid. I recently wrote a blog about how lame the turnout in Lubbock for Lamb of God was.  The resulting comments from the idiots out there are amazing, so much I will address them.  Yes, it's best to ignore these 'dumb as a bag of hammer' types, but at this point I'm having fun, so ROCK ON!

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My point was simple, Lamb of God did half of what was expected in Lubbock.  Therefor, it will mean less metal shows.  If you take nothing from this article and the other one than the previous statement, that's okay.  I realize some of you metal heads have a problem with so many big words in a row.  It's simple supply and demand.  Now let's start picking this apart.

First off, when I say "metal" I'm not including bands like Five Finger Death Punch or Hellyeah or Black Label Society...they may use the term "metal' but that's just hard rock and that's that.  For the record, let's say metal is anyone who tries to be more hardcore than Pantera.  So here's some stuff to ponder.

The show didn't do poorly everywhere.. It did bad here.  Therefor it's not the bands fault.

The show was on a Saturday, sure it was after the UT game, but your preppie football fans aren't your average L.O.G. audience, so that can't be blamed.

I actually had a couple of lugheads try to blame it on the radio station for not promoting it properly.  I'm sorry, I didn't know it was my job to keep you up  to speed with your favorite bands.  Maybe I should drop by and remind you to wipe your rears too?  In 1979 when I moved to Brownfield Texas, and Black Sabbath and Van Halen booked a co-headling date in Lubbock, I knew about it. There was NO rock radio station here, there was no internet, I found out from a friend of a friend that went to a record store. I didn't walk around with my head up my rear waiting for someone to pull it out and shout in my face 'hey there's a show coming" (that show ended up cancelling by the way...bummer), I followed my favorite bands and bought tickets when they came to town. Anyways, FMX run HUNDREDS of FREE promotional announcements for the show and the promoter bought a ton of advertising time (some listeners actually pointed this out themselves and for that, I thank them).

Then there's the know-it-all douchebag coffee boy who wants to bag on the radio station and blames the poor showing because the show WAS advertised on FMX and 'no one listens to radio anymore'.  Actually radio listening is up.  More people listen to radio than ever before, because of a little thing called STREAMING.  Dude, you've been out of school for four years and you make coffee.  I went to Burger King the other day and a woman with Downs Syndrome served me (and did a great job by the way).  Making coffee is lower on the skill set than taking orders and giving change.  Just because you put it in a fancy cup doesn't mean you have skill, it means that someone with one more brain cell than you ordered the fancy cups.  Yep, if you attack where I work with all of the good things it does and great people it serves, I'm going to call you out on your job and take a huge dump all over it. Now, I'm sure there are many smart people who are making coffee as a temporary job, so let's not all take offense, I'm simply addressing this one moron who is probably drooling in the cappuccino machine right now.

We at FMX have been putting on shows for 30 years now. It doesn't change because it's 'metal'.  Promoting a show is no different than selling a taco.  We have promoted every genre on our station. Yep, the 'college country' shows are frequently promoted on FMX. The Broadway plays are advertised on FMX.  Holiday Happening is promoted on FMX.  We serve men and adults 18-34 and older.  This group of people have tons of interests. Some like metal, some like pop, most like rock and almost all of us like pizza.  The fact of the matter is that event promoters know, there is NO WAY to reach all of the available persons in this age group without FMX.  We have no allegiance to hard core metal, we just know that there is a decent size segment of our audience who like us and also like metal, so we try to keep them informed and help with shows when we can.

Once again the reality of the situation is. One of the biggest metal bands out there was booked into town. The show lost an enormous amount of money. Promoters will now be hesitant to put on metal shows. You can blame it on the bands, the radio station, the promoters or the man on the moon, it's still going to mean less shows.  It's no skin off our backs, we are not in the heavy metal business.  We tried doing a favor for the metal crowd and all we got was trashed by brain dead morons too stupid to support their own scene.

Metal will probably come back around in three to five years, it's just in a down cycle.  Whenever something is wheezing and on it's deathbed there's always a few people kicking and screaming in a no win effort to keep it alive. Metal has proven that it just goes back underground and comes back, it just seemed like it was finally going to break through, and instead it crapped out all over again.  You guys enjoy jumping up and down in your parents basement and bumping chests or wieners or whatever it is you do. I'm moving on.

 

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