I am in a band.
I need to get my band's name heard.
I have no money to buy materials and flyers suck. (Yes, I hate them too...
Get away from me band guy! You AND your lame ass flyer! Nice flyer dude...get a job...Do you really think that helps? Buy me a beer and I will show up?
Or my favorite... "Thanks. I am in ______ and we are playing this day. See you there.")
Nearly 30,000 Reverie flyers a year are trampled on and blown away by the wind. No one actually holds onto a flyer anymore, ESPECIALLY at a festival. How can you hold onto a flyer when you have to hold two beers and get your cigarettes out of your pocket?
Even if you put the flyer in your pocket you keep pulling it out thinking you have more money...but you don't...just someone asking you to spend money that you don't have. I hate that. I really do.
Sometimes these flyers go into the sewers where the feces and urine of my neighbors bleeds the ink that once used to spell REVERIE across the cheapest paper the Uptown Kinko's could sell us. And no one is at the show... not even the guy that told me about his show. He seemed nice. Maybe they didn't remember? Maybe they are waiting to come to the next one? Maybe people DONT LIKE FLYERS.
Last year I received a lighter from a friend. Okay, scratch that. No one gives away lighters. Lighters are stolen only. Suckers pay for lighters. People hate buying lighters. I hate buying them too. I ALWAYS lose them...ask Brad, Kevin or Coate....sometimes moments after I buy them, even. Hey, they all look the same!
So anyway, this friend's lighter said 'Thinner Teed". I lost it a few times, but then I would find it. And when I found it in a friends hand I said, "HA! That is my lighter!" Then they would agree, hand it back to me, and in the process ask, "What is 'Thinner Teed'"?
Eventually, curiosity killed the cat.
Like any good kid of the 2000's I went to Google and I typed in
T-h-i-n-n-e-r (Space) T-e-e-d
Voila! Boom.
Thinner Teed is a band. (That is the last plug I make for that band. After all I did have to Google them.)
What a great idea. I mean, why haven't we done this? They cannot be that expensive. Wrapping them cannot be that hard, and lighters go through hands as much as money. What if I could find a way to get my band name on a dollar bill? That would rock.
So low and behold when Lollapalooza came roaring around the corner and all of these music fans were going to be in Chicago ALL hanging out together, I was convinced we should do something to tell the Lolla folk who we are. Introduce ourselves via lighter.
We should gift them like that band but we should put our web address. What a great concept!
I told this story and discussed it a bit. It was decided that we were going to hand out 1000 lighters to see how it would work.
We ordered the lighters while on tour Thursday. We got home Saturday. The lighters came in on Monday. We remembered that we had agreed to wrap 1000 on Monday. We freaked out on Tuesday. We called our friend Jeffrey in California on Wednesday. We misunderstood his design on Wednesday. He resent folding lines on Thursday. We wrapped half of them on Thursday. We finished the other half on Friday. We handed them out all weekend. 1,000 lighters... and let me tell you, they went fast. People love free lighters.
Remember... No one buys lighters... They steal them... like the way kids and lazy twenty somethings steal music and the way artists steal marketing ideas... The files sizes get smaller, and the marketing ideas get shared and improved and shared. Squeeze it in. Not too much.. Just enough... Put peanut butter on both sides of that bread and the jelly won't leak through.
We put our band name on 1,000 lighters, wrapped them by hand and made them with love. We upped that band that I stole this awesome idea from simply by adding our website and leaving out the super groovy tie dye that made it impossible to read at a first glance. No one will ever have to Google REVERIE and NOT find us again!
Late Sunday I was feeling tired and I had some things to do for my 'real job'. I am a musician to the people that know and understand me but to the rest of the world I am only a guy on the 9th floor who plays in a band. I had to work on things for these people too, because they are good to me.
So I left Lollapalooza early. I had to get up for work early and it was almost 9:30 already. I still had band work to do and real work to do and other work to address. I walking out when suddenly I saw a glimmering sign in the distance. It said..
"The Chicago Promoters Ordinance Kills Indie Music"
I walked quickly up to the gentleman and I said. "You are god damn right it does. I have been looking for you. Aren't you with Jagoff?" and he said, "Yes I AM! Who are you?"
So I gave him a little background about how I am this guy in a band (Stephen Francis of Reverie), this is what we do (we play hard), this is what we are part of (independent music,Chicago,)this is what we are creating with friends (Chicago Noise Machine), blah blah blah and YOU should come speak at our next event about this ordinance!"
We chatted about a lot and I learned a lot. Gary is a hell of a guy with a heart of gold. For nothing in return this guy is sitting outside of the Lollapalooza gates sweating his nuts off in the heat. At this point he is trying to educate people on the dangers of the CPO. After all it does take away both the 1st and 14th amendment from Reverie and all of our favorite independent bands. At least in Chicago... for now.. if it happens. I can tell you if we do not stand up for our rights as artists, musicians, and more importantly as fans it will happen.
I ended up standing outside of Lollapalooza holding up this sign for nearly 2 hours, despite my previous engagements. What would another night lacking sleep do to me?
I got home an hour after my friends whom I left to get home early and no one believed my story.
"What?" I said, "I am not lying. They are going to tag me on facebook holding up the sign.... YES since I left. Why would I make that up? I have to get that work done now. Why are you laughing?"
I slept 3.5 hours last night.
We handed out 1000 lighters, I went rushing back to my 'real job', an ordinance got in the way.
If you don't know about this ordinance...Watch this documentary.
And this panel discussion.
Thanks for reading.
Stephen Francis
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