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"We have a long history of driving engineers and producers to the point of despair, because it's always 'I'm not sure about that.'" -- Larry, 2004 |
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"We have a long history of driving engineers and producers to the point of despair, because it's always 'I'm not sure about that.'" -- Larry, 2004 |
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My Fan Year - #42
@U2,
November 12, 2005
When Matt asked if I wanted to host a CD release party in St. Louis right before How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb hit stores, I leapt at the chance. Sure, I'd never done anything like party-planning, but why let inexperience get in the way? I've gotten to try out any number of jobs thanks to my U2 fandom-why not add "event planner" to the list? Especially since we have Sherry, an actual event planner, on staff. It was her idea to have "Swinging to the Music" parties across the country to celebrate the dismantling of the bomb. She'd been coordinating similar shindigs in Boston for years -- it was time for something bigger and better. How about three bashes, all on the same night, in Boston, Seattle and St. Louis? How about panic? How does that sound? Does panicking sound like fun? Good. See, here was the trouble -- not only had I never done anything like this, but St. Louis hadn't either. St. Louis fans had never really picked up on that "Meetup" thing, or done much pre- or post-concert socializing -- or at least if they had, I didn't know about it. What if no one showed up? I had a cool venue in mind -- Beatnik Bob's in City Museum downtown -- but if we didn't have a crowd, we wouldn't be able to afford it. I put its name down anyway on the Evite page a few weeks before our proposed event. I just hoped we'd get enough RSVPs to know we could cover the cost. But the number of people saying they could come to the St. Louis party stayed ridiculously, frustratingly low. And here was another worry: I'd be out of town for a few days just before the party, right at the time final decisions would have to be made on where it was going to be held, or if it was going to be held at all. Sherry talked me down off the ledge a few times in those weeks leading up to the Event That Almost Wasn't. I had invaluable local help too from my friend Reiko, who did a lot of legwork during my ill-timed out-of-town trip. But the urge to run screaming from every room I was in stayed strong. I did end up switching the party's location from Beatnik Bob's to a room at Schlafly Bottleworks, a restaurant owned by a local brewery. The change got in just under the wire; in fact, if I remember right, we were past the usual deadline for booking the place, but they had pity on us and took us in. I now had a wide range of potential catastrophes to freak out about:
None of these catastrophes occurred, of course. No -- if something goes awry, it's something you would have never expected. I certainly never dreamed anyone would ask about an announced ten-dollar U2 concert. It happened like this. I sent a press release out to the media about the Swinging to the Music party. A local TV station stuck the announcement into its morning news show -- a very nice 30-second burst of publicity. It named the date, the venue and the admission price while showing a clip of Bono from the Boston Elevation DVD. I hadn't thought to leave info about the party with the folks working the front door at the Bottleworks. Suddenly they were being inundated with calls from people who hadn't been listening to that morning news show with their full attention. They saw U2, heard "Sunday night," "Schlafly" and "ten dollars" and drew their own conclusions. And thanks to my negligence, the Schlafly people didn't have any information in front of them to set the callers straight. Oops. Other than that, and an experiment with the decorations that made my living room stink (if you buy a prop "bomb" with a real fuse from a party store, don't light it inside), the party was a great success. Just the right number of people came -- not too many, not too few. They dug the promotional video clips Sherry had put together for airing on the bar's TV. They got the joke when I carried the new album in my dad's old briefcase which was handcuffed to my wrist. They passed the CD booklet around reverently. They raised lots of cash for the African Well Fund. No single evening has ever given me more excuses to feel freaked out. But I'm sure you've guessed it: I'd do the whole thing again in a minute.
© @U2/Pancella, 2005.
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