We broke it over his head.
Stolen gear stories never turn out well. Some comeuppance. (Though it’s little consolation for the Decemberists, Sonic Youth, Dino Jr, La Rocca, Tapes N Tapes and the thousands that came before.)
The other night at the Lucero show we were greeted to the awesome surprise that someone had stolen one of Glossary’s (the opening band) guitars. At first I was positive it was simply misplaced. We’ve never had anything stolen from our backstage. We have a clearly separated area for the bands with 3 signs marking to not come back there unless you are in the band, in their crew, or are part of our staff as well as security guards who patrol the club and our grounds. Mostly though, we don’t have to worry about this stuff because our patrons are decent, cool, respectable people who would never dream of stealing something from the club.
In fact much of our clientele are musicians who would not at all take kindly to some nefarious deeds.
So anyway, the incident occurred at load out, and the guitar player in Glossary discovered his guitar (a left-handed Epiphone–not easily replaced) had been taken out of its case and taken. At first, I was sure this was either a practical joke by Lucero, the headlining band, or just a mere mistake. After searching the club at 2:30 AM for a solid half hour it was all too aware the guitar was indeed stolen. Right, so now near 3:00 AM after a 14 hour work day, the management on hand and myself had to stay and to review 3 ½ hours of security camera footage, one camera at a time. Exactly what anyone would want to do at the end of a long day working at a club. It took some time to find, but, yes, there it was: a drunken moron taking the guitar out of the case, walking out the back door with the guitar, and walking back in without it. Astonishing. What kind of low-level life form would take something from a small touring band trying just to make ends meet and pay $4 gas prices on the road? Only absolute scum with no regard for people’s private property would even contemplate such a thing.
We began to put out feelers to find out who this was. Almost immediately via my space and email, a good friend and several random people identified this person and we began to track them down. Instead of making this more of a small novelette, I will from here on out give you a point summary of what happened.
–Several people sent me links to this person’s myspace and I contacted them telling them we need to talk about this situation.
–The person without knowing we had security camera footage acted like they had no idea what I was talking about.
–Upon relaying that we had conclusive security footage, the person had their roommate contact me to try to work things out.
The result:
–We got the guitar back to the band.
–This person is permanently banned from the club.
–We are awaiting the band’s decision on if we are going to further pursue this with the police.
–The person is lucky that the bands, our security guards, or one of our patrons didn’t hand them their butt on a platter.PLEASE KNOW (FROM NOW ON):
–If you are backstage and aren’t authorized to be there or don’t have a pass to be there, you will be removed from the club without any questions asked. We don’t care if you are friends (or think you are friends) with the band. If they want you to be back there, they will inform us and we will get you a pass to be backstage.–If you ever do this more than once. You will be permanently banned from the club.
–We have cameras everywhere and this is a small town. WE WILL FIND YOU IF YOU DO SOMETHING AS DUMB AS TRY TO STEAL A BAND’S GUITAR.
–We will send out information on the event to our collective friends of 100,000 people on myspace, facebook, and our email list.
–We will hang a picture of you at the front of the club with the words: “CROOK” underneath it.
–We will have you arrested and spend as much time and money as we can on bringing you to justice.
SIMPLE RULES TO LEARN:
–Act like a human being. Your parents must be extremely proud that you life has spiraled downward to the point of stealing a guitar backstage from a band at a small club.
—Don’t steal band’s equipment and you can eliminate the possibility of having everyone in town hating your guts.
As you probably know, report any stolen gear to the fine folks at StolenGear.org. Then borrow (don’t steal) a nice solid bat.
Original post from Alt-Country.org
Finest club in Birmingham, the Bottletree, co-run by our good friend Leah, the blonde half of Red Blondehead.
