Boston Ruins Music

Read this.

Now answer this question:

Are you fucking kidding me?

For those of you who are too lazy to click the link, here is a short synopsis:

- all under 21 live shows in Boston proper must now end at 11 pm.
- we're fucked.

I really don't know what this solves. Isn't the under-21 crowd the crowd that, at least in theory, should be the easiest to control? If the bouncers are properly trained - that is to say, if they are screening IDs, checking for overly intoxicated patrons on their way through the doors, and enforcing the drinking laws, shouldn't all of the under-21 folks out in Boston be relatively innocuous?

That aside, what really worries me is the effect that this law is going to have on the local music economy. A solid four fifths of the high profile mid-level venues in the Boston area (the venues being Bill's Bar, The Middle East, Great Scott, Harper's Ferry, and The Paradise) will be affected by this law. The only venue that will be able to throw 18+ shows, which are easily more profitable and sensible bills for the bands involved, will be The Middle East. The competition to get 18+ weekend shows at The Middle East, which is already ferocious, will be more cutthroat than we can possible imagine now. The other four venues will attempt to put on 18+ shows with early start times until they realize that no one goes to shows at 7pm, at which point they will become almost exclusively 21+ venues.

But hey, at least people will be able to ride the T home.

Worst thing about all of this is that the music crowd didn't do this. The yah-dudes did it. The baseball cap-wearing, ironed-jeans having, buttoned-down shirt-rocking douchebags who cruise Lansdowne Street at 2 am looking for fights because they're disappointed that the hours they spent at the gym doing only bench presses and bicep curls didn't make them any more adept at talking to women and who just spent $100 of their parents' hard-earned money on shitty, watered down drinks in plastic cups and who are about to drive their cars home, drunk, to their $850-a-month Commonwealth Avenue apartments; those people, those horrifying shells of people, they are sexually frustrated, so they roll with their paltry crews of similar - nay, replicant - douchebags looking for fights, and they find one on the corner of some Mass. Ave and Boylston (note: I saw this happen after our CD release show at Bill's Bar), and the fight sucks because none of these overgrown children can throw a punch to save their lives, so they both go home, faces intact, congratulating themselves on winning, pretending to be men, and ready to do it again next weekend.

And who loses? Rock and roll loses.

Which leaves me with only one question for rock and roll:

Since when did we lose to these assholes?