[Dixielandjazz] Lu Watters concert

[Terence Coates]

Hello John, 
                We have never met and, in fact, I know very few of the DJML 
"members" personally. Many of those members will probably feel quite lucky after 
this note.

    The point that I feel needs to be made about the furor over the Lu Watters 
concert is that neither you, nor any of the other people involved in the 
organisation of the event, nor any of the attendees needs, to apologise. You are 
to be applauded for whatever your degree of involvement was!

   Basically, as I see it, this was an OKOM event organised on the basis of a 
limited seating arrangement, and the other factors mentioned in your posts. With 
that as background, it seems to me that the limited advanced "publicity" given 
to the event was pretty logical. I must admit, I would have liked to be there!

What does bother me about this situation is that there are list members out 
there who have nothing better to do, in effect,  than "piss and moan" about 
someone - or some group - organising what appears to have been a fantasic 
concert. These are the same people that, even if they did have advance notice, 
would then have p and m'd because they could not get a ticket, due to the 
limited seating available, or the event was too far from home for some(not 
all) of them, or - - - ?

    Let's face it there are many, many OKOM sessions going on out there that we 
are not all aware of, and some of us miss out on the good stuff from time to 
time.

                                                  Best Regards, and KBO,

                                                                                
Terry.




________________________________
From: John Gill <smokewagon at yahoo.com>
To: terencejcoates at att.net
Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List Sent: Mon, December 12, 2011 2:41:07 AM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Lu Watters concert

Hi
I need to sday something here. First of all I'm sorry once again if any one felt 
left out . It was not intentional. We were given a certain nunmber of seats we 
were allowed to sell for a certain price that was negotiated by Bimbo's and the 
group that organized the event. So even though Bimbo's can seat 750 or more, we 
were allowed 350 for the deal that was negotiated. For the price we got the use 
of the hall for 4 hours, the sound system and an engineer,3 security people, the 
full dance floor, two bartenders and a waitress, and 350 seats. The event was 
promoted on a very small local basis and it sold out very quickly. Ticket prices 
were very low and even though it was sold out the proceeds fell far short of 
actually paying for the event. The price of renting Bimbo's is astronomical and 
when you add that to airfare, hotels, etc., it's a big nut. The local media was 
not interested at at all and shame on them. That is probably why it seemed like 
an
invisible event. The actual promoters are not savy to the Dixieland Mailing 
List, so that's why it was not promoted here. I take the blame for that because 
I'm the only member of the band that follows DJML. So I'm sorry about that. But 
I was the hired help and was not in charge of promotion. That said the event 
sold out because Lu Watters still looms large among people in San Francisco who 
like there jazz traditional.
Financial losses aside, it was a great event, the dance floor was packed, and 
for one afternoon in San Francisco Lu Watters was king again. I'm sorry 
everybody did not get to attend, it was not a secret event and I wish everybody 
could have been there. Maybe someone out there in Dixieland Cyberspace can throw 
their own Lu Watters 100th Birthday Concert and we can do it again. Or how about 
Turk Murphy, George Lewis, Kid Ory, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, King 
Oliver, Buddy Bolden, Wild Bill Davison, Eddie Condon, Jack Teagarden, Coleman 
Hawkins, etc. Do you all realize that most people don't even know who these 
people are?
John Gill
 
PS and it's spelled WATTERS not Waters.
JG
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