Last night at this local pub I had an almost unbelievable experience, although I've heard a lot of horror stories about the manager before, but I'd never actually experienced it myself.

It all started when I arrived with my band and the doorman wouldn't let our drummer in. He had lost his wallet a few days ago. I can understand a bar needing to cover its ass but there were a few things about even that altercation which didn't sit well with me. First off, our drummer has been going there fairly regularly for two years, known to the doorman, and he got super aggressive with us when we asked first, if he could just come in to play and then leave, and then asked him if there was any possible way we could work around it, "are you reading my lips? no way". he then shouted after him as he was leaving down the street that he needs to get an ID.

So alright, whatever, huge fucking kink in the plan, our drummer is an absolute keystone to the band, but we had someone who said they would fill in, and so when we started i said "our drummer wasn't allowed in tonight, so we're making due". And we did, and it was a bad set, we all knew it while we were playing, from the total lack of cohesive rhythm (not the temp drummers fault by any means, he hadn't practiced with us or anything) to a blaring bass drone feedback off the monitor. But whatever, expected it under the circumstances, it happens. As soon as we finish the doorman starts yelling that he had no idea the guy he wouldn't let in was our drummer and calls me a "fucking liar", accuses me of calling him a liar while I'm sort of baffled trying to explain what happened a few hours ago, and then he storms outside, the manager follows him. We all kind of look at each other like "what the fuck was that about?" and start putting our gear away.

As I'm walking down the stage stairs the manager runs inside and proceeds to start yelling in my face out of fucking nowhere. Essentially going on about how we are shit, fucking noise bullshit, we can never play here again, etc. Two of us are calmly trying to reason with him, how we've played two tight sets in the last two months there, what happened. There is no getting through, we are just met with more yelling and cursing, he was in a total rage. One of us went back to try and talk to him again about it and it was the same thing.

I've played shows all through the states and eastern and central Canada for years, and never have I been treated that way by venue staff. From the get go we were all polite and reasonable and we were treated as if we were rowdy drunks causing damage to the bar. As regular patrons and performers we were treated as if we were nefarious strangers. I'm just totally baffled at the complete lack of professionalism and total disrespect. Such a violent attitude has no place in a supposed community music scene.