It’s Dec. 8, 2000. Pop-punk band Midtown has just finished their 25-minute set, and the crowd in St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in College Park, which has grown to more than 900, uses the brief respite between bands to take a breather. Sweaty brows are wiped, and the Chuck Taylors that came untied in the pit are securely fastened once again.
The lights go down once again. It’s time for Drive Thru Records’ New Found Glory to take the stage. NFG has made quite a name for themselves lately, but are still about six months away from MTV fame.
The crowd roars as the band slams into their first song with crunching guitars, and promoter Jamie Arthurs stands near the St. Andrew’s stage and takes a minute to soak everything in and “dance a bit.”
Arthurs’ shows in College Park from 1999 to 2001 came during the heyday of DIY – do it yourself – punk shows. The shows were completely devoid of corporate ties and still, Arthurs managed to bring in 650 to 700 fans at least once a month.
Arthurs and his volunteers would work well into the night as bands came and went. Some bands were only paid $100 for their gigs and often asked for a place to crash at the end of their sets. Arthurs’ former Laurel apartment served as a resting place for many band members in the past, he said.
“That house has seen its fair share of rock stars come through,” Arthurs said. “Now they’re rock stars, then they were just cool indie bands.”
When Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba called Arthurs in 1999 and requested he promote a last minute show for him, Arthurs spent a rushed two days confirming the details before Carrabba showed up at his practically famous-by-association apartment and played for a crowd of 30 people.
“The Dashboard thing just kind of happened on a whim,” Arthurs said. “I was like, we can watch a little Dawson’s Creek and you can play.”
Now 31, Arthurs doesn’t have as much time for his music passions, and his couch is significantly devoid of future rock stars. He has bills to pay, and he’s trying to save money so he can marry his fiancee.
But still, during his hours of work as a mortician in Rockville, his thoughts drift to his real passion: the days when instead of spending hours prepping bodies for identification and comforting grieving family members, he was foregoing sleep to book bands, making vegan sloppy joes for hundreds of teens and setting up lights and stages.
Arthurs’ music obsession began when he was about 13 years old and started going to shows with his older brother. His brother, who worked as a DJ, introduced Arthurs to a few bands along the way and piqued his musical curiosity.
He lists The Ramones and The Cure as a couple of his all-time favorites – staples that introduced America to the punk movement, which eventually created a hardcore subculture.
Arthurs has promoted somewhere between 150 and 200 shows in the past 11 years, he said. His gigs moved from shows at Club Laga, a small, all-ages venue in Pittsburgh to shows at the Chop Shop, a do-it-yourself promotion space on the top floor of a broken down Baltimore warehouse with one light that still managed to draw about 300 fans each show.
The Chop Shop closed in January 1999 when the owner of a strip club down the street called the fire marshal during a big show. The fire marshal shut down the operation because the building was over capacity.
Arthurs moved his promotion business to St. Andrews in September 1999, where he had the opportunity to host shows for Kid Dynamite, Dashboard Confessional, Alkaline Trio and his crowning achievement, 2000’s New Found Glory show.
“That show, it was just crazy,” Arthurs said. “It looked like a festival. It was just a sea of people wall to wall – there was no room to move.”
“I just stopped charging after a while because I had no place to put the money,” he added.
For the hardcore and punk music scenes, the late ’90s was a time when bands took to the stage not only to perform, but also to spout their political ideas, Arthurs said. The ideas were pure, the messages were motivating and the music was loud.
But following the explosion of New Found Glory and fellow pop-punk pranksters Blink-182 in the MTV-driven mainstream, corporate giants took hold of the innocent scene, which Arthurs said broke his heart.
“It’s hard for older people on the scene to watch something they fell in love with just get wrecked and turn into a whole new monster,” he said.
Nowadays, big-time companies – most notably Clear Channel – control massive proportions of the music industry, and the traditions of the hardcore scene have begun to falter. This turn from heart and hope to marketing and profit margin leave people such as Arthurs wondering whether it’s time to abandon his independent music promotion.
Currently, Clear Channel owns 9 percent of radio stations in the U.S. in addition to numerous concert venues, according to its website. But whether it’s fewer independently produced shows or the loss of the culture of bands crashing on their promoter’s sofa and trying to motivate the political masses, the scene is definitely changing, Arthurs said.
“The aspect of keeping people political on the scene just doesn’t happen anymore,” he said. “A band has to be willing to do something political instead of just, ‘Hey, look at me in my girl’s jeans and cool hair.'”
With New Found Glory now capable of selling out much larger venues, independent promoters such as Arthurs are pitted against corporations like Clear Channel and Hot Topic in search of new talent and opportunities to promote it, Arthurs said.
“The scene has grown from the size of Rhode Island to New Jersey, and now it’s the West Coast,” Arthurs said. “I want to go back to the day where my scene is not a fashion show, not depicted by MTV or Hot Topic,” he added.
The end of the line for Arthurs came in late 2001, after a few kids from Washington, who were less than fond of Arthurs, arrived at a show with firecrackers. The kids set them off in the church, causing a few scuffles. Arthurs rushed to the stage, stopped Darkest Hour’s performance mid-set and ushered everyone out of the church.
For Arthurs, promoting shows just wasn’t worth the risk after that, and it served as another painful reminder that the music scene he once lived for was quickly losing its innocence.
After throwing himself into his work for a few year without shows, Arthurs decided to return to the promoting scene. Now, he still hosts shows at St. Andrews “just for fun.”
He hosts a show or two every six months, but his endeavors are much more strained than they once were. Every show he promotes requires a million-dollar insurance policy, an expensive rental fee for St. Andrews and additional show-related expenses. Before even paying the band, Arthurs is looking at a $1,500 bill, straight out of his pocket until he can be reimbursed from ticket sales, he said.
“I started doing it for friends’ bands, and it snowballed into a second job for a while,” he said.
But now that Arthurs is engaged and has a wedding to plan and pay for, his situation has changed almost as much as the scene.
His shows now may be just for fun or to help out a friend, but somewhere inside of the 31-year-old mortician is a 20-year-old punkster screaming to get out, and his shows let him strive to create a music experience of the past instead of one that is rapidly commercializing in every possible aspect.
Contact reporter Sara Murray at murraydbk@gmail.com.
