I used to do shows. That’s a plural but barely. It’s hard, man. Dealing with people you’ve never met over the phone and via e-mail, figuring out a way to pull together the cash to get acts out here, finding the people a place to stay, figuring out the technical details for all their equipment needs, hoping to God they don’t have some crazy contract asking for shelled Brazil nuts and organic Tibetan grade B maple syrup iced tea in their green room. Then you have to hire security, hope the venue will work with your sponsors, and find a car big enough to drive everyone around when they get here. Once they are here, it’s about playing ambassador while keeping the attitudes positive and focused on the mission at hand. For a minute, you completely forget that people need to actually show up to the thing. Then it’s go-time, the doors open and all you can do is wait. People start to trickle in, some walk up thinking they’ll be comp’d just because they are them. You realize that if you’re going to make any of your money back you’d better hire someone to work the door that doesn’t know anyone, and that you better stay away from the door. This was usually when I would start drinking. Heavily. Then the timing needs to be right. The opening acts need to stay sober, and people need to be having fun. I’ve gotten this both right and very wrong. All you can do is keep trying. Eventually, I chickened out. Turning people on to amazing bands, getting them drunk and dancing faces off would never cover my rent after all the payouts. The stress is real, and sometimes all you get for working so hard is people saying the show sucked.

It’s just been much easier to crutch off people like BAMP and Chinatown’s Ara Laylo, who has consistently been doing it no matter what for years. I remember talking to her as she was executing her second of Montreal show, coming very close to having the band stay at Ross Jackson’s house because the funds just weren’t there to put eight people in a hotel. Her passion to make it happen made it happen, and everyone was exposed to glorious, danceable, colorful, eccentric indie music that night. The hard work and stress is worth that. Having a small background in what it takes is what usually has me first in the door for these smaller shows, eager to see these acts that are equally hyped to be in Hawaii. If the concert promoter lives and breathes the aloha spirit like the Vertical Junkies, who hosted California DJ duo Flosstradamus, it shows in the performance. The best part of this past weekend was when the two visiting DJ duos came together at V-Lounge to play records. Jokers of the Scene and Flosstradamus, who apparently know each other. Their aim was to just make us all go crazy, which we kind of did. It was very late, and I might have been oblivious to my surroundings, but what I saw was two national acts that had played in competing shows earlier, coming together to give us all what we really want. Music. If that doesn’t bring us together, I don’t know what will.