Whether you’re a nonstop club kid or your Saturday nights are spent in a nice knitted kaftan binge watching Netflix, there’s one simple rule of thumb that everyone should be able to agree on regarding nightlife:
If a DJ literally goes by “DJ Underground,” you can almost certainly do better.
One Edinburgh, Scottland promoter learned that the hard way, and now they’ve put the entire story — complete with receipts — of an attempt to book “DJ Jeremy Underground” up on Facebook.
In just ten hours it’s been liked 12K times, because, well, it’s simply ridiculous.
How about we take this to the next level?
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“It is with regret that we have decided to cancel the performance of Jeremy Underground at this Friday’s Abstrakt launch party,” the post begins.
The drama between the promoters and Jeremy Underground’s agent stemmed from, of all things, hotel rooms.
“After booking the artist a night in an expensive 4 star hotel, we were told that he did not approve and (despite the contract simply asking for 1 room in a ‘4 star or 5 star standard hotel’) that the artist required a ‘5 star hotel with a sauna and gym,'” the post explains.
The promoters made a tough call, swallowed their pride, and agreed to the diva demand, booking an entire new room (complete with hotel sauna and gym) for their visiting talent.
But it wasn’t enough to stop the madness.
“Tonight, we received an email stating that the artist did not approve of this hotel and would ONLY stay in the Sheraton Grand. The agent did say that the artist would reimburse us for 2 of the 3 nights at this hotel, but given that the Sheraton Grand’s cheapest room was £614 per night, we stood to lose £614 + £788 + £149 = £1,551 on the artist’s hotel room alone.”
Trying to reason with the agent/artist was ultimately futile.
“After pleading with the agent that we already stood to lose thousands of pounds on this event (aside from the £1,551 on wasted hotel rooms) and were promoting it for a love of music, the scene and admiration for the artist, we were again told that the artist really needed to stay in the Sheraton Grand as ‘this will in turn provide the best possible performance.'”
The promoters made an even tougher call, and decided to cancel on the DJ and cut their losses before it got even more ridiculous.
Here’s the email they sent:
“We’ve agreed that this is simply not worthwhile and that it’s best we just cut our losses.
I find this so disappointing. It’s against everything the underground scene / house music is meant to stand for and is exactly the type of behaviour that is making so many promoters stop promoting parties – especially in small cities like Edinburgh where we do it because of our passion for the music and not to make money. Agents / artists acting like this will eventually be the downfall of the scene.
We simply don’t want to work with someone like this.
For these reasons, we’re going to cancel the booking.”
After sending the above message, “the agent responded by saying that Jeremy was now ready to ‘pay for the (new) hotel out of his own pocket.'”
The promoters had already arranged a Plan B lineup, and more importantly were over having to deal with this absurd behavior. Wouldn’t you be?!
“We are simply not prepared to work with this agency/artist (who’s stage name is ‘Underground’!) and would rather lose money and let people know the truth of a situation that is all too common in the modern scene.”
And that’s when things got even weirder.
Immediately after they said they were sticking with their decision to part ways, they received threatening emails and messages from the unhinged “agent”:
Let this be a lesson to everyone, regardless of vocation — don’t be an asshole!
As the promoters point out in their viral post, however, there is one silver lining:
“One lucky ticket buyer will win a night in an otherwise unused 4 star Edinburgh spa hotel 
“
You can see the full post below:
It is with regret that we have decided to cancel the performance of Jeremy Underground at this Friday’s Abstrakt launch…
Posted by Abstrakt on Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Jaxton
DJ’s aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. Pushing buttons on a console and waving your arms around are not difficult to learn.
jorgecruz
Don’t lump all DJ’s together. There are some like Ralphi Rosario and David Guetta that make their own music and are well known producers for most of their work hours. It only started getting bad when clubs started booking people like Paris Hilton and calling them DJ’s.
wizbang_fl
@jorgecruz Excellent point. There are DJ’s (who I would really term artists) and there are individual who call themselves DJ’s but no ability beyond mixing one song into the next with no more style than autotune (or iTunes) can provide on its own. Paris Hilton (there are others) who have become DJ’s similar to how Trump became President. Not talent based but due to notoriety from “dramatized reality tv”. The real artists that I can think of from past and present would include: David Guetta, Junior Vasquez (back in the day), Danny Tenaglia, Peter Rauhofer, and Victor Calderone. What’s funny is the real artists that know the business are clear up front what they want instead of moving the bar playing the part of “child diva” who can be easily be replaced.
steve_michaels
Sounds like the ‘agent’ and the ‘artist’ were one and the same person, probably with two different emails. I’m gonna assume drugs and some other plans for the hotel room as well. Good times!