Sat May 24 2 SHOWS! 7 & 10pm$12, $10 mbrsBaltimore’s favorite Cavalcade of Variety performance is hosted by Greggy Glitterati and loaded with spunk, verve and a healthy dose of titillation. Burlesque gems include: Sugar Ann Spice; An Amish Awakening by Shortstaxx; The Three Splooges; and Lil’ Dutch and Gary Gutter. Dawn Swartz collaborates with girl band The Degenerettes on a puppet-punk ode to ZZTop. Torchsinger Alisa Grundmann sings Weill; Cupcache sings about sugar; Mason Ross does awkward standup. Jehnna is a 21st century bellydancer; Noelle Powers is hula hooptastic; Mara Neimanis is an existential clown (scary!); and DJ Tyler Quinn vibrates your permalistic sightations. Oh yes, and don’t forget Greggy’s co-host Botoxa Woopsinflova, the plastic surgery disaster puppet.Need Tickets? Go HERE! 
June 21st, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Attention all bands, performers, bartenders, soundboard engineers, Djs, and patrons of Lo-Fi Social Club. I implore all of you to boycott Lo-Fi Social Club. I have kept quiet about this for far too long and feel that it is important for all to know the story of my involvement with the club.
I am the former booking agent and curator at Lo-Fi Social Club. After pouring my heart and soul into that club (even scrubbing the floors on my hands and knees with gasoline to get the putty off from the floor after it was installed, for no money whatsoever), I have been completely let down for the last time by Neil Freebairn, the proprietor of the club. I was put in charge of booking at some point in December. I did the best job I could with what little resources that were available to me. Neil told me he didn’t want to bother with the booking anymore and this would be an easy way for me to make some money while the record store was being built (I was to be manager as I will explain shortly). I was the only person doing any booking at that club save a show or two that Neil promoted heavily because his former band was playing, booking around 100 bands and I was working for peanuts, and these are peanuts that were never paid to me.
Prior to my working at Lo-Fi Social Club full time, and after having organized the most successful night at the club when the club was at the former location in Brooklyn, The Pain of Being Dead art show, he promised me a position as curator at the new location at 1825 N.Charles. He never paid to ship back artwork to artists that were in this show and I still have several art pieces from that show that rightfully belong in the hands of the artists that spent their money and time to send the artwork to the club for the show. He told me he would pay for this and never did. This show was on April 13th of 2007. In addition to his promise to give me the position of curator, he promised me a position as record store manager when the new location opened. Regretfully, I gave my 2 weeks notice at my then current job. Needless to say, the record store never opened, though he continually promised me that it would over many months. He offered me 24k a year plus health benefits to manage the record store and curate the art shows there. This never happened. He promised for months that he would stock the store and that he was dealing with Morphius to stock the store. I spent countless hours writing up an inventory for which I was never paid. I also began construction of the record store in my backyard with a fellow Lo-Fi staff member because Neil said that if we wanted it to happen, we needed to show initiative. Well, we showed the initiative and spent the majority of my time trying to make that aspect happen and I wound up in the poorhouse for it.
Opening night was a disaster as you may all well know. I had stressed to Neil the need to count heads at the door as I knew the club would be packed that night and we would have eyes on us. He decided that “it wasn’t important” and decided to stop counting heads. It actually was very important, as several bands including Durden, Squaaks (and I believe this was supposed to be their cd release party), and Thrushes did not get to play as the police rightfully shut down the show considering it was a fire trap with that many bodies inside and outside of the club. Neil saw this disastrous night as a minor setback, but this left a sour taste in many peoples mouths, including mine, and rightfully so. This was an omen of worse things to come.
After a stream of unsuccessful shows Neil booked, he offered me the opportunity to do all the booking for the club, offering me $x amount for each show I booked. I spent months booking every single show at the club and spent a tremendous amount of time talking to bands and setting up 90% of the bills from January through March. In addition to this, I was managing both the myspace calendar and calendar on the official website very diligently, also taking and uploading 90% of the photos and creating content like interviews on the website. I was also videotaping and making and uploading almost all of the videos that are located on the website. I was working extremely hard for Lo-Fi to get off the ground.
To make a long story short, Neil Freebairn, after giving him more than adequate time to pay me (he was supposed to start paying me in January, and this left me heartbroken and destitute over the next several months causing me great mental and financial turmoil.) has still not payed me for my booking at his club. Expecting that he would make good on his obligation to pay me, many times over months, he has run me around in circles promising payment. All the public apologies you have seen Neil make, were because I told him it was in his best interest to do so. He seemed to not really care when he left five bands standing outside a locked club for a show that had been booked at least two months in advance, while he decided to go skiing instead of running his club. He chalked this up to a miscommunication even though the show was on the calendar.