The band does eventually swing through its back catalog, including all three Meat Puppets II tracks that ended up on the Nirvana MTV Unplugged CD. After a longish set and a rousing encore, Kirkwood hangs out near the bar, taking photographs with fans, shaking hands, and signing autographs.
But no amount of audience enthusiasm or glad-handing can salve Grant Hall's ire after the last note sounds. A frozen scowl owns his face, and he looks as if he could kill someone. He says nothing.
Joshua Prezant
None shall pass: Grant Hall keeps the guest list handy
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The next afternoon, he can't shut up. "I feel like I got the wind knocked out of me," he sighs. His calculations told an unhappy tale, as a variety of intangibles wreaked havoc with his formula, his figures, and his bottom line. He needed 300 people just to break even, and he didn't come close.
"A hundred people?" he says incredulously. "A hundred people from a band that sold half a million copies of one record? That's so bad! I mean, come on!I really took that show personally. It was totally my call. I said, "This has gotta work.' And nobody cared! It fell flat on its face, and it really crushed me."
A few days later, he reports that he's still in shock, wounded. It used to be that Hall would take a blow such as that, then bounce back, prepared to gamble again on a band no one else will touch. He's like Binky, Matt Groening's pincushion-hearted love bunny: ready for further punishment. After nearly a month to recover, he sounds less sullen. "I'm past the defeat, and I'm onto the next thing," he says. He's run through more formulas, possible outcomes, and flow charts, but this time, instead of applying his accounting to one show, he's rethinking his entire career. And he just doesn't see an easy way out. Not without selling out.
"I don't want to have to take on someone like Jaegermeister as a fucking corporate sponsor so I can finance this," he growls. "I don't want to do it. It turns my stomach!" He laments the local hegemony of large firms like Cellar Door, Fantasma, and SFX. Such companies aren't even remotely interested in acts that may draw only 100 or 200 people -- even though Marilyn Manson, Green Day, and Limp Bizkit started out at that level. Thus it falls to promoters like Hayward and Hall to help transform up-and-coming talent into bigger acts, but how long can their limited finances hold out? "This whole world will be homogenized crap forced down your throat by two or three huge corporations," says Hall dejectedly. "But I'm still plugging away."
If Hall and his fellow independent promoters decide to pack it in, all of us will feel his pain. As disappointing as the turnouts might have been, South Florida shows by Alejandro Escovedo and the Meat Puppets clearly are high points on the region's rock-o-meter. The chance that either would have taken place without Hall or someone like him is negligible. Masochist, martyr, or saint, Grant Hall is still gambling for our sake.
