Cafe Paris under the Gun

Initially we were going to perform a show at Cafe Paris tonight, but on this particular evening, that isn't what occurred. The reason why had to do with events during the previous two week at Cafe Paris.

During the Open-Mic Show, which was held on Tuesdays, the Police appeared twice on noise complaints. (Because people were playing their acoustic guitars too loudly?) This was taken pretty much as a bad sign by Greg, Cafe Paris' owner - but the final straw was the following Thursday during a Belly-dancer performance when a full-blow A.B.C. ("Alcohol & Beverage Control") Police raid was held. There were five cop cars parked out on the street and officers running around the club with flashlights. Ultimately, they only found one violation - Greg's business license was "improperly displayed" because it was still inside it's envelope - but the writing was on the wall for Greg.

He decided then and there not to have anymore live music.

His reasoning was that clearly the Cops and probably some of his neighbors had it "in for him" and he knew they had more money and more time to expend on this than he did. And if this was the response to acoustic guitars and a bellydancer, imagine the response to a set of full rock bands? (Note: I witnessed all of these events at Cafe Paris First Hand and interviewed not only Greg, but the Police while the A.B.C. raid was in progress).

The Police also raided the Press Club on Friday, the next day - no violations were found, but Greg and Cafe Paris isn't the only live music place that they have it "in for." Police have been hounding the Press Club for a couple years now. Not very long ago Bigshots Billiards in Roseville had finally given up it's long and length fight with it's neighbors over noise issues involving live music. Bigshots was technically within legal noise limits, but the Roseville City Council managed to limit their parking 1/4 normal. It got so bad that Cops were coming in nightly and counting the number of people in the club, dividing by two just in case people we're sharing a car, and citing Mike Regusa, the owner, if there were more people in the club than were allowed by his limited number of parkings slots.

Meanwhile back at Cafe Paris - we Shallow and Juggernaut who were all scheduled to perform tonight, didn't have a show.

I've talked to a lot of people around town about Greg, who's a gruff set-in-his-ways 70 year old man. Quite a few of those people are angry at him for something or the other. For most of them it's two things - his shows were always 21 and over and he left it to the bands to handle collecting money at the door. The main problem with this is that he usually didn't *tell* people this until after they've arrived for thier show. A lot of bands with younger audiences found out after they were done performing that Greg wouldn't let their crowd in - (this happened to us also) - or that he hadn't collected any money from the people who had shown up in order to pay the bands.

Ok, I can see how this could piss people off - but we figured this out on our first show at Cafe Paris and after that it was no big deal. I mean, we didn't have a crowd of people to invite in the first place when we started doing shows here almost a year ago and so few showed up anyway that all we would have made was beer money. Maybe. For us, what was cool about Cafe Paris was that it was pretty easy to book a show there and get an oppurtunity to at least play for *SOMEBODY*, even if it was only a few people - THOSE PEOPLE MATTER.

The oppurtunity to play and a chance to be heard was more important to us than anything else.

I mean, I was once just browsing over at a local CD store (The Beat on J st in downtown Sac) and Greg walked in. We chatted briefly and he asked me if we wanted to play a show - I said "Sure" and he walked out to his car and he had his calender with him. We booked it right then and there, later we played it without any problems. Dealing with most other bookers in town is flat-out pain in the ass. Sorry to say - few of them book shows intelligently - where you have one headliner/drawing band and several other promising groups that can benefit from the exposure and become headliners. They simply don't do that - they try and book a show full of "headliner" bands. Groups that are trying to work their way up through the ladder of noteriety and need to get seen in order to build a following can't get on the bill.

That stinks.

Plus it's bad for the scene because eventually people get tired of seeing the same groups over and over again. This is why we played Cafe Paris a total of seven times - and had different groups with us each time.

I for one, am rather sorry that Cafe Paris is no longer having live music. I was really comfortable there and I consider Greg to be a friend. Half the time I walk into Old Ironsides they treat me like some kind of invader, always with this nervous..."Can I help you?". Their booker - Kim - has never returned my calls. It was Kevin Seconds - not Kim, who called me back to confirm our one-and-only gig there so far. I can only get us booked in the Press Club by resorting to flat-out harrasment - "JAY - WE NEED A GIG - GIG - GIG - GIG - GIG - CALL ME BACK". I left two messages exactly like that in the same day. Fortunately, Jay - who books the Press - and I have become friends over the last few months and he doesn't take it personally. He's just overworked. Jim Barr at the Distillery is a friend of mine - but I know his booking policy (detailed above) so I don't bother to ask. There's no point. (All of these clubs btw - are within walking distance of my apartment which is why I now know everybody personally...except Kim)

I'm sure Greg's gonna do alright by converting the place into a Coffee House with a Happy Hour - he was even talking about repainting and redecorating so he won't lose out on anything. But with Bigshots closed recently (albiet temporarily, until it's owner Mike Regusa can find a new location), Club 65 closed due to landlord issues and Cafe Paris without live music...

The Sacramento Music Scene has definately lost something.

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