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Grant - NIAB done?


JoeDirt

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From their Facebook page (for those who don't have access):

 

What does M*A*S*H*, The Roman Empire and the Mc Rib all have in common…. Sooner or later all great things must come to an end. And thus are the words spoken by the former members of Nuts In A Blender and About Last Night… two dynamic bands that gave the Hudson Valley one hell of a party for more than 12 years. That’s right, you’re hearing it here for the first time (or maybe 2nd or 3rd hand if you caught one of us drinking)… after more than 1,000 shows, in 7 states, we’ve decided to shut down this music machine, part as friends, until one day we’ll all get together for a beer to talk about the good old days and decide that it was too much fun not to do again. It the memorable words of Neil Young: it's better to burn out than to fade away. We’re deciding now is the time… let’s unplug this Blender until the next time someone wants a giant music smoothie.

Reasons? Let’s not focus on the reasons. Let’s focus on the FUN. The unstoppable FUN that comes from 12 years of memories… the fun of so many crazy shows. The FUN that comes from getting together with your friends every single weekend and making new friends along the way. The fun of having a band play all your favorite songs, ,… the hits, b-sides, and the guilty pleasures…. and put them all together into one of the best live music parties The Hudson Valley has ever seen. And that’s exactly what we plan to do this Saturday, AUGUST 2nd at Billy Joe’s Ribworks…. Put on a party one last time… To play for our friends who without them we would have never left the garage that warm summer in 2002. We’re calling out to everyone who’s ever enjoyed a NUTS or ABOUT LAST NIGHT show, former members of NUTS and people who have supported us over the years come on out and lets have one last party!

 

So call your friends…. relatives, co-workers, even people you fought with and won’t even return a simple text to… let them know that the band once known as NUTS IN A BLENDER and ABOUT LAST NIGHT is calling it a night, and our last show together will be SATURDAY, AUGUST 2nd, 2014 at BILLY JOE’S RIBWORKS in Newburgh, NY. We’ll raise a glass, toast to our friends, supporters, fans and let Zippy get on stage to give it one last…. wiggle… wiggle… wiggle!!!!

 

I've really enjoyed Grant's posts here, and following his adventures, successes and challenges. Hope he'll make his way back soon and have continued success in his next venture.

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A little birdie told me that peeps were buzzing in here. Sorry I haven't been around. It was in part b/c I was so freakin busy... with the band. work, life... but also b/c this forum upgrade was a terrible experience too. I see they STILL don't allow you to sign in and reply to a post... instead you have to go back to the main menu site to log in. (for a user experience I fail to see any improvements) Rant over.

 

Anyway... yup NUTS is officially over... We came to the decision a month ago (given some important circumstances) and we're all happy with it. We had a terrific run for a long time (12 years) and even though the last 2 years have been challenging we all accomplished what we wanted out of it. It's better to leave people with great memories and go out with a bang rather than backslide in terms of quality, opportunities and pay. Think about it... not only did we keep the band going while in the midst of a vicious fight with a founding member but we ultimately built a better band and raised the bar even higher for the local band market.

 

 

So why did we end things after such a successful run. There were three reasons really....

 

#1 As most of you know almost 2 years ago our singer (founder) left the band in a failed attempt at a power play to remove the bassist (co-founder) of 10 years. His reasons were understandable but the way he managed everything was not. So in an act of defiance our singer trademarked the name and logo of the band two weeks after his resignation. He could have easily used this as a card to come back and resolve matters. Instead he chose to extort money from the band... at the tune of $400 monthly to lease indefinitely or $800 a month to own (after two years). His first action last Fall was to contact Facebook and have our Group removed. We had more than 3700 local contacts through that group, as well as a Band page with 1100 that were taken down. The reasons :Trademark Infingement. So we changed the name to About Last Night. However locally the name change really hurt us.... people recognized NIAB as a name brand and the local clubs especially gave the new name a cold shoulder. However we were planting flags in other markets particularly CT where our name was being recommended left and right.

 

#2-Both singers left the band for personal reasons.... and both left the band with little notice. As unprofessional as it was (and disappointing) both situations were unavoidable (hint: significant others were involved). To start a whole new search was not what any of us wanted to invest in.

 

#3- The club economy and privates market is the worst I've ever seen it in 15 years. Clubs have scaled back both on the number of dates and pay dramatically. After four clubs decent clubs closed locally we had one major venue we could depend on. They pushed all bands out to Saturday nights and a 12 week schedule. In NUTS we averaged 5-7 shows monthly... with the new band it was hard to pull together 3-4 shows per month. The only alternative was to travel 90 mins or more for the same or even less pay (been there/done that). Privates were trickling through and to add further pressure on the nightclubs a fair amount of wedding and professional bands were flooding the nightclub market at a deep discount to fill up their calendars. Now you have 30-40 bands competing for a handful of dates.

 

So a month ago we all got together for beers to discuss the future. We looked at everything on the table and all of us smiled and said "&@%# it" it was a fun run. Why get down in the weeds and fight this. When it gets to a point you are no longer making good money there's little reason to invest more in. Last year we added video, improved some lighting.. revamped the setlist. It did little to get people out on a regular basis. The feeling was at least if we stop playing people would miss us. And honestly I've been waiting for a band to come along and grab the baton from us and set the new bar for entertainment in the area. And I still don't see one. Everyone has side or acoustic projects the could roll into. This was becoming way more work than reward. So we agreed to end it with one last show. Think that could go off without a hitch. Nope!

 

PROMO

[video=youtube;VBZtT3_-M2U]

 

We started promoting the last show just last week. We didn't extend an invite to our former singer and was anticipating some sort of anticipatory response. We got it when he contacted the club mid-week and notified them that they were using a trademark in advertising the show without permission. The club called us in a panic of course and pulled all advertising. We plowed full steam ahead not knowing the type of crowd or performance we would get. We couldn't have expected a better night... we had it outdoors on the bank of the Hudson River. Beautiful night and the club clocked in 2448 people through the door (a normal night is close to 800-1000)Terrific turnout and I saw people I haven't seen in 5-6 years. Joe... the core group was on stage. Our drummer had another band commitment for the night so we called back our original drummer to play the first 2 sets. He joined us in the third. Our regular sub singer wasn't there so we asked the singer of a now defunct rival band to sing. Over the years both bands had traded players back and forth. Their singer had a deep rivalry with ours... so having him on stage was poetic. Funny how things come full circle. He filled in with us a year ago.

 

We totally threw the night together. We had no time for rehearsal as everyone was already committing up with different projects so we got together about two weeks ago and ran through songs we all knew to fill the setlist. Some songs we hadn't played in 6-7 years (Jet, SR71, Green Day). The last set was mostly current band material which we had to rely on John (the sub singer) to just listen to previous recordings and sing along. We didn't have time to rehearse at all. It was a '**************** show' but the crowd loved it. To end the night with over a 1,000 people in front of you... most who had been coming out to shows for years was overwhelming.​ You never take that for granted. Honestly it felt like the first real NUTS show we played in about two years. ;)

 

Bon Jovi Medley

[video=vimeo;102767166]

 

Inside Out

​[video=vimeo;102487665]

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can you elaborate on what your former A**hole, uh, lead singer, did to copyright the name? So that facebook would take the page down? I have my band name registered with the secretary of state in Ohio, but no where else. I do not have the logo trademarked. In other words, how can I prevent what happened to you from happening to me? If I recall, registering a trademark on the federal level is a thousand dollars and up.

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Yeah, these copyright law things are always interesting.

 

I wonder, for example, how far he could have pushed things had they called themselves "More Nuts/No Blender" or some such and changed the logo?

 

You have all these different versions of bands playing around and it seems that as long as they call themselves "The Original Coasters" or something they seem to be fine under copyright laws.

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Copywrite and Trademark are two entirely different things. I'm estimated he spent between $1500-1800 to file the trademark and another $1000-1500 to get the cease & desist and other letters written, The Trademark was for the use of the name "Nuts In A Blender" and the logo for any commercial entertainment purposes.

 

From his lawyer:

 

This letter is intended to not only respond to the claims made in your correspondence dated March 6, 2013, but also to provide you with notice that should your clients continue use of NUTS IN A BLENDER, it will be wrongful and unauthorized. Mr. XXXXX is terminating his de facto license and intends to continue to use the mark for entertainment services. Any continued use of the mark by your clients will cause confusion in the market place, and will constitute trademark infringement pursuant to 15 U.S.C. §1114 false advertising, unfair competition and false designation of origin pursuant to 15 U.S.C. §1125(a).

 

Mr. XXXXX has been using this mark in commerce, at least as early as May 2002, to identify and distinguish his services. Our client has expended substantial funds, time, and effort in the development and protection of its valuable trademark and thus, the mark is well established and well known.

 

 

He contacted Facebook and presented them with proof of the trademark. FB has a no-tolerance policy when it comes to trademarks. Whoever shows proof is who FB sides with.

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I don't think its the copyright issue or the fact that the original singer is being a jerk as much as it was the two new fronts dumping on them. I never thought that those two had the staying power to put as much faith in them as grant did. as for pulling the plug.. I fully understand that. All things come to an end , including the band I played with for the last 5 years and I ditched the side project as well. Like anything there is a time to move on. Like grant said ,, they had a good run.

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Tim, losing both singers took a lot of wind out of our sails, although we had another singer on deck (as good as JD vocally) to replace our male front. He was a terrific singer, just not a very strong frontman. It goes without saying... you can be an amazing talent in a studio or recording booth, but you need to really have stage presence to entertain and lead a band through a performance. Our former singer had that... our replacement singers had that. And 'that' is an extremely hard thing to find.

 

The guy who filled in this past weekend has 'that'. He would have been an excellent replacement for our former singer. The guy is well known and has a long history with area bands and is a draw just as himself. I know he was interested and we could have kept rolling with him out front... but what would we call it? We can't use NIAB... About Last Night wouldn't fit... it wasn't catching on with clubs and it was associated with being a Top40 act. Would we change the name a third time and make another tired run at changing the name. Without the use of the name we are dead in the water. And as I said... the truth of the matter is it's not that much fun playing the clubs these days. How can you sell a party band when there's not much of a party on the club scene. LOL

 

 

This is a mistake I see countless bands make... they suffer lineup changes and name changes yet the show deteriorates and the quality of the product drops. When someone mentions the band's name people respond "Oh, they are still playing"... and it's really a former shell of what they once were. This was a concious decision to end this band. Were are hands tied? Absolutely? Could we enable some work arounds? We did before, and we could do so again. But there comes a certian time when you say to yourself... this still looks pretty from the outside... let's leave it intact. There may be a day when we decide to mend fences and dust this off.... but trying to trudge through this terrible club economy isn't really helping ourselves or the scene right now.

 

Think about it... we're a band that just drew 2000+ people in attendence with barely any promotion. And we're pulling the plug.

 

Interesting... as soon as we walked off stage at 2am the new manager of the venue rushed our manager and asked why we were breaking up (he was aware of the legal issue). We just said we didn't have enough work on the calendar to keep things running. And he responded that he wanted us as a house band... he didn't care what we called it. LOL He doesn't realize that the crowd that came out Saturday came to say goodbye... they haven't and wouldn't come out like that every weekend.

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Yea I get why you pulled the plug. You can really only put humpty back together again so many times. The times are a changing and your core fan base is getting older and other things besides going to the bar tend to take priority. Face it money is tight. We got the same thing going on down here , People still come to the beach ,, but they don't spend the money like they did. As for the fun ,, yea I get that too. I played over 1000 shows in the 5 years I was with my main band. I doubt that in 5 years I will look back and say ,, I wished had played a few more bar gigs. LIke you ,we had a good run ,, but I could see that bailing was in order and everything that has happened to the venue and band has proven that I made a good decision. Will I rock again in another band.. Who knows , but I am not looking right now. I haven't started selling gear yet ,, but its not out of the question.

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We both agree the bar economy right now is troubling. Many people ask my why... what do I think is going on. I think it's simple yet a combination of things.

 

I'd say our best years as a band in terms of draw was 2009-2011. I mean Jesus... would could set up and play in a park.... announce the show on FB and two hours later we'd have a 100 people in attendance. I could say we were spoiled... except that we worked every angle to be 'that band'. None of the other bands in our circle were having success like that. In the height of the recession people wanted to be anywhere other than home. They wanted to drink... they wanted to forget. Most were un or underemployed... not making much money and trying to stave off debt. We drew people from 25-50... but the core crowd that came out were usually 25-35 and single or 35-45 and divorced. Now it's 5 years later... the economy has improved, yet it took many of those post college grads 5 years to land their first professional job. Now they are stuck paying off debt they rang up the four years prior. A good example is a friend of my wife. She started following the band at 23.... now she's 31. She lives at home with her parents still and has been underemployed since graduation. She has a Masters in Teaching Elementary Ed. She just landed her first teaching job... she's 31, in debt and not moving from her parents anytime soon. She also can't afford to go out and blow $100 on a Saturday night. Say what you want about Generation Y... they were handed a very unkind bag of "@#%&". So when I look at the nightclub scene... I see people under 25 (who don't follow bands) or people over 50.... who tend to head home by 11pm. That 7-10pm dinner slot is looking sweeter and sweeter. LOL (too bad it pays "@*#%" ).

 

The other thing that happened here exclusively in the Northeast was a Hurricance by the name of Sandy. This did more to damage retail eonomy in NY, NJ, PA, CT than anything. On average people spent a few thousand dollars unplanned to prep, combat or recover from the storm. I cite Sandy as a huge factor in the nightclub decline. Since Sandy we've had four important clubs close their doors. All suffered damage from Sandy and never full recovered in terms of business.

 

I do hope this is a trend.... I'd hate to see live music of any kind be flushed away by DJ's and cheap LapPop bands. As the dollar becomes thinner I'm seeing a lot of embarrassing shortcuts being taken by bands left and right. The end result is a drop in overall quality of entertainment. Which encourages people to support less than more.

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I never thought that those two had the staying power to put as much faith in them as grant did.
Based on....what????? You never met either of them, I don't think. Almost 100% certain you never worked with them. So you based this prediction on what? A picture or a video clip?? I guess you had a 50/50 shot of predicting "stay" or "go" and you got this one right. Maybe even better than a 50/50 shot since most everyone leaves a band eventually.

 

OTHO, you've been making dire predictions about the intentions and actions of one of my singers for nearly 5 years now and have been dead wrong about all of them. She still with us and still wants to be and still works hard at it, vocal issues notwithstanding.

 

Nothing personal, but I always find it laughable whenever people start presuming they understand and can predict the motivations and actions of people they've never even met or even read anything they wrote.

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The guy who filled in this past weekend has 'that'. He would have been an excellent replacement for our former singer. The guy is well known and has a long history with area bands and is a draw just as himself. I know he was interested and we could have kept rolling with him out front... but what would we call it? We can't use NIAB... About Last Night wouldn't fit... it wasn't catching on with clubs and it was associated with being a Top40 act. Would we change the name a third time and make another tired run at changing the name. Without the use of the name we are dead in the water. And as I said... the truth of the matter is it's not that much fun playing the clubs these days. How can you sell a party band when there's not much of a party on the club scene. LOL

 

I think I said this to you at the time: I thought it was going to be a tightwire to walk to try to both be the Old Band and the New Band at the same time. That almost never works for bands. You pretty much have to cut your losses and start from scratch as a new entity. But if the market isn't there for you and/or it seems like more trouble than it is worth....well then there you go.

 

 

This is a mistake I see countless bands make... they suffer lineup changes and name changes yet the show deteriorates and the quality of the product drops. .

 

Or even when the show and the quality improves, it's tough to move forward many times. Old fans like the old thing. Period. They'll never see the new lineup as better even if all the musicians on stage KNOW that it is. One of those intangible things about this business. "Quality" is subjective on so many levels. It's like how so many people will always insist that some bands first album was the best one even though it's clear that musically, vocally and from a songwriting perspective, a band is so much better on so many technical levels on later albums.

 

Connecting with an audience is a fragile and intangible thing.

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Based on....what????? You never met either of them, I don't think. Almost 100% certain you never worked with them. So you based this prediction on what? A picture or a video clip?? I guess you had a 50/50 shot of predicting "stay" or "go" and you got this one right. Maybe even better than a 50/50 shot since most everyone leaves a band eventually.

 

 

 

I was sorta curious about this as well. Given neither left for 'music' reasons and it's doubtful either will perform with a band on this level again. JD... the male was always a question mark. After all he signed a 6 year contract with USMA as lead vocalist of their band so we knew at most we'd have him for a couple of years.... his departure was disappointing but it made sense. Her departure on the other hand made no sense at all. An American Idol trialist twice, she worked for the Post Office, had strong local roots and enjoyed the spotlight of being in a band. Hew departure was shocking and something we never saw coming.

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I think I said this to you at the time: I thought it was going to be a tightwire to walk to try to both be the Old Band and the New Band at the same time. That almost never works for bands. You pretty much have to cut your losses and start from scratch as a new entity. But if the market isn't there for you and/or it seems like more trouble than it is worth....well then there you go.

.

 

Well again... from a local level the new name/line up was slow to take hold but it was really starting to take root. We new from an audience perspective it would take a solid year (or a healthy summer) to move beyond the old name. In April we played an Autism benefit and the press and buzz from that event (over 300 in attendence) really started to get things moving. The bottle neck was the nightclubs. Many had a 'back of the line' attitude when we swapped the name. One club owner went as far to offer us half$ for the new band because he couldn't use NIAB to market the event... event though NIAB never played his venue. Another club complained that we only brought 150 people to his club in the dead of winter when NUTS would bring 250 ppl. I replied with the fact had we not played there would have been about 20 through the door (this venue was failing) and we had offered him a discount. He was paying $800 less than what we charged him as NUTS. His bartenders also said openly it was their best Friday night in three months. So club owners used it as a negotiation point.

 

However we were building buzz 90 mins away... in CT we played a big club in CT that would never book NUTS. This was a larger capacity venue we played in Jan... and the manager booked us inmmediately for 4 more dates... and sent personal referrals to four more clubs. So things were working for us in that market... we didn't have the big shadow the previous band had in front of us. However driving home 2 hours and getting home at 5am every Saturday night wasn't thrilling either. In Nuts it was easy to build things at home but playing regionally was a big challenge. It was evident that this band would do better regionally... it's just the money wasn't there like it was 6-7 years ago. It wasn't economical. You have bands driving from PA to Boston to play $800 a night. the gas alone is $100.

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