Philadelphia's hardcore institution Paint It Black has engaged in some high level punk rock philosophy regarding their recently canceled show. Originally, the band was scheduled to play a show at The University of Delaware on November 6. However, according to an e-mail from the school's ticketing system, Paint it Black pulled out from the show on September 11, 2014. (Laura Stevenson and Cayetana remain on the bill).
Today, Paint It Black issued a statement explaining their refusal to do the show. They also announced a replacement show. According to the band, the band stated that when they agreed to play the show, they were under the belief that all the details regarding the show had been agreed upon. However, some time after the show was arranged and plane tickets were purchased, the band states that they were informed that there would be barricades at the show. Thus, the band, on or around September 11, informed the venue that they would not play the show due to the barricades.
Instead, tomorrow night, October 30, the band will be playing a free, public show in a non-traditional venue (or perhaps outside?). The band states that due to the nature of the show, they will announce more details about the where and when of the show on the day of the show.
DELAWARE, ARE YOU AWARE? IS THIS THING ON?
What’s up, punks? We wanted a minute of your time to talk about this mess with the university show that was supposed to go down next week. We were really excited to play Delaware (for the first time ever! weird right?), and especially stoked to play with Priests and Cayetana, two of our favorites. After everything was squared away and the details were sorted out, we announced the show. We even bought a plane ticket for our drummer Jared, who lives in California. A few weeks after tickets went on sale, the people that we’d been in contact with at the university informed us that there would be a barricade in front of the stage. We were, of course, not OK with this news, especially as it was the first we’d been told of this requirement, and informed them that they would have to alter those arrangements. We also expressed our unhappiness with the way this was communicated to us, well after we had agreed on the details of the show and dealt with the logistics of setting up air travel and taking off work. The university refused to budge on this issue, so we decided that we couldn’t participate.
Although we’ve occasionally played behind a barricade when supporting some of our friends at larger venues that require it for insurance purposes, we would never agree to it for a show that was our own, and that we had a heavy hand in setting up. Challenging the traditional distinctions between "band†and "audience†is one of the central tenets of punk for us, and we take it very seriously. It would feel like a betrayal to us to do otherwise, and although we’re fairly certain that this problem was due to the inflexibility of the university administration and not the fuck-up of the students setting up the show, we did feel betrayed by the parties involved. It’s been killing us to imagine that some of you might have bought a ticket and then thought that we just bailed, but we haven’t communicated about it until now because we were trying to move the show somewhere else. Our efforts in that direction were sadly unsuccessful.
So, ever determined, we press on: Tomorrow night, at midnight, in our hometown of Philadelphia, we will play an entirely FREE SHOW, very much outside the confines of venue, capitalism, commerce, stage and indeed free of any and all barricades. Due to its nature, the location won’t be announced until sometime tomorrow. All the same, we hope to see you. K.Y.E.O.
xo,
pib