Instead, aspiring rappers not named Asheru, Head-Roc, or Black Indian spit their rhymes alongside prominent go-go bands in hopes of making it big. This topic, and a whole lot more, was recently discussed on what radio host Jamie Benson hopes will be a semi-regular podcast that interviews notable figures central to the D.C. hip-hop scene.

On the show's first installment, Benson, Kokayi and yU interviewed The Unspoken Heard (Asheru & Blue Black) about its rise to prominence in the Chocolate City scene. Go here to download the podcast or listen below.

Dead Prez

Last night, Occupy D.C. organizers announced that Dead Prez and D.C.'s own Head-Roc will play a free concert today from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in McPherson Square. While the performance is part of an anti-Walmart rally, don't be surprised if the musicians let fly some of their feelings about Occupy D.C. In an op-ed at the Huffington Post yesterday, Head-Roc—a longtime D.C. rapper and occasional Washington City Paper contributor—wrote that aspects of the movement make him "uncomfortable."

"I can't speak to the other Occupy movements happening around the country," he wrote, "but here in the nation's capital the inclusion of input and leadership from people who understand the importance of talking about D.C.'s social and economic disparities with regard to race and class is woefully and noticeably missing."

Head-Roc says that he was invited to the concert by Faye Williams, a small-business advocate who runs Sisterspace and Books, a bookstore that specialized in work by and about African-American women. And while it's unclear how Dead Prez—or, as Heady described them, "internationally known Black Love Pan-Africanist agenda-driven hip-hop legends"—was tapped for the show, the hip-hop duo is famous for their ethical and socially conscious rhymes, which makes an Occupy show seem right up their alley.

The concert will be far from the first at Occupy D.C. or the nearby Stop the Machine encampment—even Jackson Browne, of '70s liberal-nostalgia fame, turned up in Freedom Plaza earlier this month to kick in a few protest songs of his own.

Photo by Flickr user basement414, creative commons attribution license

Though not always monochromatic, the crowds at Fort Reno skew white. The bands—with a few exceptions—have usually been white, too. In a city that until recently had a black majority, it's surprisingly segregated. Over the past few years, the series has begun to branch out with more hip-hop artists—including Head-Roc and The Cornel West Theory—but is the crowd any more diverse? There's still a stark difference between the demographic of Fort Reno and that of Fort Dupont, for example.

Barbara Luchs, 88, served as secretary of the Tenleytown Neighborhood Planning Council from ’68 into the 1990s, and as board member of the Northwest Youth Alliance from the late ’90s into the 2000s: [In the late 1960s], integration was just beginning and there was a lot of racist feeling. The people in the neighborhood who were racially biased didn't want the events at Fort Reno, they didn’t want tennis courts there—we fought for those—and they didn't want the swimming pool at Wilson. They didn't want programs like Fort Reno, because they didn’t want blacks and whites mixing together.

Natasha Stovall, 40, booked Fort Reno in the early ’90s: My memory of Fugazi shows is that the most intense stuff would happen. Ian [MacKaye] would be breaking down slam dances, and people would get really mad at him afterward, saying, “Why can’t we do it, when you used to do this.” There were always skins and punks looking to start something.

Hugh McElroy, 33, played with AKA Harlot #1, Black Eyes, Horses, The No-Gos, Hand Fed Babies; plays in Cephalopods: I went to basically every show starting in ‘92 or ‘93. I think the first show I went to was Slant 6 and Cupid Car Club. There were just a lot of teenagers there, but granted, there were also skinheads there, and that was less desirable... I got followed home by skinheads from one of the shows once. I was walking home, and they followed me in their car and yelled "faggot" at me—six skinheads in a car.

Head-Roc, 40, plays as Head-Roc and with Godisheus: To my knowledge, Head-Roc was the first hip-hop act to play Fort Reno [in 2006]. It was really surreal experience. [It was a very white crowd;] that’s the demographic around that part of town.

The thing I remember is when we got up and started rocking, people got a little rowdy. They were into what we were talking about. We were talking about D.C. I’ve been locally focused for 10 years now... I love rocking Fort Reno amongst the white crowd—I think my biggest supporters are white fans. I’m a black man from a black city that talks about what’s wrong with the system. Black folks aren’t always down to talk about the system, which is run by white people. What’s encouraging is seeing the white brothers on board.

Dave Berman, 49, D.C. resident since the early 1980s, frequent Fort Reno attendee: [On July 14th,] the first band, [Guilty,] was like raging D.C. punk rock, the second band, [Sound Limit,] was like '80s synth pop, and the last band was The Cornel West Theory, which was like political hip-hop. That’s one of the more diverse shows I’ve seen. They’re one of the few black acts I’ve ever seen play here. Fort Reno seems to run pretty white. Since I’ve been coming, there’s always maybe a few black people in the punk scene, but beyond that, you don’t get black families coming out here. Then there are free shows at Fort Dupont, and you don’t get any white people going to those. [My wife and I] also go to Carter Barron to see shows and we see like The Chi-lites and The Delfonics, and we’re the only white people there. D.C. is still segregated.

Head-Roc: Head-Roc has a very multicultural, multi-ethnic fanbase. I don’t have to downplay who I am to get my message across. The message is solidarity, and that translates well.

For a few moments yesterday, the Twitters lit up some with debate over the growth, priorities, and coverage of the city's hip-hop scene. The impetus? 1) Andrew Noz's City Paper Music in Review piece on D.C.'s wealth of very good rappers and paucity of great ones; 2) rapper Head-Roc's rebuttal on Arts Desk; 3) The premiere of WKYS' video countdown of D.C.'s hottest rappers in 2010. Then the debate kind of petered out, and everyone returned to their usual late-December inertia. I liked producer/MC Oddisee's thoughts:

DMV artists, why on earth would any of you give a flying f*ck about being included on a list that @939WKYS is responsible for assembling?

Come on you all, the world is massive. Pay attention to what pays attention to you.

Here's the WKYS video, with a cameo by Arts Desk contributor Marcus J. Moore:

Also out there! WaPo's Blake Gopnik—who's leaving the paper for Newsweek/The Daily Beast—has been spending his week in the Corcoran, meditating on paintings that call out to him in the museum's "Salon-style" rooms. However! On Day 2, he choses two strangely recessive portraits by Gerard ter Borch from a room whose paintings are not arranged Salon-style! Le horreur! But it's a nice piece.

WaPo's Anna Hornaday tells us about the paintings that will soon be entered into the Library of Congress' National Film Registry, including two classic D.C. films, All the President's Men and The Exorcist. Here's the full list. Amazing inclusion: The Maysles Bros.' 1975 faded-wealth documentary Grey Gardens.

TBD has several unusual retrospective pieces: The year in severed heads! The year in Rick Ross! The year in film incentives! The year in waiting!

Coming soon: The year in retrospective pieces! (Actually, Largehearted Boy is all over that.)

OK, so I'm looking at the front cover of this past week’s Washington City Paper “2010 Music in Review” edition. Wait, or is it “2010 in Music Review?” I honestly don’t know. It’s a little confusing to me. Still, I get that this is in some way the “tastemaker” issue on D.C. area music as compiled by the Washington City Paper staff.

What’s also confusing to me is how in the world it’s printed, right there on the front cover for the entire world to see, in what is to be taken as an authoritative assessment and conclusion on the state of the DC hip-hop scene this year:

Hip-Hop: We’ve got plenty of good MCs. But D.C. still lacks a great one

Pardon me, but of course I have to chuckle at that statement. Chuckle.

Reading the piece written by my colleague Andrew Noz, there are actually a few great D.C. MCs mentioned: Kokayi, Oddisee, yU—and I don’t know why the piece doesn’t focus on them more. It would be exponentially more helpful than this blanket declaration that D.C. lacks  a great M.C., because it’s the furthest thing from the truth.

What’s more accurate is that D.C. lacks a great commercial rap/pop star. I’ll give brother Noz that. I’m not into commercial pop rap, but maybe I can agree that D.C.’s representatives of American pop culture don't compare with their counterparts in other cities who are interested in pop-music success. I say maybe because I really don’t know. I’m not into pop rap music, personally.

In the article, Noz mentions how one of D.C.’s national offerings as an urban commercial artist, Wale, is on a track with the national pop-rap artist Waka Flocka Flame. Family, I've heard Waka Flocka before, and through word of mouth I know he is considered to be the reigning village idiot of pop-inspired commercial rap. Let me tell you, this association and collaboration is not complimentary to Wale, and I have a hard time even believing that Wale really thinks Wocka Flocka is a great MC—but he is a commercial pop rap success. I don’t know if Wale is out to be a commercial success, or a great MC. Only a few artists are able to merge both distinctions effectively. Kanye West comes to mind as the prime example in today’s times—a great MC who enjoys mega commercial success—and an argument can be made that he has paid a considerable price for it. “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” one year, and the next his mamma is suddenly dead at the hands of a plastic surgeon on an operating table. Hey, I'm into conspiracy theories.

No, D.C. does not have a Kanye West yet, but we do have great MCs, and with a more supportive gatekeeper and tastemaker community our great MCs would enjoy greater success on the national stage. Take the mighty Asheru for instance—my favorite example when talking about a great D.C. MC who I think should be enjoying mega success as a professional artist.

Asheru, not mentioned in Noz’s DMV piece, is a hip-hop legend here in D.C., throughout the region, country, and—yes—the world. Famous for penning the theme song for Aaron McGruder’s Boondocks cartoon show, Asheru has been an active musician producing hip-hop classics since the '90s. He’s spawned heavyweight digital/live music ensembles like the Black Lincolns and The Els that everyone in the scene knows are monster show-rocking outfits. Asheru is a leader on national progressive and community circles in arts-based education techniques with his H.E.L.P programming. He’s received numerous awards from prestigious institutions and orgs for his work in our D.C. communities as a foundation. All that, and more, plus some: Asheru is a great M.C.—and everyone knows it. In fact, as is the case with dozens of other great MCs in this town, that Asheru is a great M.C. is indisputable.

The question is: Why don’t more people in the region better know about our great MC’s? Well, it isn’t for the lack of effort on the part of the artists who have persevered through the years to establish careers for ourselves. We do our jobs. We create, publish, and perform music here and all over world. It’s nowhere near accurate to say D.C. hip-hop artists aren’t known beyond the city or region. D.C. hip-hop has been putting in work and has been on the move for 20 years now; it is well-seasoned and world-traveled. Dozens of D.C.'s great MCs and DJs have magnificent stories to tell of their journeys. Ideally, in the scheme of things, it’s the job of the gatekeepers and the tastemakers to gather these accounts for reporting and endorsement to the local entertainment community.

Who are the gatekeepers and tastemakers in ours and every music scene? They are the DJs, promoters, event planners, venue booking agents, and the press. These are the elements within our community who are responsible for popularizing to the entertainment public who’s who and what’s what locally to look out for and patronize. I agree with Noz that oversaturation—everyone and their mamma wanting to be rapper—is a huge problem. But it would be much less of a problem if our “qualified” gatekeepers and tastemakers did their jobs of weeding out the garbage from the gems in our area.

I put the qualifier “qualified” in there because too many of the current stock of gatekeepers and tastemakers, commercial and independent, know little to nothing about D.C. hip-hop and go-go music. Many of the people who actually sit in positions where they could make a difference in the scene are not actually from or “of” the scene. Oftentimes, from what is written and printed and espoused to be an authoritative word, a D.C. music-community participant can tell that the author actually has very little knowledge and understanding of the D.C. music scene and development. And yet, there seems to be no shortage of articles being published these days about both forms of D.C. funk music—giving the reading community an improper analysis of what’s really going in our DMV music scene.

The words “Hip-Hop: We've got plenty of good MCs. But D.C. still lacks a great one” requires at least a little response. I hope other vets chime in.

The Best of Friday:

Every now and then, an artist comes along who scares the shit out of you. Arrington de Dionyso (formerly of Old Time Relijun) is that kind of a fellow. He creates arresting sound spheres that are both spectral and primitive. As a performance artist and self-proclaimed shaman for the 21st century, he creates raw-earth music, music for communing and for anthropological contemplation. Tuvan-style throat-singing combine with Indonesian lyrics and haphazard translations of the poet William Blake on his debut Malaikat album. The hallucinogenic and ecstatic is interrupted with grunting belches and burps of the earth, vocalized by a sputtering clarinet. It makes your body hum. The $10 suggested donation (the show is a benefit for Transformer gallery) for a survey course in ethnomusicology is a  serious bargain. 10:30 p.m. All ages.Comet Ping Pong.

Phasefest: DC's Queer Music Festival. Friday and Saturday. $15, $20. Phase 1. There's something for everyone: See website for full lineup.

The Best of Saturday:

The Gershwin Project revisits the work of an American master who held iconic status in Soviet Russia as an emblem of American culture. With Russian pianists Genadi Zagor and Vakhtang Kodanashvili, the Russian Gershwin Post-Classical Ensemble performs Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (with improvised solos), Three Preludes, Concerto in F and Cuban Overture. Preconcert presentation with Richard Crawford at 7 p.m., concert at 8 p.m. $42. Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center

Bliss 10 Year Anniversary Party: Will Eastman, Brian Billion. $10. 10 p.m. show. 18+.

Curtis Fuller. $20 preshow, $25 doors,7:30 doors, 8:30 show. Friday and Saturday night. Bohemian Caverns.

The Best of Sunday:

The Flail. Call for Price. Saturday and Sunday 9pm and 11pm. Twins Jazz.

Head-Rock. AK Slaughter. Height. $10. 9 p.m.  Black Cat.

The Rest of Friday:

• Eels w/ Jesca Hoop $25. 7pm doors. 9:30 Club

• Titus Andronicus, Free Energy, Last Tide. SOLD OUT. Rock & Roll Hotel
• Papago Warrior.  Free. 6 p.m. Kennedy Center Concert Hal
• NEA National Heritage Fellowships Concert. 8 p.m. Free. The Strathmore.

• Curtis Fuller. $20 pre-show, $25 doors,7:30 doors, 8:30 show. Bohemian Caverns. Friday and Saturday night.
• Field Music, Bellman Barker, The Beanstalk Library. $10 pre-show, $12 day of. 8:30 doors, 9:30 show. Rock & Roll Hotel
• Ben Sollee: Ditch the Van Tour. $15.  7:30pm. The Strathmore.
• Joe Sample. $43. 8pm & 10pm. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Blues Alley.
• Surprise! At the Club!! Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros $25. 8pm doors. 9:30 Club
• The Boxer Rebellion , Amusement Parks on Fire, Augustines $13 9pm. Black Cat

• 500 Miles to Memphis. $8. 9pm.  The Red and the Black. 21+.
• The Walkaways, w/ Brother Shamus and Memphis 59.  $12. 9pm. Iota Club
• Cerca Trova. Iona Sound. All In Karma. Light Up The Sky $10, $13. 6pm. Jammin Java.
• Dia + Mista Forty + Socz + Sonny Black. $13. 10 pm. Jammin Java
• Swamp Keepers Band. Call for time and price. Zoo Bar
• Loose Lips. Ravenous. Lenorable. Skelliton. $8. 9pm doors. 10pm show.Velvet Lounge. 21+.

The Rest of Saturday:

• Tosin Aribisala. Free. 7 pm. Atlas Performing Arts Center.
• Flat Foot Sam & The Educated Fools. Call for time and price. Zoo Bar
• Cornel West Theory. Noon:30. Voids Moan. Thela Blu, Zebulun. $8. 10 p.m. Velvet Lounge. 21+.
• Univers Zero & Miriodor 7pm. La Maison Francaise
  
• Bullet for My Valentine w/Escape the Fate. Black Tide. Drive A. $30. 6pm doors. 9:30 Club
• BSO: Mahler's Seventh Symphony: $28- $88. 8 pm. The Strathmore.
• Kinch. Overrun. Shortwave Communique. $8. The Red and the Black. 21+.
• David Bazan + Band. Mynabirds, $15. Black Cat
• Colourslide, w/ My Radio and w/ Jeff Himmelman $12. 9pm. Iota Club
• X-MC. The Yachtsmen. Sleeper Agent. $5. 10:30 pm. All ages. Comet Ping Pong.
• Caroline Herring. $12. 7pm. Jammin Java
• 10:00PM Jason Reeves+ Trent Hancock. $10, $13. 10pm. Jammin Java
• Twins of a Gazelle. BeatShark. Great Elk. $8. 830pm. DC9. 18+.
• Basia Bulat & The Acorn, Sam Izdat. $10 pre-show, $12 doors.
• Sugarland. $35.75-$65.75. 4pm. Jiffy Lube Live
• Alice in Chains w/Deftones and Mastodon. $49.50-$59.50. 7 pm. Patriot Center.
• Inaugural Asian and Pacific Islander American Talent Competition and Showcase. 7 p.m.  Lisner Auditorium
• United States Navy Band:Sea Chanters Concert. Free. 7:30 pm. Washington National Cathedral
• Jackopierce.  7:30 pm. $29.50. Birchmere.
• Capital City Symphony with Charlie Barnett and Chaise Lounge Symphony Lounge. $20-$30. 8 pm. Atlas Performing Arts Center.
• Invader. Julie Hall. The 6th Degree. The Blackshire. The More You Know.Suffer No Guilt. Just My Luck. Cyberstrike. Evereaux. Provence. $10 pre-show, $12 doors. 5:00pm doors, 5:15 show. All Ages. Jaxx.
  

The Rest of Sunday:

• Locos por Juana. Free. 6 pm. Kennedy Center Concert Hall
• Joe Brooks. 7 pm. Jammin Java.
• Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà 7 pm. $25-$25. Lisner Auditorium
• WPOC Sunday in the Country: Lady Antebellum. Eric Church. Joe Nichols. Gloriana .Bucky Covington. Matt Kennon $45-$75. 1pm Merriweather Post Pavillon.
• Slash wednesday, Southlawn, Xuberx. $8. 7:30 doors, 9pm show. Velvet Lounge. 21+.
• AJ Parham $8. 7-11 pm HR57

An occasional feature in which esteemed D.C. rapper Head-Roc shares what’s on his mind.

[A conversation I had yesterday about the cancellation of yesterday's Cornel West Theory show at Bohemian Caverns. All me talking.]

“Really? The show is cancelled? Why?”

“They were shut down? Since Saturday?”

[My “Mouth”]

Well, why the fuck didn’t the venue tell The Cornel West Theory that before tonight??

…and there goes more fuel to the fire of my argument that the D.C. entertainment industry is dysfunctional and predatory, and that we must do something about it.

I won’t lie to you. Upfront, I admit I'm writing this piece because:

1. I am pissed that I got all gussied up, out in full diplomatic hip-hop regalia, to go see The Cornel West Theory rock the house at the uber-historic e Bohemian Caverns only to find the place has been shut down—since Saturday!
2. I am very pissed that I took the time out to do my best, spreading much love to my Cornel West Theory brothers and sister, writing yesterdays Head-Roc’s Mouth!

Wait a minute. No one told The Cornel West Theory that Bohemian Caverns was closed?

Including the promoter of the show, I must assume?

And on that note, others might have known as well. Hell, maybe I was supposed not to have known, but one thing’s for sure: Who should have been contacted were the Cornel West Theory point people. Maybe their record company, Socket Records, should have known?

And what about the other people who did know? Who knew? Did the Up and Up Open Mic people know? They got the hottest shit going in the building with that Tuesday night joint. I don’t know if they knew or not—and I’m not asking them to clear themselves either. I do know that they weren’t there last night, either. I do know it’s not their fault that Bohemian Caverns was shut down by the city for certain violations. It can’t be the fault of Up and Up’s, Cornel West Theory’s, or any other of the event planners and artists that produce shows there because all they do is make these music venues/hybrid restaurant/nightclub/coffee shop/bookstore/art gallery spaces shit-loads of MONEY while rarely and barely getting paid for the WORK they do to promote and popularize that people come and spend MONEY at these “entertainment” spaces.

So, the question is: Where does the money go? Well, since I don’t play devil’s advocate I won’t do the typical, by itemizing what it takes to run a venue, other than to say:

What it takes to sustainably operate an entertainment venue is “What It Takes!” And until proprietors take the time to cover all the bases of “What It Takes” to run a venue, then they  should not attempt to do so. If all bases of “What It Takes” to operate as an entertainment venue are not covered, instantaneously the venture devolves into a business operation where TAKING advantage of the local arts scene is the only way to stay afloat. As pointed out in my previous articles, this predatory relationship is now status quo in Chocolate City.

Now, this piece isn’t to lump the stewards of Bohemian Caverns into the mix with other venues and persons running their venues that I’ve mentioned in past espousing on this issue. I am, however, saying that for Bohemian Caverns to not inform one of our region's most tenured, authentic, polished, prolific and loved groups that it couldn't host last night's show, which wasadvertised for weeks, is fucked up. It’s fucked up to The Cornel West Theory. It’s fucked up for those of us who are fans of their work, and it’s fucked up for Bohemian Caverns and its history. However, fucked up doesn’t mean it’s not fixable. And I would love to see that happen in this instance.

Hi, my name is Head-Roc, and I am fan of The Cornel West Theory.

Of course, because the term has been around for awhile, there is a food blog named after it.

Correction Appended

For a moment, on the first night he worked the door at the Velvet Lounge, Andrew Bucket thought he was staring death in the face. Her name was Allison Wolfe.

"I was excited to meet her, let alone work the show at all," he says of the Partyline singer, who helped found the riot-grrrl movement in the early ’90s as a member of Bratmobile. "At that point in time, it was 2007, the Lounge was under different management, and they were doing door polling"—a fairly common practice by which venues ask patrons what act they’ve come to see and sometimes use that data to determine payouts at the end of the night. "Allison saw me making the sheet and flipped out."

"Fuck that," she told him. "All the bands are getting paid tonight or we are not doing this." And so at the end of the night, Partyline, which had assembled the show, took the evening’s percentage and distributed it evenly among the three bands.

The Velvet Lounge no longer polls at shows, and Bucket, now the club’s booker, is a passionate opponent of the practice. "It connotes a disinterest in the band," he says. "It really just assumes that the bands don’t know each other, that they’re not willing to cooperate. It puts this competitive edge to the whole thing. It’s bogus."

Local bands have few options these days: DIY spaces like 611 Florida, Kansas House, and DC Mini Gallery have shuttered; the Black Cat books many more touring acts than local ones. That leaves the Velvet Lounge, Comet Ping Pong, and the three spaces in D.C. that poll at the door: DC9, the Red and the Black, and Rock & Roll Hotel.

"We are absolutely not looking to fuck the bands out of the money—if they are pulling in the numbers," says Steve Lambert, who books and partially owns those three venues. "That doesn’t work for anybody."

He says his venues use door polling mostly for his records—so that the next time he’s considering placing a band on a bill, he’ll have an idea of how many people they can draw. He says he mostly polls shows with only local and small-scale touring bands—if a band is on the road, he’ll usually throw it some extra money. Sometimes, he’ll hand bands their percentage—in the case of his venues, 80 percent of the door after an overhead cost is met—at the end of the night and let them divide it themselves. But in other cases, he feels that paying bands based on their draw incentivizes marketing. "I do not believe people should be paid on who they are," he says. "Thievery Corporation gets paid a lot of money because they can draw 5,000 people."

"I’ve always used this system in different markets. It’s a practice that’s done throughout the country," says Lambert, who used to book small- and medium-sized venues in Lansing, Mich. "There are people who aren’t fans of it, but people who aren’t fans of it are people who don’t draw."

Last week, an Arts Desk post by the D.C. rapper Head-Roc titled "Venues ‘Polling’ Practice Is Some Bullshit" attracted 40 comments. "It is a fundamentally flawed system and it doesn’t take into consideration a number of variables," wrote one commenter. "Polling is the fairest way to tell who has the bigger fan base," wrote another.

Dante Ferrando, who owns the Black Cat and drummed in the post-hardcore band Gray Matter in the ’80s and early ’90s, doesn’t like polling. "If you put a band on a bill, if they didn’t draw, they still played, they still came to the club. It’s usually the out-of-town band," he says. "To me, the whole process makes it a little more of a club vs. the band kind of feel."

Opponents of door polling offer several arguments: First, it encourages bands to compete when they should be working together to promote a show; as a result, a music scene’s sense of  community suffers. Second, while venues and bands should share the responsibility of marketing, ultimately, whoever curated the show—the booker—owns its success ("If we don’t get a good turnout, that’s on me," Bucket says). Last, polling isn’t necessarily accurate. For one, patrons may be there to see several bands, or none in particular, or the person on the door might get things wrong. "The door guy’s got a lot to do, and it’s hard to do it fair," Ferrando says.

But Lambert says that venues are doing their jobs by providing space and marketing acts through their Web sites, in advertisements, and through social media. "So we should take the loss for them not drawing?" he says. "Most of the time we recoup the loss [of promoting and running a show], and most of the time the bands get paid."

By Mike Stuto’s estimation, the practice emerged in New York in the early ’90s in smaller rock clubs, and eventually spaces that booked small and medium-sized national acts, like the Mercury Lounge, followed suit. His East Village club, Brownies, which he converted into a bar in 2002, sometimes used door polling, usually for bills of bands whose members didn’t know one another. "We started doing it because bands were demanding it," he says. By basing the system on empirical data, he says, he avoided disputes over who deserved the most money. He says the polls generally struck him as fair; when bands took issue with their accuracy, they were usually "grasping at straws."

Jaxx Nightclub in Springfield, Va., doesn’t door-poll, but it does ask the area bands that play its Localpalooza showcases about six times a year—mostly metal bands whose members are between about 16 and 20 years old—to sell their own tickets. Owner Jay Nedry then pays bands based on how many tickets they’ve sold. He says it’s instructive to them, even if it can be demoralizing. "It’s a good kick in the ass," he says. "It makes people understand it isn’t free."

While Lambert says "no one has ever bitched about it from a band," some local groups say they’re uncomfortable with polling. "For a band starting out, it can kind of suck," says
Dan Scheuerman of Deleted Scenes, "It’s kind of degrading, I guess." Because "it’s already so hard to make a dime as a musician," says Rob Pierangeli of Casper Bangs, "maybe you shouldn’t scrutinize over who gets paid how much."

J. Sequential of Screen Vinyl Image says bands that dislike polling should simply avoid venues that do it; his band usually contacts groups with which it’s playing beforehand and agrees to split the pot. Because three D.C. venues poll, "I think what happens is a natural divide is created in the city," he writes in an e-mail. "There are bands who are looking to get the bigger shows and get paid more and get more exposure, and I believe they will run with the other bands who are after the same thing. But there are bands who just don’t want to deal with that type of noise and just want to play shows and hook their friends up who are on tour and at least get them some gas money without having to clear $250 at the door."

Aaron Estes, who sings and plays guitar in Bellman Barker, takes the opposite view. "Most bands at the polling level (including mine) aren’t really making any money anyway, so I don’t really care," he writes in an e-mail. "The money from a show might help pay some tolls or cover gas, but it’s never going to cover the expense of missing work until you’re playing bigger venues to a bigger fan base, and at that point, no one is going to be polling the door."

Correction | Feb. 17, 2010: Due to an editing error by Managing Editor Andrew Beaujon, the article incorrectly stated that the Black Cat books many more touring acts than local ones. According to the club’s booker, Vicki Savoula, between 50 and 60 percent of bands that play the Black Cat are local.