FROM THE GUY IN NORFOLK & WESTERN THAT WROTE THE POST THAT STARTED THIS WHOLE THING.
Holy shit, I had no idea what I was starting when I wrote that.
A few ponts I'd like to make.
1. I am very sorry if I offended anybody (which I did, apparently).
2. What I wrote expressed my opinion and my opinion only, and not the opinions of the fine people I am lucky enough to play with in Norfolk & Western.
3. The diary entry I made was merely for a site that is run by Portland's local weekly paper, the Willamette Week. I was not attempting to slander the city of Washington, D.C. in any way. I regret the statement "Washington, D.C. is not the safest city in the world to begin with." That is a completely foolish blanket statement and I apologize for it fully.
4. A friend of mine that came to the show told me to be careful because we were in a bad area of town. I know nothing about D.C. I know nothing about D.C.'s neighborhoods. When we're on tour we are in a different city each day and have no idea what kind of neighborhood we are going to be playing in, and all of us have found ourselves in bad situations before. When you spend months at a time in a different area of different cities, it's smart to watch your back and ask about your surroundings. When we arrived at the club, I didn't look around and say "oooh, this looks like a bad neighborhood" or "oh my god, there are black people around, this must be a dangerous place." I merely wrote that because, in fact, somebody had told me it wasn't safe, which is somebody else's opinion, not mine, and which is a statement that is independent of the racial makeup of the surrounding area.
5. I mentioned that I ASSUMED we were being cased by "gang members" because at 2 A.M. there was a group of men wearing gang colors and face masks, standing directly next to (and leaning up against) our van, brazenly staring at our pile of expensive and hard-earned equipment, and making threatening statements to a female that was traveling with us! Imagine yourself in a city that you have barely been to before and having this happen to you. You wouldn't like it, trust me! I didn't say they were black, or Puerto Rican, or Asian, etc... a suspicious person is a suspicious person, regardless of their race or where they live, and in this particular situation there happened to be seven of them, and they were obviously interested in making all of us uncomfortable, if nothing else.
6. I have nothing against the DC9, and neither does anybody else in the band. I also did not complain about how many people were at the show (in fact, we all thought there was a pretty good crowd there for a Monday night). However, the sound guy on this particular night was totally rude to us, laughed at or completely ignored the most basic requests from us, and just seemed generally unprofessional. When you spent a month of your life in a fucking van driving ten hours a day, and loading two tons of gear up and down flights of stairs every fucking night, it's pretty disheartening to be treated poorly by the person that you completely depend upon to make you sound good each night. I thought that the DC9 was a cool club with incredibly cool people working there, and it's not their fault that we got paid 12 bucks either. It just sucks to spend 100 bucks on gas and 100 bucks on lodging each night and make 12 bucks. It sucks to work your ass off and get laughed at and lose a lot of money. That's all. It was a statement of fact, not a reflection upon the club.
Anyway, that's what I wanted to say. I hope that some of you will realize that I'm not a D.C.-hating lily-white granola-munching primadonna, and that I look forward to playing in D.C. again if you'll have us back. Friends?
-Dave Depper
Norfolk & Western
