twas a combination of all of this.
They had two nights booked at the club - a monday and tuesday. Mind you, I don't know about the inner workings at IMP or who did what, but since IMP was promoting both those shows and the Shins at Merriweather on that same Monday, I think the promoter thought it would be better to add them to the Shins bill, convinced them of that and then didn't have two, conflicting indie rock shows.
They set up a deal where you could (1) get a refund of your tix to the 9:30 club show, (2) exchange the 9:30 tix for a lawn seat to the Shins show, or (3) exchange your 9:30 club ticket and pay for an upgrade to the pavilion for the Shins show.
Fans got upset. I, for one, couldn't go to a show on Monday, and wouldn't trek up to Merriweather for a lawn seat for a band that was perfectly suited to the Club, but NOT to Merriweather. I'm sure people had lots of other reasons. Britt personally apologized to the fans by posting on DCist and promised to get it sorted out.
The sorting out meant that Spoon WOULD play the club on Tuesday. To get into the show, you either could give them (1) your original 9:30 club ticket to see Spoon or (2) your pavilion ticket to the Shins show. They did not sell new tickets for the Tuesday show. This seemed backwards since some people might have just opted for a refund, some people exchanged tickets for lawn seats but didn't upgrade to pavilion, and some people never got to buy tickets to the 9:30 shows in the first place, and didn't want to have to buy a pavilion seat for a show they didn't want to or couldn't go to just to go to the show on Tuesday.
So then they said okay anyone with a ticket to the Shins show could come to the Tuesday club show. They listed it as sold out. They expected more people would show up than they could let in. I mean, Merriweather holds way more ppl than the 9:30 Club.
So, from what I heard, Spoon's set at Merriweather wasn't very good. They sounded bad, the venue wasn't the right venue for them, but alas, there they were.
And then on Tuesday, even though the show was Sold Out and people got in line at 2pm because they were sure there would be 2,000 people trying to get in, the club was only 2/3 full for the Spoon show, which was absolutely fantastic btw.
The band was probably disappointed in the whole thing. I wouldn't expect them to work with IMP again if they think IMP handled the whole thing poorly.
Of course, this is just based on what I remember and is from an outsider's perspective. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but it was a mess.
I'm not sure where else in DC they could play, though. Their show the following April at Sonar was AMAZING, though. Maybe there...
