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Performance Schedule
Due to recent events with rival bands and rival musicians in the Washington, DC area, the American Hot Club Band has decided NOT to publish upcoming performances for the indefinite future. Unfortunately, in the DC area, there are not enough live music clubs to support the number of local bands. As a result, the music business has become extremely competitive, to the point where publishing a performance schedule is comparable to a business publishing valuable information about its customer base.
We are the first DC band to take the bold but sensible step of not publishing upcoming events on its website, and we encourage other bands and artists to do the same. Clubs are a band's clients, and publishing their names is potentially revealing sensitive information to the competition.
The American Hot Club Band will send e-mails to fans prior to each upcoming event, but such messages will not include our entire performance schedule for several months in advance. (Most people ignore such information anyway. They only want to know the next performance date, not the next ten.) We typically give a few weeks notice prior to each gig. To get on our mailing list, please send your contact information to the following e-mail address:
APOLOGY Recently I used Bill Mulroney's e-mail list because he had inadvertently e-mailed the entire list to me within the past two years. Over the past 18 months, we lost contact with one another. I was under the impression that he was no longer performing because he stopped sending me e-mails of upcoming gigs and his website had zero activity on it. In an effort to promote an upcoming gig for the American Hot Club Band, I decided to use Bill's e-mail list because I knew many of the people on it, but did not have their e-mail addresses. It seemed like a list that no one was using, but it had value to me. When I sent it out, I notified people that the list originally belonged to Bill and I would remove anyone's name upon request. And it wasn't SPAM e-mail because the gig I was promoting did not have a cover charge. It was free. Therefore, it was not SPAM by its legal definition. As it turns out, Bill is still performing, but has a different website, although the old one is still active. There was quite an uproar, and some people practically accused me of armed robbery. Several rival musicians used the incident as a pretext to create bad publicity, but they clearly had no interest in Bill or protecting his fans' right to privacy. Rival jealousies emerged as tension mounted. Musicians are obviously sensitive about their mailing lists since the club scene in DC is hardly the best in the nation. My apologies to Bill for the misunderstanding. It was completely my fault, not his. I should have asked permission before I assumed he was no longer performing publicly. Sorry Bill. Dave Sharp, 10/16/2007
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