Rave This

The Rave in Milwaukee is not a place that i go. I've never quite figured out why so many big-name bands make The Rave their one tour stop in Wisconsin. The place is a dump. I'm surprised that the whole structure hasn't collapsed from those heavy metal vibrations it endures almost every single night.

When i saw Korn there in 2002 (yes, Korn...i'm not proud), i was thoroughly unimpressed with their sound system. I thought it was overly tinny and there was too much high end. The bass sounded like Fieldy may as well have been beating on high-tension wires on a radio tower, and whenever the higher three strings on the guitar were used (which, with Korn, is rare), i though it was going to sever my eardrums. And i was 16!

But the main reason that i don't go to The Rave has to do with their shitty policies and their shitty employees. The Rave is well known for these "free tickets" that they send out to everyone everywhere and throw around on the streets. You can probably find a good pile of them in the gutters at any outdoor event, oftentimes even in Madison. These colorful strips of paper with the word "FREE" so boldly emblazoned across them seem so enticing, with their photographs of big-name national bands coming through and all the coolest tours that the teenagers want to see. In smaller letters underneath "FREE" it says Two Drink Minimum. Having so recently been there for the Korn show, and knowing that a bottle of water was $3 or $4 (can't remember for sure anymore; but either way, absolutely ridiculous), i figured hey, it's worth $6 or $8 to see Sevendust, Cinder, and whoever the other band on the bill was. So i grabbed that free ticket and a fistful more of them.

The day of the show, we ended up leaving for Milwaukee far, far later than we wanted to. It was Cyndi, Windsor (her boyfriend at the time...i can't even remember his real name anymore. We called him Windsor because that was the name of the city he was from.), and myself, speeding pretty badly down the ice-slick interstate, trying to make it to Germantown in time to pick up Juli and then make it into Milwaukee before the show started.

Luckily, we weren't stopped by any cops and we didn't go flying off the road or anything. We made it to The Rave just as Cinder was taking the stage. I didn't want to take any chances parking my vehicle on the streets in Milwaukee. I lived in a small town at that time. Milwaukee was fucking scary. So, I ended up paying an exorbitant amount of cash (i think $20) to park in a lot just a block away from the venue.

I could hear the band playing as we walked in. We presented our "free" tickets to the guy at the door, who then directed us down a flight of stairs to a bar in the basement. Annoyed, we complied.

We took our tickets up to the disgruntled bartender. He instructed us to write our mailing addresses on the back of them, which we dutifully did. We didn't really think about these kinds of things back then, we just did them. Parents: teach your kids about the evils of marketing!

Once we had finished, we handed the tickets back. "Alright guys," he said. "$17 each."

"Seventeen dollars?!" i shouted. "For two drinks?!"

"Yes, that's right."

"We'll just have water. That's like $3."

It's hard to tell who was more irritated with the other at that time. "No, you have to buy these drinks. Seventeen bucks."

Between the four of us, we had a total of $45. "We don't have enough money between the four of us. What do you suggest the rest of us do?"

"Well, i guess some of you will have to wait outside." In Milwaukee, in the middle of December? Really?

"Fuck you, man! Fuck you and fuck this place!" I let loose a torrent of obscenity that i only wished would knock the whole building down. I probably said "fuck" more times than you hear on your average Limp Bizkit album. Security ended up brusquely following us out of the building to make sure we were gone. They left us at the door.

As we were walking down the street, we happened across the same Rave employee who'd taken my money for the parking not ten minutes earlier. I was able to drop my rage and adopt a diplomatic poker face momentarily, and politely asked him for a refund. He confirmed that he recognized us as having just come in, but refused to give me my money back.

"Well then fuck you too! I hope the whole fucking place burns down and" blah blah blah. I thought it was vicious at the time, but it was really just a bunch of swear words. I probably could have at least called his lineage into question.

I haven't been back to The Rave since, and i've no plans of ever being back to The Rave. I think the way they do business is shitty and i think that every Rave employee i've ever come into contact with was an asshole.

I don't mean to say that their "free" ticket thing is altogether evil, though it is misleading. If it said right on the damn thing "reduced ticket" or something to that effect rather than "free," i'd be a lot happer. Something to prepare you for the actual cost you are going to pay so that you can be sure to have enough money before you drive all the way to Milwaukee from Madison, just to get thrown out on the streets. I mean, $17 is still a good price to see a band like that in their prime. It just would have been nice to know ahead of time.

Somebody asked me earlier this evening about my reasons for avoiding The Rave, so i told him the entire preceding story. He's a big fan of the "free" tickets, but he explained that it's because he expects The Rave to gouge drink prices and somebody like him is going to have at least two drinks at a show anyway, which i suppose is reasonable. But the problem still lies in the fact that we were all 15-16 years old at the time, we couldn't get any drinks that were worth that price. But another shitty thing that they do that he just told me about is that if you arrive bearing these "free" tickets for a show which is sold out, you will be turned away. The "free" tickets are valid only if there happens to be space available.

I think that any business which is going to promote itself with free anything should be held accountable for providing that free service or those free goods. They should not be handing out these "free" tickets like so much cheap Mexican candy if they aren't going to back them up. It would be better just to be well known for having kind of a "flying stand-by" type service, where you can be let in to any show, without wasting all this paper on printing up "free" tickets, for a reduced rate if there is space available. At least then, people would know what they were getting themselves into and could elect to go or not to go based on that risk, and then people who have somehow not obtained a "free" ticket could take advantage of the program too.

The sad epilogue to this tale is that for years i continued to receive fat envelopes stuffed with "free" tickets for every single show The Rave put on for the next several years, until i moved away. Shit, those tickets are probably still going to that house on a nigh-weekly basis.