How to Alienate Customers - Red Hook Brewery Style - 14th Annual Hookfest

How to alienate customers - Red Hook Brewery Style - 14th Annual Hookfest

Oversell a festival making sure the amenities aren't up to the number of people in attendance

• Lines for the entrance where long enough to where most people in line missed the opening act
• a trip to the porta-johns required AT LEAST an hour investment of time
• food vendors ran out of food early

Have a lousy sound set-up

• The mix of Rustic Overtones was just awful. Vocals were non-existent
• Crash Kings complained openly on stage about compression levels on everything
• Announce from the stage beer was being shut off at 9PM instead of 9:30 PM assuring that the 9:30 PM time was posted that a number of festival goers would have either been tied up in the bathroom line or would be able to hear the announcement

And then, when all else fails, when customers offer complaints and criticism at an expectable volume level show your customer service expertise with yelled threats of police involvement

• When requesting $5 beer tickets be bought back by the brewery to be met with YELLED THREATS OF POLICE INVOLVEMENT was a bit much but;
• when the unhappy customer rationally explained he lived two stats away so a 90 day use policy was useless so he once again rationally requested a ticket buyback, the hysterical member of the Red Hook Management Team brought cops onto the scene

All-in-all it was a shame to have been treated in this manner as beer, sunshine and music normally make for a great day....but poor customer service can trump even the best of days....

A note from The Ten Foot Polecats

Hey All, we got a busy week ahead starting Tonight! Check out the show and swing on by....and for you in the Boston area our CD RELEASE PARTY for our current CD "I Get Blamed For Everything I Do" is scheduled for Saturday Night...see below for info




Wednesday, July 14 9:00 pm

Post Heavy Rebel Weekender meetup

Lucky Dog Music Hall

89 Green Street, Worcester, MA

Ten Foot Polecats 9pm

Lounge Chair Allstars 10pm

King Sickabilly 11pm

Goddamn Gallows headline at Midnight

$7.00 21+



Thursday, July 15 9:00 pm

Worcester Cultural Commission benefit for Art In The Park!

Beatnik's

433 Park Avenue, Worcester, MA

with Big Jon Short, Ten Foot Polecat Duo, James Keyes, and Hat on Drinking Wine!



Friday, July 16 9:00 pm

Crazy Rebel Roots Night

The Dive Bar

34 Green Street, Worcester, MA

with Smokestack & The Foothill Fury, and James Keyes



Saturday, July 17 9:00 pm

Ten Foot Polecats CD RELEASE PARTY

Club Bohemia (downstairs at the Cantab Lounge)

738 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA

9pm The Tin Thistles

10pm Smokestack & The Foothill Fury

11pm Ten Foot Polecats

12am King Sickabilly



For more info and mindless conversation, check us out at:

http://www.tenfootpolecats.com

http://www.facebook.com/thetenfootpolecats

http://www.myspace.com/thetenfootpolecats

The Valley 5th Annual Taste of The Deerfield Valley

Celebrate The Valley 5^th Annual Taste of The Deerfield Valley, Saturday, September 11, 9am–5pm –a benefit for the Junior Iron Chef program.  

 Taste the best of the best at the 5^th annual Taste of the Deerfield Valley slated for Saturday, September 11 from 9am-5pm where more than a dozen restaurants will gather at the base of Mount Snow in West Dover, Vermont. Participants will have the opportunity to taste specialty items from each of the restaurants and vote for their favorite taste. Three-time World BBQ Champion and star of TLC’s BBQ Pitmasters Myron Mixon will be joining this year’s event demonstrating his BBQ skills with a private lesson and dinner on Friday night and a BBQ demonstration on Saturday.  The public will vote on the best taste.

 Chef Robert Barral, owner of Café Provence and former New England Culinary Institute executive chef and the Deerfield Valley’s award-winning Jr Iron Chefs will also do a demonstration on Saturday morning. A portion of the proceeds will go to the Junior Iron Chef program.  The Deerfield Valley Food Pantry will also be on-hand accepting food donations. 

 Also new this year, the Taste is teaming up with the Deerfield Valley Health Care Volunteers as they revive the popular “Art on the Mountain” with a 3-day art show at Mount Snow. Taste attendees will enjoy complimentary admission to the show. 

 The following day, Sunday, September 12, the Deerfield Valley Community Cares is organizing the Best Dam Walk —a great way to walk off any indulging at the Taste. There are several walks available. The one-way walk is the most appropriate for families ant will begin at 10am. Each entering adult will be asked to have $50 worth of sponsors (five people at $10 each or any other combination) and each child under 12 will be asked to have $10 worth of sponsors. The walk will be held rain or shine.  

 Taste of the Deerfield Valley is hosted by Celebrate the Valley, Mount Snow and sponsored by the Town of Dover, g.Housen, Outside Television (RSN) and  92.7 WKVT. Tickets for the Taste are $15 for adults, $5 for children age 7-12, and free for children 6 and under. Cooking demonstration tickets are limited and we encourage you to pre-purchase them. For more information, please go to: www.celebratethevalley.com or call James Angus at (802) 380-8297. 

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings- I learned the hard way

Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings
“I Learned The Hard Way”
Daptone - B00377E4SC
Review by Georgetown Fats

The 2007 release of ‘100 Days, 100 Nghts’, also on the Daptone label, may have put Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings on the radar of both critics and fans alike, “I Learned The Hard Way” has all of the markings of putting Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings in the history books.

On the 2010 release, ‘I Learned The Hard Way’ Sharon Jones, the former Riker’s Island corrections officer, is back the 8 piece Dap-Kings band. Recorded entirely at the band owned House of Soul studio, Jones and The Dap-Kings prove the value of taking razor blades to Ampeg 8-track reel to reel tape over Auto-Tune and other digital manipulations and trickery.

On the opening track, “The Game Gets Old”, Jones evokes the spirits and aura of Stax and Motown with a vocal delivery as powerful as Irma Thomas. Sure the theme of the foils of love may be the basis for most soul music, but with the right vocalist, Ms. Jones, and proper arrangement more than make-up for an overdone theme.

Dave Guy, Dap-King trumpeter contributes another track titled “Give It Back”. Once again the listener is treated to another song about unrequited love. Dap-King bassist & producer Gabriel Roth, under the moniker of Bosco Mann, manages to orchestrate and arrange tracks from all 8 members of The Dap-Kings with vocal tracks of both Ms. Jones and backing vocalists without ever allowing solos or lead lines to interfere with the groove of the song.

Having given up a chance to make $500 a night with a successful wedding band to make $75 a night in the early days with The Dap-Kings, Sharon Jones convincingly delivers every line of the Bosco Mann penned “Money”. Rather than another hang-wringing tune about not having enough money, Mann’s “Money” is one part anger and one part swagger for the all-mighty dollar.

On the goose-bump educing “She Aint a Child No More”, once again penned by Bosco Mann, Jones sings a girl who grows up quick and hardened to due to being a product of abuse. Unfortunately the pathos of the track is entirely too convincing. Mann and Jones both manage a catharsis with this track, they may not be products of abuse themselves, however they both have tapped into the raw emotion of witnessing the ravages of child abuse.

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings are not a retro act, but an act basking in a timeless sound. Having toured extensively and bringing contemporary audiences back to the funk and soul sounds of the 60’s and 70’s, expect the awards and accolades for “I Learned the Hard Way” and Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings throughout 2010 and beyond.