The Great Chicago Rock ‘n’ Roll Booking War of 1990 began earlier this year, when Cubby Bear manager and booker Brad Altman decided he wanted his club to become a”big-time player” on the city’s music scene. At this point it looks like the war’s cruising right into 1991.
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Yet Altman has also alienated most of his competitors, thoroughly infuriating people like Nick Miller, Jam’s club booker; Joe Shanahan, booker and co-owner of Cabaret Metro; and Sue Miller, now an owner as well as the booker at Lounge Ax. Altman is known for bidding half again as much, even twice as much, as his competitors to get bands into the Cubby Bear. Often only pressure from Jam and Lounge Ax or Jam and WXRT (which does not yet sponsor shows at the Cubby Bear) has thwarted him. Some of his plans are pointed–he specializes in soliciting bands with long-standing ties to Sue Miller. Other actions are puzzling–he once sent Cabaret Metro a fax that twitted the club for allegedly copying the Cubby Bear’s ads in the Reader and then thanked Metro for sponsoring its “Rock Against Depression” series on Wednesday nights and informed the club that Cubby Bear would be taking the series over. Metro, which had been doing the series for six years, ignored the fax and heard nothing more about it. “It’s not like we’re enemies,” says Altman.”It was a teasing thing.”
Altman’s most legendary sally involved the Seattle band the Young Fresh Fellows, which had a long-standing relationship with Sue Miller. Altman puts on his wide-eyed look and says he didn’t know anything about that; he merely decided to offer the band’s agent $2,000 and plane tickets for a one-shot show.
How does Altman do it? One of his most engaging qualities is his willingness to talk figures, something that makes most club bookers cringe. “The thing about the Cubby Bear is that we make $2 million a year whether we have music or not. We make $20,000 on a game day. So we can do one of two things: we can ignore music altogether and make it a sports bar, or we can use some of the money to improve the facility and become a big-time player on the music front.”
The figures are Altman’s, and may not be accurate. A number of things put the Connells at Metro despite the money. Metro’s national prestige, for one. Another might have been the fact that WXRT sponsored the show. “[Program director] Norm Winer has a strong relationship with Jam,” says Altman. “He should. He knows they’ll do it right, and he won’t be embarrassed. The problem is that I haven’t yet developed a relationship with him. So we’re going to start advertising on WXRT as soon as we can. I’m in pursuit of Norm Winer. Brad Altman is in pursuit of Norm Winer, and I don’t care who knows it.”
