Chords for An Interview with Tisa Mylar, manager at the Whisky A Go Go

Hi, I'm Tisa Myler.
We're at the world famous Whiskey A Go Go in Hollywood.
You call Gina and then you send over a CD.
We listen to it and if we like it,
and it's something we can put in with the same kind of genre of music,
then we give you a call back.
And we do pre-sell here, even though it has kind of a bad thing to it.
It's really not.
It just ensures that the band bring people.
What is pre-sell?
Pre-sell is we'll give you some tickets, say $25, $50.
It depends upon what Gina's going to work out for them.
And then they take those tickets and they sell them to their friends.
We give them to them for a cheaper price, but they can go and sell it to their friends for a little more
and make some money on it.
So it's not a bad thing.
A lot of people think it's a bad thing that you have to pay to play, but it's not like that at all.
[Bb] Let me go see.
So [Eb] the bands that play here, of course.
I [Ab] moved out here in [Ebm] 1964 with my family from Chicago.
The owner here is my grandfather, Mario.
We all moved out here and he took over here as a manager at the time.
And he ran it the whole time until he recently bought it maybe about _ seven years ago.
He purchased the whole building and the club.
So he owns the whole thing now.
_ And he owns the Rainbow down the street too.
Same owner.
But a lot of people come here because this is actually where the bands play.
You can put a club in Vegas, but it doesn't [Ab] necessarily mean people are going to go there
because nobody really played there [Ebm] until you get some famous people in there.
[F] But here, everybody's played [B] here.
And that's why we get a lot of people.
Oh, Doors, Van Halen, _ Aerosmith, everybody you can think of out here.
Chili Peppers don't have pilots.
Everybody.
_ _ We have industry here all the time.
[Bb] Sometimes they say they're coming, sometimes they don't say they're coming.
They're out kind of scouting new [Bb] bands.
_ I would say not on an every [Bbm] night basis, but pretty much during the week
somebody will drop in or whatever [Bb] and check out a few bands.
So they're here a lot.
So it's good for bands because you never know who's going to be in the room.
We're open pretty much every night.
We have our slow nights like [G] everybody else,
but if you ask anybody on [F] Sunset Strip, the whiskey is open more than anybody.
[Gb] And so that kind of says something for it.
[B] We don't get, unfortunately, the big nationals as much as we'd like to,
[Eb] but there's a lot of competition in town too.
This [Bbm] is a small kind of mom and pop place,
[Ebm] and they are corporate places and they have more money to pay out bigger guarantees
than we could even think of paying out.
But of course we open it to anybody,
and once in a [Bb] while people surprise you and come back and play.
We just had, _ _ who did we have in here the other day?
[Gb] Tenacious D [C] this year.
So that was kind of cool.
And everybody liked that.
That was a sure [Bb] sell out.
Well, there is types of music that we don't, we kind of steer it away from
only because it's been problems for us,
so we do really kind of unfortunately have to stay away from it for insurance reasons.
But we're open to pretty [Eb] much anything.
Just, [G] sorry about the ice. _
_ _ But we like, we [Bb] encourage all the bands to come and try and play here
because it's something, we had a show the other day, it was during the day,
and there was a guy who teaches music,
and he brought all of his students here to play the whiskey,
and there [Bb] was little seven year olds on stage playing,
and they were very talented.
So I said there are going to be future bands playing at the whiskey.
It has come up many times, and they have tried it,
but you know what, I've seen the,
we had a guy that was in here doing the internet thing,
and it just wasn't the quality I think that we wanted to put across
until they could get it a little better.
You know, I mean it was like sitting in front of the internet
watching a business size, you know, card picture.
It just seemed kind of weird to me.
So once they get it a little clearer and a little better, I'm sure,
you know, I'm sure there's people that maybe aren't here in California
that would like to see what's going on at the whiskey.
And so it's something that we would like [C] to do, you know,
in the future when they get it down a little better.
[F] But what we were shown just wasn't really the quality we wanted to do,
so we just said, you know what.
But we have a DVD, [Bb] you know, we have a service here that makes DVDs,
and it's a great service.
[F] I'll be honest, most of the bands do it,
and they get to take home a DVD right when they walk out the door.
So it's a great thing to have.
And we updated it, he updated it.
His name is Joe, he does the [Ab] videos.
And he updated it from doing VHS tapes to DVDs [Bb] now, and it's great.
A lot of them like it, and it comes out great.
I mean, it's like watching yourself standing on stage, you know.
It's no CDs.
We don't take it on music.
We just take it on, you know, T-shirts or, you know, pins, stickers,
things like that.
But, you know, I don't really want to do it.
I really kind of feel like a lot of the bands are out on tour,
and, you know, they need their money and stuff.
But it does take up a large part of our club,
so that's why they do charge it.
But we take 20%, which is around this part of town, and it's very cheap.
And I'll be honest, most of the time we don't take it.
You know, I mean, [Ebm] there's a certain cutoff point where I say,
nah, you know what, forget it, it's no big [Gm] deal.
I'm not going to take somebody's $20, you know, so [F] we keep that in.
And then when we get into the larger shows, and, you know what,
I have to because they do take up a lot of space.
So we do take it [Gb] for that.
And then what? _ _ _
_ Depends [Bb] on the show.
Yeah, depends on the show.
Sometimes our door will be _ _ huge, and our bar will be nothing, or vice versa.
You know, we'll have a great_
It really just depends on the show and how many tickets are sold and stuff,
and depending upon the age, because, you know, we're an all-age club.
So some nights it's really young, and some nights it's older bands.
You know, we do the punk show, Atomic Punk, so it's a great bar.
You know, and the door does well.
So sometimes we win both sides, so it just depends on the show.
We try to do as much as we can.
You know, when a good show comes around, we hear about it,
so we definitely put in a bid.
But again, like I said, because you've got corporate companies,
they can outbid you by a lot of money.
And, you know, we get a lot of bands that come back,
and the good thing is that they remember playing the whiskey.
They remember, you know, those times when they want to come back
and be a little closer to their fans,
and so they want to play the whiskey, which is great for us.
So, you know, we don't give up.
We still put bids out, but sometimes you get shot down,
and you just try again.
The next one, it's not a big deal.
You know, I believe in the local bands.
I believe it keeps a lot of these clubs going,
and I think that sometimes people forget that, you know,
that they are going to be the next big bands, hopefully,
and I like to have them, and I think that, you know,
they win and we win, so I never discourage that at all.
I would say come to L.A. for sure if you want to be in the music business,
but also come here and have something else to back it up,
because it is rough, and it could take you a while.
I mean, I know bands that have been around,
struggling for the 12 years that I've been here,
and they're great bands, but they're not signed yet.
So, you know, it just takes that one person to walk into the door,
but if you don't have a backup and you don't have something else,
it could be pretty rough for you.
And, you know, moving to L.A. just to become a rock star isn't like reality.
[C] You've got to have something else to do,
and then that, you know, can be your passion all the time,
but you have to have something to back it up.
[N] _ _