MORE ON THE ROSE FUNERAL UNO DEBACLE

I guess yesterday’s story about Rose Funeral beating up on some concertgoers for playing Uno during a recent set in Tulsa has caused a stir – because people are still e-mailing us about it. Here are some tidbits from those e-mails, both directly and indirectly related to the incident:

• Multiple sources who either work with the band or are involved with the tour in question have now contacted us to say that, unfortunately, the Tulsa story is 100% true.
• In the original post, we discussed an exchange over Facebook in which the band appeared to be threatening another guy who dared to ask them “What’s wrong with Uno?” Last night we received an e-mail from someone named Mike Alfaro, who says that he runs an unofficial Rose Funeral Facebook fan page and that he was the one making the physical threats in that exchange, not a member of the band. (There is now a message on the Rose Funeral Facebook page that states “I’d like to say that this isn’t officially the band;” meanwhile, Google describes the page as “the official Facebook Page of Rose Funeral.” So who knows.) Alfaro asked us to remove the screen shot of the Facebook exchange because “I don’t want this to get out of hand more than it is.” Which I guess didn’t occur to him before he started threatening to kill people in the name of the band.
• Reader Max Jacob e-mailed us to clear up our confusion about a reference to Vader in the account of the Tulsa debacle: according to a fan review at Metal Set Lists, there was another instance of Rose Funeral having a run-in with a concert attendee who was heckling them during their set (although the dude wasn’t playing Uno), this time when they were opening for Vader here in NYC. While we understand that message boards aren’t the best source of accurate news, in light of yesterday’s story, it seems not-unlikely that these accusations are credible. In this instance, Rose Funeral guitarist Ryan Gardner is said to not only have spit on the heckler (again), but to have told him “I’m going to kill you” before having him ejected from the venue. Gardner, RF bassist Dale Hammond, and a third, unidentified man then allegedly tried to attack the non-fan outside the venue. As the story goes, the conflict was settled when RF drummer Dusty Boles told the concert goer that “the band has been getting laughed at every night” and that Gardner “is an asshole who can’t help acting that way” before getting the venue to let the heckler back in so he could see the remaining bands on the bill. Again, this is an unsubstantiated rumor coming from a message board, but given that the incident in Tulsa apparently really did happen, it seems not-unlikely that this story is true as well.
• Finally, reader JT O’Brien, whose friend Stephen was also apparently involved in the Tulsa debacle, sent us the above photo of his Uno cards… which Stephen had signed by Nile’s Karl Sanders. Karl really is a nice dude, isn’t he?

Now I’d like to stress a few points, just to make it clear why we thought this whole thing was worth talking about in the first place.

First of all, I’m not judging Rose Funeral’s music. My opinion about what has occurred would be the same no matter what band we were talking about.

And I’m certainly not encouraging anyone to heckle Rose Funeral, or play cards during their set, or whatever. That shit is rude. If you don’t like a band, don’t watch them. If they’re in the support slot and you have a good spot near the front of the stage and you’re afraid you’ll lose said spot if you walk away for their set, well, then that’s a choice you made, and you now have to suffer through the set of the band you don’t like. I’m not saying you have to enjoy it, I’m just saying, keep your mouth shut, let the band play, and then go about your buisness.

Having said that…

If you’re in a band, you need to be prepared for the fact that not everyone is going to like your music, and sometimes, people are going to heckle you, or text during your set, or play cards, or talk to their friend, or do any number of rude and distracting things. That sucks, but spitting on that concert goer is not an appropriate reaction; unless they did something potentially physically harmful to you, like, say, throw a bottle at you, having that concert goer ejected from the venue is not an appropriate reaction (especially if you’re not the headliner); and physically threatening and/or actually physically attacking that concert goer is definitely not an appropriate reaction. If you’re an artist who wants to share his art with the world, you need to have a thick skin. The incidents we’ve been hearing about these past few days are immature and, frankly, disgusting. And hopefully the members of Rose Funeral will now make the decision that it is not acceptable for anyone among their ranks to behave this way in the future.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve been overcome with an insatiable desire to play Uno. Weird…

-AR