[wetcamelfood]

Originally posted by enibs78
I am sick about how Jonathan Todd has mishandled the fan club and misrepresented the band, and how he has treated people like Pip and Louise.

I have also been to a couple of shows so far on the tour and have been blown away by how good the band is sounding, how great they're doing together. I don't want to do anything at this point that is going to start a fight between them.

According to at least one magazine article, Jonathan Todd is Mick's "friend and business partner." He produced Mick's Total Drumming project. Maybe this is one more example of Mick's questionable business judgment, but with that as background it's hard to see Mick firing him. And getting Stevie or Lindsey into the fray will not be good for the band.

Go with complaints to the California AG, to Warner Brothers, to the press and places like that. But PLEASE don't ask Stevie and Lindsey to be doing battle with Mick over this in the middle of the tour. I hope I don't get flamed for this, it's just the way I feel.

No flames, just some points I thought of I'd like to make about this.

I just don't think that it would be THAT "upsetting" to SN & LB if they were "made aware" of this during the tour as it's often been stated that they have been "through so much already" in the past so this shouldn't be any different than those other times.

Like Vianna said, no one is perfect, but I personally don't think Stevie & Lindsey are as sweet, innocent and angelic as some people may think they are (I don't mean YOU enibs, I just mean the general public or whoever ) For instance, I mean, you (meaning everyone) don't REALLY believe Stevie when she clings on to her "explanations" of why she got in to drugs in the first place of "no one told us it was bad for us" do you? No one ever told me that swallowing broken glass was bad for me either but not being told this didn't make me ever want to do it.

If it was to be that upsetting to them then maybe they shouldn't be in the business, it's like the old expression "if you can't stand the heat then get out of the kitchen". We all have to deal with things that are upsetting to us in our everyday lives while we are trying to concentrate on other things AND we handle it ourselves and don't have "managers" to handle things like this for us so that in itself shouldn't be an issue as stated earlier, they're not children and have to realize that if they're going to be in a BAND then all that comes under it's name INCLUDES them at ALL times in which they are in it, they can't be in it at selected times of convenience. For instance, if you're at work and your boss says to you "oh this person you work with is swamped with stuff that needs to be attended to, can you help them out for the rest of the day?" As much as you may want to keep to the things you want to deal with, you can't say to your boss "well, no, that's their mess, let them deal with it". Just a thought.

Also, (and I'm sorry to keep going in to this angle of things but it was something I thought of a little while ago) it's been cited that Tom Petty is someone who really cares about his fans and takes care of them via his fan club etc. SO, you'd think since both SN & LB both seem to be close with Tom now (if nothing else according to appearances they have made on TP albums over the years, her in the 80's and he in the 90's) that if she/they REALLY DID CARE about her/their fans, then all she'd/they'd have to do is meet with/call TP and say "Look we know you have a good system with your fan club set up and we care about our fans so can you advise me/us on how to put it together to make sure it's run right, they get value for money, areas/stumbling blocks to watch out for (etc.)? As long as she/they listen(s) to what he has to say to her/them then any fan club they would "care about" would be built up the same way as his, he might not even have to say anything except putting SN/LB in contact with the "clean" people that run his one (that is, if they can run another one at the same time and if they don't have the resources to run a FM themselves then he could've set them up with more "clean people" or at least given them advice as suggested above. However, their "silence" on this should say something and if they really don't know what's going on about this then that should show that they don't care about their fans as much as it may seem as if they did really want to know what their fans thought etc. then they could check around the web (or hire someone "clean" to do it for them) while they are waiting in their hotel rooms for their next appearance as suggested by me before. I know the on line fan base is only a small portion of the fans etc. but they can't have their heads in the sand THAT far to not know in this day and age how important a factor the internet is for fan bases and if nothing else, it would be a quick (if they're SO busy) easy way to get a general overview of what's going on and would at least give them a grain of what life is like for a FM fan (as I say this is all assuming they care that much about their fanbase) and it may also open their eyes as to how inferior the official sites are to sites like The Penguin and if they really wanted to give the fans "value for money" then you'd think the'd say to their "webmasters"... "Can we add (this) and how about (this)" as another big assumption that was made by JT was that he decided that every fan wanted a "flashy site with no content" when, though some may want that, I'm sure most of us would've preferred it to be less flashy if that meant we got more content instead right?

Like I've said, I think they may release a statement AFTER the tour/project is over and THEN say "oh gee sorry" to try to make it look good but what good will a statement at that time do anyone? (and that's assuming there'll be a statement at all).

Anyways, just some thoughts I had on this and I just wanted to chuck them in to the mix is all.

John