It's hard for a small band to break out from the pack of all the other bands trying to make it, and occassionally bands do need to stretch the truth a little. This is a tale of when lying about things ends up biting you in the ass.
Threatin, a "band" based out of Los Angeles, that is seemingly just one dude – Jered Threatin, landed a UK and European tour after not releasing any music and playing no known U.S. gigs. But how?
Threatin or an acquaintance posed as a fake booking agency, Stageright Booking, to contact UK and European venues, sending faked live footage of "packed" shows, with fake comments and bought Youtube views and Facebook likes. MetalSucks got a hold of some of the footage, which oddly only shows a crowd.
The description of the video reads “Live video of Threatin. Got this video last june. i could only get a few seconds here and there the crowd was pretty wild. i kept almost dropping my phone..great show though.”
This video doesn't even show the crowd:
I guess the dude made a convincing enough story to get a European tour booked, and then, the first show happened and there was a problem. Even though the band claimed to have advanced 291 tickets sold, only three people showed up. The first show was in The Underworld Camden, and the venue left a commenting calling out Threatin on his behavior:
A similar story happens the next night at The Exchange in Bristol, with the "promoter" telling the venue that 180 tickets had been sold, with 100 people marked as attending through the Facebook event. Nobody showed up outside a few people from the opening band's guest list. The venue went back to the event page and noticed all the people who RSVP'd had their location set to Brazil.
Here is the Exchange's full statement:
The next show was at The Asylum Venue, and can you guess what happened? Yep, they told the venue they sold 150 tickets (a sell out( and only one person actually showed up who bought a ticket.
There are still a few shows left on the tour, but it's hard to imagine they won't be cancelled at this point, as word has gotten out. It's difficult to see what Jared Threatin's plan was with this hoax, as e and "StageRight Bookings," if that's even a real company have very quickly blacklisted themselves from the entire industry.
If you're wondering what this guy looks like, here is a video of him talking about the lyric process with b-roll spliced in of him concentrating on writing lyrics while looking into a mirror:
