July 15-21, 2004

naked city

The Good, the Band and the Ugly

THE WINNER IS?: Kevin Laibson and Easily Amused nearly ruled a Battle of the Bands.

A lawyer is looking into charges that Coyote Ugly's Battle of the Bands was rigged.

by Brian Hickey

Everybody knows the fix is in at carnivals. Those wooden baskets are just so perfectly tilted so the softball will fly back out and prevent too many framed Def Leppard concert posters from leaving the premises.

Pro football? There's an oft-wagering bartender down the Shore who successfully proved a theory that teams looking to build new stadiums with public funding just happened to win a bunch of Super Bowls in the late '90s. (I didn't buy it either — at first.) Wrestling? C'mon, Hogan would never have been able to body slam Andre the Giant unless the French behemoth let him.

Still, there's a line that never should be crossed, for some institutions are so sacred that to sully them is to dis apple pie and America's God-given right to colonize any nation its president deems dangerous. It's called the Battle of the Bands. Wannabe rock stars taking to the stage, their music speaking for itself. May the best group win.

But if what a few people involved in one such event at Coyote Ugly last week said is true, that bastion of rock 'n' roll decency was cruelly violated. There, according to a judge, an emcee and a band manager affiliated with the 8-week, 30-band competition, the final results were summarily dismissed by a bar manager who assaulted two men who voted against the group he told them to pick.

Derek Spence, a 21-year-old from Northern Liberties who hosted several of the Wednesday night battles, says it all went down July 7 at the club, located on Third Street between Market and Chestnut.

It was finals night — the competition started in late May or early June — and four bands were vying for a $1,000 grand prize. Tickets for the event, which bands themselves sold at $8 a pop, also boasted that the winners would get some airtime on WYSP-FM, but it remains unclear whether the station was involved with the contest.

All went according to plan, says Spence, until judges Justin Whitman and Brian Mishico gathered in the office to make their final selections. They decided that a band called Easily Amused — "an early Weezer meets pop punk of today, more of that nerdy type," says Whitman — won. Within a matter of minutes, however, a 23-year-old bar manager came back to talk to them.

Spence says the manager started talking to them about how he thought another band called Lip Splitter — "more like Korn, an early Limp Bizkit sound, a little screaming involved," explains Whitman — was his favorite.

"So get up there on the mic, thank everybody for rocking out for the past couple months, hype the bar up a little bit [and] announce Lip Splitter won," recalls Spence of what the manager said before leaving the room. (Whitman recalls the same conversation.)

Spence says he and the judges then discussed whether to stick with the band they'd picked. A few minutes later, Spence walked up on stage and gave Easily Amused the grand prize.

"Two minutes later, [the manager's] flying through the crowd, he grabs [Whitman] by the neck. He's screaming "Who did I say won? Who did I say won?'" Spence recalls, noting that this was done in front of the competitors. "Then he moves onto me and pulls his fist back. I'm saying, "Calm down! Calm down!'"

Spence says the manager-- whose name is being withheld because it couldn't be independently verified — slammed him into a wall, grabbed him by the neck and threw him down the front steps of the bar. Noticing Spence still outside a few minutes later, he then allegedly ran back outside and chased the emcee down Third Street.

"It was like 'roid rage or something," says Spence, who maintains he suffered two cuts on his arm.

He later filed a police report that states the bar manager, who was nameless in the report, hadn't been arrested. Asked about the allegations on Monday, bar owner Tony Morello declined comment because he hadn't "heard the whole story yet." Five minutes later, a different man who said his name was Tony called to say, "I won't give our side of the story because there is no story. Nothing happened! It's preposterous." He then said he's pulling all of Coyote Ugly's advertising from City Paper.

For his part, Easily Amused's manager Yaron Gabai contacted Jenkintown attorney Ron Gordon, who says he's investigating the matter. There was no formal on-stage announcement, but Lip Splitter was declared the winner and awarded the money that night, Gabai says.

"If they won legitimately, they're owed the prize money," Gordon says. "If these bands are bringing crowds to the club and selling tickets, the club's making money. If this was advertised as a legitimate contest, but it was actually predetermined, a lot of people are owed money. But, there are a lot of ifs left out there."

Adds Gabai, "If this was all rigged, this is bigger than Easily Amused suing Coyote Ugly."