‘Pay for Play’

This open letter to “pay to play” promoters is prompted by Chuck Philips’ July 16 article on clubs extracting fees from bands that want to gain exposure by performing on their stages:

I’d like to thank all you promoters for finally figuring out a way to foul up everyone :

--The bands that will have to scrape up the money to be heard and will probably bomb out because they haven’t yet developed as performing groups.

--The clubs, whose names will mean nothing in terms of promotion because anyone can pay to be on the bill.

--The record companies, which will have a far more meager bunch of bands to choose from.

--The record buyer, who will have little but slick commercial garbage to buy.

--And last, yourselves; you will have to live with your “product” . . . or else listen perpetually to oldies, which, as you know, get very old.

WILLIAM A. LAWSON

Van Nuys