Threatin has gotten a ridiculous amount of free publicity this weekend – exactly the type of thing a band their stature yearns for, but the publicity is not so good. The initial post from Friday is still racking up a ton of interest.
A quick catchup: the band bought fake likes and fake Youtube views to convince a slew of UK and European venues to book them. The venues booked them using a hire fee, which meant Threatin paid an upfront rental fee for the venue. The venue would check in to make sure it would be worth their time to pay their staff, and Threatin assured each venue people were coming, with hundreds of RSVPs on Facebook event pages. Eventually, somebody caught on that all the RSVPs were from Brazil (fake) and nobody actually showed up to any gigs.
One of the venues elaborated on why they even agreed to book the band in the first place:
“We were one of the venues on the tour and like the Underworld The Asylum 2 venue was hired by Casey Marshall @ Stage right Booking… the hire fee was paid in full months ago… when we asked for a ticket update we were told it sales were 171…
“We were lucky that the other venues reached out and let us know of the issues, after speaking to the supports and making them aware we decided to run the show for them (they all brought people) and with a little morbid curiosity as to what the whole charade was about.
“probably THE strangest show we have ever been involved with… they have basically paid a lot of money to rehearse (they need it) at different venues around the UK.
“Big shout out to London Bristol and Manchester for contacting us in advance and letting us know…
“interesting times for sure!”
The booker for the Underworld confirmed this arrangement:
“Hiya, Patrice from Underworld here! We actually hired the venue to this Casey Marshall, the £780 hire fee was paid in full in advance, so we didn’t really bother to do background checks. We watched a YouTube video, was shocked that anybody would bother to hire the venue for this guy but took the money and figured it was a days work for our crew and staff :)”
That means Jared Threatin paid a ton of money out of pocket for a set of rehersal gigs in popular venues all over Europe. Pretty amazing.
Yesterday, we scoped a photo of one of these live gigs and now MetalSucks has obtained live footage from that same Manchester gig. What you see is basically an unsigned band playing to an empty room. The difference is this band spent, literally, thousands of dollars, to play to this empty room:
[youtube=https://youtu.be/rzkIhkSQCG0][/youtube]
A far cry from the fake live videos we saw earlier this weekend. The band were scheduled to play Belfast, Ireland yesterday, but sadly, that show was cancelled at the last minute. The venue, The Empire, seemed to have a good sense of humor about it:
If you purchased tickets for tonight's Threatin show, both of you can get refunds from the point of purchase. pic.twitter.com/hR0FHHFR0L
— Belfast Empire (@belfastEmpire) November 11, 2018
The venue decided to have the show anyway, with the opening bands playing for free. They made this announcement on their Facebook page:
“Just before 2pm today, Jered Threatin’s management cancelled his performance at Empire Music Hall tonight. As yet, no reason has been offered.
“Staff have been scheduled to work tonight, a sound engineer had been booked and two support acts, Periapt and Red House have gone to a lot of trouble to play tonight. Because of this, we have decided to have the gig anyway. Admittance will be free of charge!
“The rental of the hall has been paid upfront, so we won’t be losing out. We believe in supporting local acts, genuine bands and our own staff, and we’d be thrilled if you could come down and support these great acts.
“Doors at 7.00. Free in!”
We, of course, have to wonder if "Jered Threatin’s management" is really just Jered himself, as we've been pretty keen that he's spent thousands of dollars pumping this fake persona that doesn't exist.
The tour was not without it's (small) victories, and it does seem that Threatin sold at least ONE PIECE OF MERCH:
Oh hey, that's me (Mel) and my keyboardist (Tim). 'Promoter' sent us free tix so we came. Actually bought a T-shirt b/c I felt bad they'd come so far to play to 2 people. Didn't know about all the fake stuff til the next day. Fab venue though. I'd never been and will come again. pic.twitter.com/kjN1SMda9O
— Aonia (@Aonia_Band) November 11, 2018
While Jared Threatin has made his social media private, it seems there is a Threatin Fan Club twitter account that is active that is calling "fake news" on all of this actual evidence.
https://twitter.com/ThreatinFanClub/status/1061719218981425152
They responded to a photo of the band performing to an empty venue responding it was just a sound check. Uhh, sure Jan.
https://twitter.com/ThreatinFanClub/status/1061751026154397696
https://twitter.com/ThreatinFanClub/status/1061295186247143428
All this free publicity landed Jared a pretty big achievement – his first fan guitar cover:
[youtube=https://youtu.be/IFTrzDLX2rU][/youtube]
Also, while it seems his Wiki page was taken down, this screenshot is just [chef's kiss]
MetalSucks tracked down the edit history of the page and turns out the Wiki editors were on to him. Here are two moderation notes that basically call out what we all know as true now:
“The article does not contain any reliable sources, every reference is related to the subject or to sites such as ‘toprockpress.com’, ‘celebritymusicscene.com’, etc. Nothing in the article is verified, so you cannot cite the article as evidence that the subject meets the criteria. I’m not going to go too deep down this rabbit hole but this is all seems to be an elaborate promotional scheme, which has not worked out due to the article averaging 3 views per day (this is not typical of ‘an award-winning solo artist who recently rose to fame and is considered one of the most influential figures in current Rock music.’)”
“It’s almost comical in it’s peacock language (‘prominent label’…’highly anticipated’…’released globally’–FWI, I guess wikipedia editors could be considered ‘authors whose words are read globally,’ LOL) that is backed up by zero reliable sources. As stated, everything is user generated, self-download, first-person, etc. An obvious attempt by publicists to package a client, including creating content for dubious sources such as ‘New York Music Review’ and ‘Top Rock Press,’ which seem to exist only to promote this person. Perhaps it’s unfair for this subject, as he may genuinely find success someday and merit an article, but this one as it is is a gross example of how the internet can be abused to hype ones way into notability. (Just for fun, I clicked on the ‘Followers’ link on his Twitter to see how legitimate his fan base is. Unsurprisingly, it’s mostly accounts from click farms from the other side of the world.)”
So things are going great for Threatin. We hope they play another show, and Jared, if you're reading this, we would love to interview you. For all your faults as a musician, you clearly have a knack for social marketing (there is a term called "growth hacking" that could be applied here).
We'll keep you posted on further developments.
