Saturday, December 18, 2010

A Long Night

The rock band Dispatch had a long career devoted to the purest principles of their music. At one point they turned down a million-dollar deal because the corporation was proposing to own all the creative aspects of their work, and require them to re-record some of their originals. After a while they'd mostly stopped performing, and decided to have a free farewell concert in Boston for their fans. They thought that maybe 20,000 would show up. When they arrived on the morning of the five o'clock evening concert, there were already 45,000 people there. Final tally was 110,000. A few years later they decided to do a reunion show at Madison Square Garden in New York, and sold out three nights.

"We were an overnight success; it just took twelve years," they said.

They gave the million-dollar three-day take to charity.

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