"Maybe This is Too Cool" - After years of layoffs and pay/resource freezes, Amazon execs treat themselves to a private Foo Fighters concert worth millions
Maybe This is Too Cool
I'm disappointed in Dave grohl
Tbf it’s not like grohl needs the cash is it
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They drove a dump truck full of money up to my house! I'm not made of stone!
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Eh, all he did was accept money to do exactly what he does: play a concert. Now if he canceled other concerts just for this, that would be a different story IMO. The Amazon execs would just buy a yacht or something instead if Dave declined.
If those dirty fucking workers had just worked harder they could have a Foo Fighters concert too.
Best I can do is a YouTube video with ads for dick pills.
If those workers worked hard the execs could have had another concert after this one*
Yeah I heard some of them had the gall to use the actual restroom on work hours. Like, get yourself a bigger bottle, and some better bootstraps! Amirite?
It is a musician's business to know who they are performing for and why - and the more famous they are, the more it starts to matter. Grohl knows this.
The people on here who is excusing this with "capitalism bad except when people I like is doing it" arguments is just demonstrating how empty "liberal values" get when push comes to shove.
That's actually their manager's business. Literally what they hire them for. And honestly, if you're going to fault them for performing a private venue for an Amazon event, you should also fault every artist that's ever performed in like, Vegas. Casinos have been bleeding people to death long before Amazon hit the scene.
I'm not going to fault a performer for literally doing their job and taking a fat payday. I'd probably do the same in their shoes, anybody who insists otherwise isn't being honest with themselves.
It's not like the rider said "play show at Amazon, these guys just laid a lot of people off and are screaming about budget cuts so they want you to play for the rest. Here's 4 million dollars."
It probably said "corporate event for 6-10k people. Here's a check for 4 million dollars"
So you’re arguing that selling out any supposed values you might have is fine as long as the check is big enough.
Foo Fighters are a huge band. They aren’t at the whims of some all powerful manager. And Amazon’s crimes are not new, they’re not obscure information. They’re incredibly well known, frequently discussed, and go hand in hand with the mention of Amazon. They knew what they were doing, who they were doing it for.
Now, if you want to discuss the power that record labels and their business relationships hold and their contracts with the bands they produce, that’s a possible explanation for this. But we’re talking about aging millionaire white guys. Chances are, they had veto power, knew what they were doing and probably could’ve accepted a monetary fine from the record company for defying a contract obligation if that’s why they were being forced to do it. And, honestly, probably would’ve leaked that information, gotten a ton of great press, maybe gotten into a public dispute with the record label if they chose to speak out about it, and then cashed in on that.
But, like you said, they did it for a fat paycheck. They didn’t stick up for the well-documented abused workers of Amazon while cashing in on it — “virtue signaling,” as people say. They decided to do this. For money. From Amazon executives.
And that’s…not better.
The fact that this comes at the end of typical corporate purse string tightening at the expense of workers is really just the steaming shit nugget on top of this diarrhea sundae.
So we're just skipping the part about the execs treating themselves to a concert after many years of union busting, horrid working conditions, innumerable other abuses, and excluding the workers. But we're going to shit on the people they hired for a gig.
Coolcoolcoolcoolcool.
Sure but the biggest pushback I’ve really seen tbh was by a dude who eventually revealed he’s just ranting about cancel culture. He doesn’t even like Grohl. So certainly not a liberal lol
At the end of the day they're people too though. And this is music, not war. There's a pretty big gray area for "participating in capitalism does not equal approval of capitalism."
There’s a pretty big gray area for “participating in capitalism does not equal approval of capitalism.”
That only goes for the working class - the people who are forced to participate in capitalism. Not for filthy rich musicians.
And this is music, not war.
There is no aspect of our enforced existence under capitalism that is free from it's insidious influence - and that includes music.
I dunno. Man’s getting paid to play music. If he takes that money and does something better with it. That’s still a positive. Don’t be a hipster lol
Kurt wasn't offered millions for a private show.
For those not upset and see the band "just playing a gig", what would be a line that you personally would consider too far? Would you be ok with them doing a private show for Netanyahu and his cabinet? Would a private show for Trump and his Republican lackeys be ok? How about Nestle CEO and its board, but none of its workers? Would a private show for the Proud Boys be ok if they had a "dump truck full of cash"?
Seems like it's just fanboyism and they can't stand that a band they care about (or at least enjoy) has sold out to the absolute worst degree. People are right in that all bands sell out to a certain point ("All you know about me is what I've sold ya, dumb fuck/I sold out long before you'd ever even heard my name/I sold my soul to make a record, dipshit/And then you bought one" -- Hooker with a Penis, Tool), but when you specifically accept a gig that is just some elitist executive party for a company that treats its employees like shit, you've gone too far.
Fuck the Foos. And stop making it political ("lol, liberals") -- bullshit, this is just rampant band fanboyism.
Bands who break through walls with speakers
Not just try to sell you sneakers
You want bands who wanna sell you things
Or bands who wanna tell you things?
One of the last punk dudes still making a statement instead of doing shows for 50 year old execs.
And stop making it political
It's political because caring about people who aren't rich is political.
Look, I despise Amazon and Jeff bezos. I avoid Amazon and work hard to find products from retailers that aren't Amazon storefronts. But at some point, unless you're self-employed and completely self-sustaining, you're 1) whoring yourself out to somebody, and 2) sucking the knob of capitalism somewhere.
All we're left to argue is matter of degrees.
I think that anything benign that separates evil people from a significant portion of their cash is fine by me. That's millions of dollars they can't use to break up unions, or replace human workers with AI, or pay for campaign ads (or hush money, or legal costs). And it's not something that's aiding them in those pursuits, so it's generally just money they're losing.
I think. That's just my initial idea.
I definitely agree but it still hurts, a lot.
This is way past the point for me, but I'm not a good musician or famous and part of how I draw lines may be contributing factors.
Well I guess I’ll be adding the Foo Fighters to my list of people that won’t be getting any money from me.
Does it matter? Sure it matters to me. I can sleep better knowing I’m not contributing to things I don’t agree with.
I expected better from Dave Grohl but here we are.
Something about monkies with lots of bananas? Dave's got 330 million bananas and just got a few hundred thousand more. Hoarding is only bad when people I don't like do it.
I honestly don't care who they play for, as long as it's not at the cost of of any regular scheduled gig.
Right? The concert is not the problem. The problem is who is paying for it/who is deserving of this (or any other) company benefit.
Though I guess there is an argument to be had that the performers are enabling class exploitation instead of standing in solidarity. Then again, it's entirely plausible that the performers don't know any of these details.
Depends on how they're paying for it and if I could donate most of it to causes that actively oppose them. IMO it's like buying Chicks CDs to burn them. But the money, which is the real power here, flowed in one direction that day.
Personally, I'd think it would be much for impactful to play for whoever, then donate all the proceeds to some important cause. Telling e.g. Netanyahu no to a Foo Fighters concert isn't going to make him change his mind about anything. But giving the concert will take money away from him and give it to something important.
I consider Amazon to be only average evil. Now if they did a concert for Nestle...
The ruling class needs a very poignant reminder that their perceived value is entirely manufactured by the working class, on whose shoulders they stand. These people have no real value if the people they exploit are able exert their own agency.
Fuck these parasites. And as a matter of course, fuck the foo fighters.
Yeah, call me when consequences actually happen.
Oh look everyone it's part of the problem.
We have to all work together to give those consequences. Workers need to act as a united force to push back against the ruling class. Checking out hurt the movement. Help us show them the consequences.
Oh well see that would actually require communication and commitment.
We don't do that. Something about needing that job that they definitely won't pull out from under us to pay those bills that never go up.
They should pour out a piss bottle for the warehouse employees who couldn't attend.
To think this is a problem with just Amazon is silly. This is every American corporation. The executives of every major corporation in this country treat themselves very very well on company dimes while their workers all languish in starvation wages. The only way to fight this is to raise the minimum wage to something that is livable for the average worker. The government needs to force these companies to behave. They will never and I mean abso-fucking-lutely never choose to treat their workers with respect and dignity by paying them a decent living wage.
And the politicians that are in all of their pockets will never ever go against their corporate masters. The only way to make them listen is to get every single American to acknowledge that this is something that is needed and then push their politicians to do it or threaten their jobs by voting for someone else. This goes for both Democrats and Republicans, not quite equally but there's definitely a few Democrats that need to be replaced.
Bentonville AR is being turned into a bicyclists haven. To the tune of Arkansas laws are making it that bicyclists don't have to pay attention to traffic laws. That's neat, wonder why... Ah. And while bicycling is one of the better things I guess billionaires can do, in the region buying bicycles are far beyond affordable anymore to a walmart wage because it's gotten so over the top fancy, and the Waltons literally have a helicopter with a bike rack to fly out to the trails. My dad is irritated because of how often it shakes his house as it goes over.
Same city, Alice Walton had a really nice museum built in the area that was surely out of the good of her heart... Ah. Unless really local, one might not know of her nickname "Drunken Alice" where she has a history of dwi's and wrecks, including one where someone was killed, yet somehow nothing seems to stick.
Yea... I've got a bit of an axe to grind with the Waltons having grown up in their personal playground, I agree with you to think this is a problem with just Amazon is ludicrous, and despite only living a state away it's amazing to hear how people bitch about Amazon, it's chokeholds, it's problems, its wrecking of the country, and gives a full pass to Walmart. We live in an oligarchy.
Completely unrelated to my bitching about Walmart, but a perfect example of execs doing this nonsense and how I got in trouble because I can't stop snarking: Worked for a medical testing facility, ran by a doctor. Said doctor buys himself a brand new shiny Lamborghini, then through the whole email has an announcement that for one day for 4 hours where any of the staff can get a picture with the Lambo and share on the company page. Now I met said doc once during training, but otherwise worked 3rd shift with two other people, he certainly never showed up when we had issues.
So when the day happened, it was one of those I commented it's the first time I think I'm glad that 3rd shift gets ignored on any staff events. Think about it for a second, then ask the others "Who has the newest car?", turns out was a Nissan Juke. So each of us go out and get a picture with the Juke, then sent the pictures in to where people were supposed to send in the pics with the Lambo. Turns out they got 4 pictures, the 3 with the Juke, and 1 with the Lambo. Got told by our manager said doc was pissed and to keep our heads down.
My last job, we removed two departments and fired them all, then forced to have a "virtual retreat" to save money. Three months later, they showed a PowerPoint how this was their best year ever.
By that point, I was already looking for a new job.
True, this problem is everywhere.
While you're breaking your back, they're getting paid millions to eat sushi off of a porn star's back.
The only way to fight this is to raise the minimum wage to something that is livable for the average worker.
Then what do you do when only the Amazons and Walmarts of the world with the deepest pockets can afford that, and small business basically ceases to exist, as a result? People talk a lot about 'if you can't pay a livable wage you don't deserve to be in business', but the same people also complain about monopolies and lack of choice at the same time. How do you propose this be reconciled?
Also, no one's ever going to be able to begin to enforce a "living wage", even if they wanted to, until that wage is given a concrete definition--at the very least, a formula with variables to account for cost of living differences across the country. Until then, all this clamoring for a "living wage" is completely pointless.
You break your back for pennies while they get millions a second to eat sushi off of a porn star's back.
Rookies. The real wealth gets to eat sushi off a porn star's front!
I want this sushi dinner to be the tits, Charlie!
The funny thing is that people always forget about old money - people who don't know what work is or what actual money is. And who see billionaires as just mere peasants.
There is a lot of old money where I grew up, and it was funny hearing about Blackrock trying to buy their properties. They would offer these people ten times the value, but old money was just “but, that’s just a little bit more money in the money bin. I have a massive house and estate to look at the peasants. Why would I bother?”
The only way this gig is ethically justifiable is if the support act is a guillotine.
I wonder when "selling out" or being called a "sell out" stopped being a thing. It happened during my lifetime for sure. Now basically everyone everywhere you look in the music business not only is one, but the public seems to not even consider it an option to not sell out, and I think most people dream of being able to be a sell out themselves so much they pardon others preemptively and almost instinctively.
But like in this case, Dave Grohl is already a multimillionaire, does he really have to further prostitute himself for Amazon cash?
Dave is a businessman first and foremost. I wonder how Pat is dealing with this sort of shit.
FF (fuck 'em) whoring themselves for Amazon execs isn't the main story here. It's the disgusting exploitation of labor for profits. Organized destruction of unions and workers rights had made this tale an everyday, everywhere occurrence. Long ago there was a time when the news would report about main street and wall street as being more intertwined. Today their well being is in opposite directions. From symbiotic to parasitic.
It seems to prefer coercion as a method to keep people producing rather than inspiring them and earning their best.
Ambush style layoffs remove the feeling of safety, making people desperate to prove they shouldn’t be next. With this approach, Amazon embraces a timelessly blood-curdling rationale: nothing concentrates the mind like a credible threat.
Annual attrition targets for a fixed percentage of people every year create a survival mentality. No one wants to be the slowest gazelle when the lion comes around again, so everyone runs faster. Classic coercion.
The real question is, how many pee bottles did they force Dave Grohl to fill in order to make his song quota in time?
Corporate musicians still suck
Yup, this is really maximize shareholder value. I can totally see this teambuilding event doubling dividends. Wait? You said the company never pays dividends and rarely buys back its stock? Wow, I am really seeing those profits!
I can't find much about this gig online, but the Setlist.fm page lists this as a 'private event' for Amazon Web Services.
AWS is not the part of Amazon where employees have to piss in bottles. It's their cloud hosting subsidiary, and the most profitable part of the company. I also can't find any mention that it's just the executives of AWS either. It seems more likely to me that this would have been open to the employees of AWS in general as it is the most profitable part of Amazon and the crowd in the pictures seems quite big if it were only made up of 'AWS executives who like the Foo Fighters'.
Its a yearly event that collects directors and above fork across the company to a week long "convention" that is supposed to be about building cohesive between leadership.
The author went in 2022, when they had bon jovi play, and said it was just a boozy networking event where leadership was dictated to by the execs with no actual exchange of ideas.
In 2022, Amazon made a record profits, but even then they were admonished to save money. Still, no layoffs.
This year? They also made record profits, but had record layoffs, yet the party goes on.
The authors overall point is that Amazon is successful by asking people to "lean in," to go the extra mile. When you freeze wages and layoff 10,000s of people while threatening more and still throw your 10 million dollar party for yourself, you are telling good people to not only leave, but to lean right the fuck out before they do.
The article says what part of Amazon it was for. It's for logistics, not AWS, which is a separate division.
WWRATMD
Probably not what they tell them
… With a pocket full of shells.
Bayer is solving it a different way: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pharmaceutical-giant-bayer-getting-rid-111358398.html
Bayer is one of the evilst companies in the world. Responsible for millions of deaths from AIDS
The song "Dr. Aiden" by B.o.B. talks about this. I think it's a good song.
They aren’t “solving it”, yet. They’re desperate to do something to wake up the stock and for investors to have some, any belief in the future of the business.
Whether they’re actually solving anything remains to be seen.
It'll be very amusing to see that company to go down in flames.
So that's who listens to this garbage...
Too bad the Foo Fighters are garbage, so they treated themselves to shitty music
Dave is making money. Don't blame him.
I quit a company for this. We wouldn't give our star performers raises, but they somehow managed to pull off a 7 million dollar one week party for the whole company. It would've been something like 100k per employee had they just handed out bonuses.
We lost a wave of talent after that and their stock dropped 80%. I'm glad I cashed out when I did.
Dave is making money. Don’t blame him.
Tf kinda brain dead excuse is this?
Acting immorally is okay if you're making money?
This is truly mind-obliterating stupidity.
Ya… being paid to perform isn’t immoral. Honestly, I hope he took a ton of cash from Amazon for the show.
Amazon is the crowd doing evil crap. Their immorality doesn’t automatically spread to everyone they interact with. Especially, people that aren’t actually aiding their efforts. This one is corporate waste
My guess is that the argument is that participating in society does not equal endorsement of the system we live in. This is how musicians make money. By playing music to who pays for it.
That said, I myself am of two minds about them taking the money.
Don't blame him because he's just "making money"? Might as well not blame the execs with that logic. They're also just making money, right?
With this particular concert, no, they're spending company money (which otherwise could have gone to employees) for themselves.
7 million could've paid 100k per employee? Impressive for a 70 person company to host such an expensive party then.
Er...shit...was off by half...it was 50k an employee.
He's not your average guy working to put food on the table lol. For someone of his status, his image being hurt from this is far more expensive than whatever they're paying them for.
The hate is proportional to the level of betrayal people feel. These people are scum(Amazon execs). Dave and the band rewarded them with a special people only concert for being extra parasitic on society. Shame is not unwarranted here.
Wtf does this even mean?
Essentially, if you're nice enough you're allowed to do something bad once in a while.
It doesn't make sense.
Maybe to defend Dave, he thought that he was just doing a concert for amazon workers in general?
I'm sure they didn't explicitly state that "this private concert is for execs only"
No pass granted. Amazon is currently hiring their anti-union lawyers as direct warehouse managers to fight the unionization efforts at KCVG Airhub. There is no excuse in 2024 to take a gig from this company and not understand who you are getting in bed with.
Dave will have a manager that knows this stuff. Do you think Dave does all the administration that is required to set up a concert? The guy probably has a team of people. There is no way that they didn't know. Amazon has a public reputation.
Don't give the Foo Fighters a pass for doing corporate gigs for these assholes either. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Easily the least rock and roll thing a rock star can do is take a big check to play a private show for a wealthy corporation lmao.
🤘
Right? Dave has always been a very sneaky raging narcissist. I'm glad he's finally showing his true self.
It's so disappointing.
They were the best, the best, the best bootlickers.