How a Drummer’s Flatulence Led to a $500 Fine

How many drummers does it take to get a venue slapped with a $500 fine? Just one, if he's feeling gassy.

Borderstan (via Classic Rock Magazine) reports that Washington, D.C., club Madam's Organ recently found itself the butt of that joke after the drummer for an unnamed band, needing a little fresh air after letting something slip out the back, cracked open one of the bar's ground-floor windows.

Ordinarily, this wouldn't have been a big deal, but since it was after curfew — and Madam's Organ happened to have an inspector from the Alcohol Beverage Regulation Administration on the premises — the venue was fined for violating an ordinance requiring doors and windows to "remain closed from 12:30AM until closing when live music is being played." Unsurprisingly, club GM Carlos Wilcox thinks this stinks.

Telling his side of the story at a hearing in April, Wilcox is quoted as insisting that he "personally closed the windows during the performers’ first break of the night" and adding that the drummer in question "opened the window to let [a] fart out ... He cracked it open for five minutes, then the inspector showed up."

Wilcox vented further in comments made to Borderstan, blasting the city bureaucracy for its silent but deadly scourge of frivolous fines. "Twenty f---ing years with not one violation and this is what they came up with," he argued. "People get stabbed and shot in these other establishments. In ours, someone farts and cracks a window and they spend a year on it."

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