Stoopid, Not Stupid

Slightly Stoopid is one of San Diego’s biggest-drawing bands. They sold out the Open Air Theatre last summer, and a date to play with Snoop Dogg at Cricket Amphitheatre will be announced this month.

But the ganja-friendly O.B. band is still good for fund-raisers. The band, which commands $15,000 to $20,000 per show, is playing their second Belly Up fund-raiser April 15. Slightly Stoopid selected the charity (autistic children) and then decided to play the show without pay, meaning 100 percent of the proceeds from the $25-per-person show will go to benefit autistic children. Tickets sold out in 24 hours.

The only problem was the initial flyer for the event. According to Chris Goldsmith, who assists Belly Up talent buyers, some people inferred from the flyer that was posted on the Belly Up website that Slightly Stoopid was the name of the event, wrongly assuming it was a crude slur on the condition of autism.

“In retrospect, it would have been better to format the initial announcement differently,” says Goldsmith.

He says that the Belly Up crew personally contacted everyone who complained to explain that Slightly Stoopid was not a coarse reference to children with autism but was in fact the name of a local band that has been around for a decade.

Slightly Stoopid manager Matt Phillips says that the band was never given an opportunity to approve the initial graphic but says that it was an honest mistake.

Goldsmith says that many thought the negative reaction on blogs such as holytaco and goldenmagazine to the graphic was unjustified. “A lot of people wondered where appropriate political correctness ends and overreaction begins.”

Coincidentally, Goldsmith played in a Del Mar–based rock band called Borracho y Loco. In the mid-’80s, the band was booked to play a fund-raiser for the Carlsbad-based chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The MADD chapter said the band’s name meant drunk and crazy and refused to have any connection with the event.