The Rock and Roll Mea Culpa

from http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/10/2894562.htm?site=thedrum

by Marieke Hardy

My esteemed Drum colleague Michael Collett wrote a very nice piece last week regarding the trials and tribulations of punters attempting to buy tickets for music festival Splendour In The Grass. By his account, those hapless hand-wringers repeatedly pressing refresh on the Moshtix website were ‘unwitting subjects of some sick scientist’s experiment’, and left dangling slightly in cyberspace while the system appeared to collapse around their ears.

Organisers said they were ‘overwhelmed’ by the demand for tickets. Admittedly it must have come as a bit of a surprise to them considering the last four Splendours have sold out in a matter of hours and this year’s line-up features tedious nobodies like The Pixies, The Strokes and Paul Kelly.

“How odd,” they must have murmured to themselves in bewildered tones as the Moshtix computers sputtered and fizzed, shooting sparks skywards in the fashion of R2D2 suffering an epileptic fit.

“We didn’t think anybody would actually want to come.”

In the end, they politely apologised to those who may be otherwise inclined to march up and deliver a swift kick to the gonads on show day, and in doing so signed up to the latest fad in festival tradition: the rock ‘n’ roll mea culpa.

The rock ‘n’ roll apology is a fairly new phenomenon, though it is growing considerably in both popularity and regularity. Organisers of the Groovin’ The Moo festival in Bendigo (I don’t make up these names, I swear) recently issued a slavering apology to those who arrived at the May event ‘very early in the day’ and queued for up to three hours before being allowed entry.

“Since 2005 we’ve run over twelve GTM events around the country, and we have never experienced that amount of traffic entering an event at the one time,” one of the organisers implored in a heart-on-sleeve statement.

“GTM prides itself on taking an amazing array of artists into various regions of Australia and putting on a great day out. We share the disappointment and understand the frustration that some of our patrons experienced in Bendigo.”

No doubt sitting at any gate for three hours ticket in hand is mildly irritating, but it happens all the time at festivals around the country and is easily addressed: You want to catch a band early on the bill, you turn up with a ridiculous amount of time to spare. Occasionally at festivals you miss things you’d like to see, or you get rained on, or you have to line up for an inordinate amount of time to buy a felafel burger. Big deal. This is what it is to be young, folks. This is being a punter.

The organisers of music festival Pyramid Rock issued a firm but sweet apology over a freak storm that forced the cancellation of acts including Van She, Empire of the Sun and The Butterfly Effect. Why this failed to be seen as a cause for celebration is a question that sadly remains unanswered, though either way it appears punters were sated by the grovelling provided.

It goes on. When too many people fancied cramming in to DJ ‘Jive Bunny for the 2000s’ GirlTalk at Melbourne’s 2009 St Jerome’s Laneway Festival, there was nearly a riot. Organisers apologised, and sent free tickets for the 2010 event to anybody who complained in writing. The Lost Weekend festival in Brisbane apologised for having to move venues and not achieving ‘critical mass’, which I believe is festival speak for ‘not selling enough tickets’. Bluesfest organisers routinely apologise in advance for the revoltingly muddy conditions, forcing people to - gasp - purchase gumboots.

The strange thing about all these ‘forgive me punter for I have sinned’ press releases is that festival-goers are by nature a tolerant lot. Outside of crushing them to death in poorly constructed mosh pits or worse, running out of full strength beer before 2pm, they’ll pretty much accept anything organisers throw their way with amiable shrugs and cheery resignation.

When you attend a music festival - particularly one that involves camping, the outdoors, or the slightly terrifying term ‘nature doof’ - you essentially sign a contract saying “I’m well aware I shall return home in a state of utter physical disrepair with ringing ears, mud-caked nostrils, bruised limbs and a staggeringly brutal headache and this, my friends, is quite acceptable. I also commit to leaving festival grounds in possession of a ruined tent, a box of soggy Cheezels that a passerby may or may not have pissed in, and a lingering regret I sat through an entire Xavier Rudd gig without throwing something hard and pointy at the stage”.

Why the need for such recriminations and teeth-gnashing on the part of organisers? They’re music festivals, they’re for the most part a gorgeous, idiotic mess. Go, get sunburned and hassled by security guards and vomit lavishly into an overflowing toilet at 2am, courtesy of food poisoning. Harden the f**k up and have a ball. Apologies be damned.

Marieke Hardy is a writer and regular panelist on the ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club.