On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 11:10 AM, Toby Frith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> You're not taking into account the commercial viability of this. In Europe > we're lucky > because a lot of festivals have considerable funding from various councils > and organisations > in order to get them to go ahead. The only festival I can think of that that > doesn't really run ' > according to commercial foibles is Montreux, and that's been backed from the > start by rich > philanthropy. see, i think this is the problem. everyone got dollar signs in their eyes due to the unexpectedly large crowds that had wildly incorrect estimates in the early years. then when they started charging and keeping the entrances gated, it became obvious that these numbers were not right. instead of scaling back to something that could be done to serve all groups of people who had been actually attending the festival (let's break it down into say the international techno crowd, ravers, and locals who might not have known much if anything about the music but came through to have a good time) and who would be likely to continue to support it, they decided to go the megarave route. now they are pushing out the other groups of people (international presence definitely seems way way way down in the past couple of years likely due to the type of lineups, the locals mostly got out when the festival got crazily expensive) at the expense of the groups LEAST likely to continue to support the festival on a regular basis: the transient fickle raver crowd. > Although I've not been, I don't think that is the case in Detroit. It has to > be commercially > viable in order to succeed in the future. Now, it may be that in say, 5 or 6 > years time, the ' > festival may be successful enough nationwide for them to realise their dreams > of putting on > at least in part the festival that everyone on 313 wants it to be. You may > have to be patient > for it to happen I'm afraid. They either put on a festival that no-one turns > up to and they lose > all their money on, or they pocket enough money to be able to do it next year. why be patient for something that already happened to happen again? if you think this is the future of where this festival is going, i think you are sorely mistaken. the goodness of the festival already happened, and a large part of what made it so interesting has been banished. and then suddenly in 5 or 6 years when DEMF is trying to straight up compete with WMC (which is stupid anyway, why would someone go to detroit when they could go to florida instead?) why would they switch back? it doesnt make sense. this is not the route to take in order for the festival to be what it should be and has been. > The fact that Paxahau are doing it I think means that those guys I'm sure > will be carrying > the flame for Detroit Techno all along, but it'll take time. Landscapes and > crowds change - > and mindsets have to as well. right. tom
