Big Chill: Olympics ruins it for music fans

The Olympics - apparently some sort of superannuated sports day - was already a major part of the decision for Glastonbury to take a year off; Now it's claimed the Big Chill as well:

The Big Chill festival's Melvin Benn, Managing Director Festival Republic, said he considered changing the date of the festival but admitted he also faced problems of artist availability: “It is with a considerable amount of regret that I have decided not to go ahead with The Big Chill in 2012.

“I looked long and hard late last year at moving the date so it didn’t clash with the Olympics but with the mix of the festival fans desire to keep the date and an inability to find an alternative date that works, I plumped for maintaining the existing weekend. Sadly, the artist availability and confirmations we were achieving led me to conclude that I couldn’t risk going ahead with the event as an outdoor event this year.”

Never mind, eh, we can all watch the running and the jumping and the egg-and-spoon. That'll make up for it, right?

Reading - Leeds was great, says Mr Reading-Leeds

As is now traditional, the organiser of the festival must have his post-fest interview to declare how well everything went. Melvin Benn has, thus, proclaimed Reading-Leeds good.

And, given the way Leeds used to always end in a pitched battle and burning trash, the organisers probably do deserve credit for having turned things around. Nowadays, it's just the bands who are causing trouble:

Last night at the Leeds Festival Axl Rose slammed the festival organisers, saying "This war ain't over". Benn had cut the band's sound at Reading to prevent them from breaking the noise curfew.

Benn played down the feud, saying: "I'd definitely book them again but I don't know if they'd come and play. I doubt I'll be getting a Christmas card from them. It's not personal, I think the band are great. Why would I make it personal?"

It's not entirely clear how Axl intends to pursue his "war"; or, indeed, if he'll even remember he's at war this morning. Shouldn't he really be at war with the licensing authorities rather than the festival anyway?

Benn was pleased with how professional the Libertines were:

"Anyone coming into this festival that just read press would have thought thought The Libertines were going to be the issue but they were professionals," he said.

He added: "They were just fantastic. It was the real deal and they made the effort. Whether it's got legs for the future I don't know. What they have done is knock their heads together and gone, 'Let's put great shows on'. They may all walk away from each other again, if they do I expect they'll walk away very happy because they've really hung out again.

I suspect "professional" is the key word here; watching on TV the set came across as very highly-polished, like something a Libertines tribute band might do. In the reuniting, they lost something of their soul. The Likely Lads have become Mike And Bernie Winters.

Women told 'take care' at Festival Republic events

I think Melvin Benn's upset at the reports of two rapes at Latitude over the weekend is quite genuine, but the official response is a bit poorly thought out:

Melvyn Benn, the chief executive of Festival Republic which runs Latitude, said the organisation was planning to raise awareness of the potential dangers faced by female festival-goers at all its events, which include Reading, Leeds and the Big Chill. "It is fair to say that in the future we will be making much more high profile the issues of being alone at night, particularly if you are a girl – definitely," said Benn.

Hmm. I'm sure the intention isn't to imply that it's in any way the woman to blame for walking round a festival site on their own at night, but there's certainly a whiff of that coming across in the advice. The focus should be on making rapists unwelcome in the first place, not on telling women there are no-go areas and times for them.

Festival prices: "ooh, they'll have to go up, they will"

Thanks to Mark B who sent me a link to this story, which predicts a possible rise in gig prices as PRS demand more, and George Osborne pretends he has no choice but to hike VAT:

Melvin Benn, who runs the Reading, Leeds and Latitude festivals, described it as "blatant money-grabbing".

With VAT also rising by 2.5%, Mr Benn, who runs Festival Republic, said the cost of an average festival ticket would go up by about £10.

Given how the festivals Benn are involved with have been hiking prices, Benn should know a blatant money grab when he sees it.

In 2008, a ticket to Leeds cost £145.

In 2010, the same ticket cost £180.

It's strange that a man who thinks nothing of slapping an extra £35 on a ticket over two years suddenly gets outraged for his customers at the prospect of another tenner going on.

That's not say the PRS demands are entirely fair - they're talking about an increase in the percentage take they get from the ticket price:

PRS For Music's Debbie Mulloy said: "It's been over 20 years since we last reviewed this tariff and it's part of a general review of all our tariffs.

"This is one sector where there have been massive amounts of change and we felt a good review was required to make sure everything was still fair and reasonable."

The rate would not necessarily increase, she said. "There's no foregone conclusion here. It's not as simple as saying we want the rate to be higher. There are a number of things we have to assess."

As Mark B pointed out in his email:

No doubt the possibility of reducing the tariff will also be considered

The PRS is suggesting it might charge larger festivals more than smaller festivals, but doesn't entirely explain why. If you're getting 3% of ticket prices, then you already get more for a larger festival than a small one.

If the suggestion is that the percentage rate should be higher for a bigger event, the moral justification for that is far from clear. In fact, morally, you could argue that PRS get a lower percentage cut than they do from ticket sales at smaller events.

If you look at an afternoon-in-a-park type affair, the main attraction is music. If you look at Glastonbury, many people go for attractions other than the music. And if the work of the PRS members is less crucial to bringing in the punters, then surely their share of the ticket take should go down?

PRS might regret having opened this particular Pandorica.

Flagging

Apparently, they've banned flags from Reading and Leeds this year, and Melvin Benn had suggested they introduce the ban at Glastonbury as well.

Glastonbury have decided to allow the carrying of flags to continue. Maybe even to make the flags mandatory.

There's a debate, you know. There must be:

See the new issue of NME, out today (August 26), for more on the flags at festivals debate.

It's almost pointless to continue writing this piece, for without a doubt everyone is now rushing to their newsagents to get a copy of NME to read the "debate" (= "it was a bit of fun at first but now everyone's doing it and, frankly, it's got out of hand, but if you come down to it, there are far more pressing questions about ticket prices, oversupply of festivals, security and the environment that makes focusing a debate on if someone should carry a stick with a sheet attached to it seem almost as if the NME is ducking an issue where the festivals might get some proper criticism to focus on a minor annoyance.)

Venuewatch: Astoria to be born again

Melvin Benn is insisting that, after it's been knocked down and Crossrail completed, a new Astoria will arise in place of the old Astoria:

"It is a sad day for music fans who are losing out to long planned and long awaited progress of London's transport system," he explained.

However he added it was not the last of the Astoria: "We can do no more than celebrate how good it was and look forward to its replacement being born when construction begins."

It's possible that the current downturn might help the Astoria's chances of being rebuilt - after all, if nobody is going to want to pay top dollar for land for chi-chi flatlets or high-end retail, you might as well reconstruct the steady-earner of the Astoria on the site.

Still, it's nice to hear good news from Benn for a change.

Mystery Jets won't take 'go' for an answer

The Leeds Festival managed to trip over its running times earlier today, winding up with the Mystery Jets ordered off stage after five songs.

The band weren't pleased, and scrapped with roadies as they tried to take their equipment down while they were still playing. Not effectively enough, though, as they still ended having their set cut pointlessly short.

More tributes to the organisational skills of Reading-Leeds: the main stage at Reading has had poor sound quality all weekend, which was 'beyond their control', reckons Melvin Benn:

"The levels on site are almost entirely dictated by the levels offsite," he explained. "The [local] council set levels by which noise, sound can't be above a certain decibel level on certain residential properties nearby [the site].

"They've set exactly the same level that they always set, but the atmospheric conditions [this year] has meant that the sound is staying low and hitting those decibel readings much, much earlier than normal. So we have to turn our levels down."

Oddly, Benn says he has a solution for next year - just one he hadn't bothered to put in place for this year, for some reason.

Meanwhile, when a fire broke out for the second day running at the Reading campsite, the fire engine trying to put it out got stuck in the mud - luckily, another engine was on hand to deal with the fire.

And - try not to picture this - Pink Eyes from Fucked Up stripped naked at Leeds. A brave NME reporter filed this report after peering through smoked glass:

During 'Vivian Girls', taken from the band's 2006 debut 'Hidden World', Pink Eyes, already stripped to the waist, took down his shorts and boxer shorts, tucked his genitals between his legs and faced the audience.

The singer then showed his naked buttocks to the cheering crowd.

They might want to leave the tickets for 2009 off the market for long enough to allow people to forget.

This, then, is what mounting tension feels like

As if it makes any real difference to the children of rich kids who use it as a backdrop to drinking cider, burning plastic and sexual experimentation, but Reading and Leeds is having three American headliners this year.

Melvin Benn, the tease, won't reveal who, though.

He has announced that the fest is going to be unsponsored this year:

"The contract was up for renewal and I wanted to reclaim the name of the festivals to return to their roots. I didn't want the festivals to be named after a sponsor.

"I am not asking another sponsor to come in and take it over. I wanted it to be less corporate like your listeners wanted."

So, the Carling Weekend is no more, then. But it's a mutual separation. We're not quite sure how the Leeds Festival is going to return to its roots - perhaps they'll call it 'Attempting to work economies of scale from the Reading Festival 2008' or something, but its good to hear Benn taking such a brave decision.

Of course, it could just be that as the economies take a bit of a downturn and there's a million ways for sponsors to create their own events around music the cost of having your name ignored by everyone but the organisers of ("attached to") the Reading/Leeds festival became to great to justify. But we're sure that's not the case.