Falls From Grace
The fests are the test they're like the musical Olympics
Or like Grand Final meets without the seats
It's band vs. band in an action packed day of non-stop play-offs
Where's the fucking pay off?
Regurgitator – Music is Sport
With a multi-phallus flesh organ projected on a huge screen behind them, 1990s Australian punk-hop sensation Regurgitator stepped into their appropriately titled song The World of Sleaze, sending the mass of sweating patrons before them into a frenzy.
Decked out in silver bodysuits for the occasion, the Brisbane band had centre stage at The Falls Music & Arts Festival in Marion Bay as they played 1997 album Unit in full.
Some 14-years after they first released the disc, their second studio album, the four-piece had been coaxed back into the limelight to churn through 13 songs in an hour or so.
They would do the same at Lorne in Victoria the following night and for their two days (read: two hours) work on the second line of the festival bill were no-doubt renumerated healthily.
Just how much the likes of Regurgitator or the Arctic Monkeys or Tim Finn or Fleet Foxes took away for their toil is information I’m not privy to.
But it must be loads because if you believe the reports in the Mercury newspaper we’re long odds to see their likes at Marion Bay in 2012 – and Tasmania may even be robbed of its flagship entertainment event completely.
It seems the organisers are crying poor in the wake of what, on the surface at least, was a singularly successful event.
A complete sell-out, the festival attracted 15,000+ revellers to a hidden corner of the island state and held them captive for the best part of 72-hours.
Somewhere close to half this number travelled from interstate. In fact, my three-man wrecking crew was approximately 66 per cent ‘mainland’.
The three of us also spent several hundred dollars apiece on booze and food – and tickets – and whether you live down the road in Dunalley or travelled all the way from Toowoomba to get to the festival, you dropped plenty of your hard-earned in the coffers just by turning up.
As revenue streams go, this one could not have been more clear.
Doubtless there are big bills to pay in hosting an event of this calibre. PA equipment, lights and stage rigs all cost big bucks. Bands don’t come for free and nor do event staff.
And I would hate to know how much it costs to fly groups to and from the mainland during the peak summer period.
Marketing the whole shebang must also have cost serious moolah, but if it’s free publicity the organisers are after in threatening the Giddings government with the whole ‘bat, ball and going home’ line, they’ve got things seriously wrong.
Anyone who reads this column regularly (I know you’re out there somewhere, you beautiful bastards) might recall a piece I wrote some months back when North Melbourne Football Club was negotiating its way into a contract to play ‘home’ matches at Hobart’s Blundstone Arena (formerly Bellerive Oval).
The Kangaroos chairman, James Brayshaw, was screwed down pretty hard by the Premier and his club’s deal pales into insignificance compared to the arrangement Jeff Kennett negotiated on behalf of the Hawthorn Football Club, which has reaped millions for the ‘Tassie’ Hawks down the years.
Now it seems the organisers of the Falls Festival are looking to get in on a similar kind of deal. Reading between the lines, their request for $350,000 in government funding to secure the 2012 event is little more than a grab for ‘free’ money.
They'll come back again, but Tasmanian tax payers are going to have to stump up for the privilege.
In terms of timing, it’s about as appropriate to be asking for the dosh now as it would be to ask Russel Brand to get you Katy Perry’s autograph.
For those of you not in the know, Brand and Perry have recently filed for divorce and the Tasmanian government doesn’t have two sheckles to rub together for warmth, let alone paying for party planners to chuck a New Year’s shindig.
It’s insensitive and greedy.
The government has already gifted the best part of $300,000 for permanent infrastructure at the festival site. Presumably, part of the thinking is that with a significant investment already made the powers that be won't want it wasted and will come up with an attache full of ransom money at the drop of a hat.
But if you’ve been putting these shows on for nine years and are still only expecting to turn a modest profit, don’t turn around and make idle threats in the local rag before the last empty beer can has been picked up off the flattened grass at the festival site.
Your cry for help – aside from alienating you from Tasmanian supporters – may well be read by some of those thousands of tourists you bring to the state and, presumably, still want to lure back again in December.
Do you think they’ll start making plans now you’re talking about pulling the pin?
Of course not. Way to harpoon yourself, guys. Don't be surprised to see the Bob Barker pull into Marion Bay if that's the kind of slaughter you've set your sights on.
Sure, money has been forthcoming for the AFL in the past 12 months or so, but to line up in this manner, cap in hand before the bean counters can even have reconciled the books on the 2011 event, is cheap.
Why not look at your own operations before going for a hand-out?
Beer, for example, as well as being the social lubricant that fuelled many excellent hours at the festival, was god damn cheap.
Ice-cold cans of Cascade went for $5 a pop – and you’d struggle to get them for that price in any pub in the land, let alone at a commercial music festival on the big island.
Add an extra dollar to the price of every can and what happens to your bottom line?
It’s not my job to run Falls Festival and I’m not claiming to be an expert in event management. All I’m pointing out here is that in the world of common sense, it seems the only place to look when your event doesn’t make as much profit as you’d like is right back at yourself.
How far out from D-Day did you know you were staring hard at a skinny margin? Where did your budget blow out and why? How can you resurrect things without having to make threats and run the risk of looking like a petulant child?
These are all questions that need to be asked, but don’t appear to have been by the aforementioned Mercury and its reporter.
Or, if they were asked, the answers either weren’t in keeping with the bleeding heart whimperings of a journo who can’t bear the thought of losing his AAA laminate for next new year – or they plain weren’t interesting.
It could have been something like this:
Q: How will you make the event more profitable in the future?
A: We will look to make modest increases to the price of tickets and drinks. We need to secure extra revenue to ensure the ongoing viability of this event and those are the simplest ways to do so, and they keep in line with festivals around Australia and the rest of the world. People know they can’t come for free and we believe they’ll still be receiving great value for money. This is a brilliant festival and the last thing we want is to turn people away from it.
But I tend to think it was something more like this:
Q: How will you make the event more profitable in the future?
A: We will hold the State government to ransom and threaten to take the festival away if they don’t stump up cash to make our bottom line look healthier.
Q: Don’t you think that will be an unpopular move?
A: We don’t care. If we don’t come back to Marion Bay next year we’ll go somewhere on the mainland where people have more money, like Bowral.
