The 'Great' Aussie Music Festival Rant

I don't know about other countries, and how well the open-air festivals are run over there, but from what I hear of festivals in my home country, things aren't going so well. They are becoming extremely popular in the later years, with local events like Big Day Out selling out in hours, even minutes, I tend to not bother going because, basically, the lineups these days are a bunch of b*llocks, but I tend to know people that end up attending and all I seem to hear is complaining and whining about how badly organised it was.

I direct my attention, particularly to last weekends Soundwave Festival, which had such artists as Incubus, The Offspring, As I Lay Dying, Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall amongst many others. From reports, it took people ages to get in, and as a result they missed some of the bands they paid top dollar to see. Anyone who had a bottle of water on them as they entered had it 'confiscated' and diposed of, only to have them find that the only water available was warm 600ml bottles for $4 a pop... so at a 12 hour event on a scorching hot day that's not such a good idea. But at least if the punters wanted anything cold, maybe even slightly frozen, they could just go to the 'hot' food stalls and get a half cooked, frozen in the middle turkish pastry thing. Delicious!

Reports also indicate that the crowd, basically, was full of obnoxious scene kids only there to look cool and talk through peoples favourite bands to the point where the people there trying to watch the show couldn't hear it over these people blabbering on about nonsense. That is, if these people could even find where the band they want to see is playing and at what time, as the scedule was all over the shop. And, finally, although I'm not a fan of the band, I'm absolutely disgusted to hear that a member of As I Lay Dying was actually struck in the head by a glass bottle while they were performing, apparently causing him to bleed fom the head, and became "quite discombobulated for a good while", and thus cutting their set short.

Now, while the concept of a music festival is a good idea that should attract many fans of different genres of music to come together for the purpose of seeing all these bands perform, I'm convinced that they also attract a large sum of people going there, just for the sake of going, and then only to end up ruining the day for many other punters, and even some bands. This combined with poor management makes for a lot of unhappy campers.

Whenever a new festival is announced I just laugh a little on the indise and go on about ignoring it and the complaining that is sure to follow... well, as best as I can. But for some reason I just couldn't keep it in anymore.

I'm curious to know, and since I see that all around Europe and even America, festivals seem to be a pretty regular thing, do you get any problems like the above? Or is it just Aussie promoters who don't have a clue how to put on an event without screwing it royally for themselves? Do other countries get the same mixture of crowd, from the legitimate music lovers to the people who love music only because it's cool to do so now?

All that said, Metalstock should be one awesome event.