On 5/31/06, Carissa Tintinalli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Actually, contrary to what Complainas D. Coxigrump here has to say, word over the weekend from the Paxahau camp was that the city has already agreed to give them next year's contract (at least verbally).
what the city does with the contract is meaningless if paxahau lost massive amounts of money. which, judging by the general lack of people and expensive set ups (massive amounts of fencing and security people enforcing it, bigger sound, etc), points to exactly that. its possible that they budgeted for this many people (if they were really smart, they did) but i just doubt it.
I agree that attendance seemed light, but reports in the local media confirmed a higher attendance on Saturday than the previous year. I suppose we'll have to wait for the final numbers to see whether there was less overall.
attendance more than "seemed light". every year before this one i can remember sitting near the main stage as the sun was going down completely amazed by the never ending rivers of people coming down into the bowl. this year, you could easily walk up the stairs with no problem. other stages were similar, there had to have been under 500 people at the pyramid stage monday night, compared with any other festival thats completely ludicrous.
As for lower attendance at afterparties, you can't blame light attendance on Paxahau, that's simply ridiculous. There are so many other factors to consider:
how is it ridiculous? they obviously shifted the demographic that the festival had previously catered to. it resulted in a different crowd who were out looking for different things that in previous years. and that was demonstrated at nearly every single event that anyone i know attended. obviously the 2000 people who attend their yearly after parties make up the vast majority of people who were coming out for that kind of music. i wouldnt be surprised to hear total attendance being down as much as 25% or more. if they try to say otherwise, im going to assume someone is lying. because the people just werent there. why would someone travel from england or germany to hear photek or planet of the drums? they wouldnt! so they didnt! simple!
1) Saturday night had an overwhelming number of events compared to other nights, spreading the crowd thin.
what is "overwhelming"? i distinctly remember having far more to choose from on just about any night over the past 3 festivals than saturday this year. maybe you mean "overwhelmingly bad" parties, which i agree, there were many.
2) Many parties had much higher admission costs ($25+) and the lower cost events seemed to be fewer and far between this year. Factor in having to pay for the festival this year, I'm sure many had to budget accordingly and sacrfice some nightlife.
people paid for the festival last year, and there were way more people from my experience and the experience of everyone i talk to.
3)There have been several discussions on the list about the lack of new blood coming into this scene, at least compared to previous decades. Less new people means that serious festival attendees are probably the same ones that have been coming for the past seven years, meaning they're all seven years older. I don't know about you, but all day at the festival plus a 4-6 hour afterparty just isn't as easy it used to be. And that's just one day - three days in a row is nearly impossible.
wuss. i dont see why it seems so ludicrous to say that this year's festival proves that the real detroit music draws a better crowd. previous years included lineups with far less "big name" talent, far less promotion time, far less organization, pretty much any kind of disadvantage you can think of. and they all had way more people attending who were way more up for having a good time. i dont see how anyone who attended this year could say otherwise, unless theyre really into deluding themselves or their head is so far up paxahau's various orifaces that they cant tell whats going on anymore. i had a good time this year, but it was DESPITE the festival, not BECAUSE of it. there were long periods of time this year where i had to go hide from the music because everything on every stage was so awful i couldnt stand to hear it. that never happened to me before. and judging by how lightly attended the festival was especially during the early sets, alot of people seemed to feel the same way. tom
