Obviously the focus of the last few days in
the world of Springsteen fandom (a vast, occasionally strange and threatening
but for the most part welcoming cult) has been on the plug being pulled as The
Boss and his long-awaited guest (‘50 years’ was Springsteen’s estimate as he
joined them) Paul McCartney there are other issues to be addressed with
festivals like ‘Hard Rock Calling’ and with this gig in particular.
Firstly let’s look at a key component of
any musical experience –being able to hear it. As it has been for the last
couple of years at Hyde Park (and much to Arcade Fire Win Butler’s obvious
anger during their show last summer) – you can’t really hear an awful lot
unless you are huddled around one of the speaker systems and even then it
doesn’t have the rush of noise, the slam of bass and drum that typify an
adrenalised, exciting show. This is because of complaints form the locals that
have led to council rulings similar to those that caused Hard Rock to pull the
plug after the show went over curfew (and please, whatever anyone tells you can
you really believe that some baddie from the council was there pulling the plug
at 10.40pm on a Saturday night, or an actual police officer? No, as far as
common sense goes while the council may have set the rules it’s down to the none-more-hilariously-named
Hard Rock Calling organizers to abide by them – surely they themselves shut
down the show).
So, if you can’t hear then what are you
paying your money for? How about a great selection of support bands? Without
wishing to cause anyone any offence, to say that they were a shoddy,
thrown-together lot over this weekend would be an understatement. Check for
yourself.
OK so they spend all the money on the
headliner (who you can’t hear and gets cut off) and you just make the best of
whatever else is on offer. At least it’s a nice place though right?
Of course it’s not. It’s the most overtly
corporate branded piece of land in the whole of the UK and wherever there is
not a vast hoarding helping us in
buying drinks, purchasing more gig tickets, getting a ‘VIP’ experience or
drinking a certain brand of cola, there will be a screen featuring ‘backstage
exclusive interviews’ cajoling us into having a better time, a huge strip of
twitterfeed across the top of the stage allowing carefully selected messages to
assure us once more of what an amazing time we’re having in this oversold muddy
field.
To criticize the horrible drunkenness of
thousands of the people in attendance at the show is almost a moot point – what
else were they going to do with their time at the festival other than join
lengthy queues for the bar and drink up?
Of course the London-centric trait of
everyone talking over all bands ever doesn’t help the situation when you are
hearing the mighty E-Street band through a cracked car stereo but again, if
you’re underwhelmed by the experience you may just be tempted to have a natter
through the ones you don’t know (obviously I’m not condoning this – it’s
utterly dreadful – but you can in this instance see where it comes from).
Luckily Springsteen is the best in the
world at what he does and turns a shaky situation into, at least
performance-wise, a transcendent one. The man is a hero, his band legends, no
doubt.
The real question here though is – if you
can’t play the music at a decent level, can’t provide fans with an interesting
and worthy bill and have such disregard for the music you purport to love as to
cut it off at it’s peak, should you be allowed to run a festival at all?
Most would leave that open-ended. Me? I’m
going with ‘No. You cunts’.
ps this is all of course written from the perspective of a man (me, that is) who has been barred from, and i quote 'every hard rock cafe in europe' ...but that's a story for another time...and GOD DAMN i need to finish those porto blogs!!