If music festivals go, we all lose

Stretching your summer out across countless gigs and festivals is a rite of passage for so many, but if things go the way of Sydney’s night-life it won’t be for much longer, writes Eliza Barr.

Gladys Berejiklian, you’re killing my vibe.

This time last year I had just arrived home from Mountain Sounds Festival on the Central Coast.

My friend Emily and I took a modest road trip from Sydney to dance in the pit for Gang of Youths, have really big feelings with Amy Shark and stretch out in the sun with The Preatures.

However, this year there will be no Pimms at the emerging band stage. There will be no gozleme from the hilarious guy at the Turkish food tent. No fairy lights, no art installations, no sunset beers on the pop-up balcony, no incredible music from Australia’s best artists to light up the night.

The party’s over. And we all lose.

Mountain Sounds is one of many smaller regional festivals that cannot afford to operate anymore after an alarming spate of drug-related deaths at Australian festivals in recent months resulted in a severe crackdown on pills and big policing bills to go with it.

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The NSW government’s position on pill testing, which reveals the extent to which a pill is dangerous, is clear — it’s not going to happen.

But there has to be a solution to drug deaths that doesn’t involve calling time on fun altogether.

Mountain Sounds Festival has been cancelled this year. Organisers have blamed the NSW government’s crackdown on drugs and new user pays police bill for music festivals. Picture: Facebook

Under this policy, it doesn’t matter if you do drugs or not. It doesn’t matter if you remember to have a cup of water in between those tasteless vodka lime and soda cans you would never actually order at a bar but seem to be the only option at a festival. It doesn’t matter if you are an artist or a punter.

We just won’t get to go out and see live music because the government can’t come up with any better approach to harm minimisation than measures that are forcing festivals to cancel altogether.

“(Our) new scheme is designed to ensure that events with a poor track record and/or heightened risk will face greater oversight,” the government said in a statement.

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“We appreciate there has been some confusion and misunderstanding about the way the new scheme will operate, particularly in relation to the initial self-assessment matrix that was circulated to some festival organisers.”

See? Even the government knows its own confusing risk assessment policies need more work.

I am a big live music fan. In 2017 I attended 68 gigs in 52 weeks, including three festivals.

I sat in whisper-quiet bars and listened to unbelievably beautiful singer-songwriters. I was buoyed by jubilant crowds in small, sold-out rooms with some of Sydney’s best emerging indie rock bands. I saw Kasey Chambers three times. I was in an extremely polite moshpit at a Christian indie rock gig.

The risk assessment matrix from NSW government has created confusion among festival organisers. Picture: Facebook

I danced my heart out to my favourite punk band Against Me! before the temperature slowly dwindled to three degrees in Canberra at Groovin’ The Moo.

I saw Gang Of Youths set a crowd on fire with a rousing rendition of Magnolia in the beautiful, historic grounds of Sydney College of the Arts at Laneway.

I sang ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’ with some of my favourite people in the world in the second row at Paul Kelly’s slot at Splendour in the Grass in Byron Bay and almost nothing will ever transcend the moment my favourite songwriter looked down at us as he sang about “how power and privilege cannot move a people who know where they stand, and stand in the law”.

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It seems like such a waste to let all of that go.

There has to be a way to preserve these fantastic events, full of amazing music and unbeatable platforms for emerging artists, and dancing, and food, and the extremely valuable concept of the weekend away, while still taking a constructive stance on individual safety.

There has to be a way to stamp out criminal enterprises profiting off putting people at risk, making people responsible for their personal safety, and stopping drug deaths without calling off the party altogether.

Premier Berejiklian, it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

Turn the music back on, I’m begging you.

@ElizaJBarr