Music: Yes, You Too Can Do Your Own Bonaroo (sort of)

The following story is featured in the latest issue of , The Pitchfork Review. 

When I was 17, I booked a music festival on my father’s farm. TheIndie 500 lasted two days, about 1000 people came, and the stage was a hay truck. That was a long time ago, but I still try to keep that kind of excited, nervous spirit alive in the events I organize. It’s just that now I actually know what I’m doing. As an experienced old person, I book Basilica SoundScape, a two-day “anti-festival” that takes place in a 19th century factory in Hudson, New York. We limit the audience to 1400, don’t have sponsors, and aim to keep the lineup small, particular, and multi-disciplinary. It’s been successful so far: In the five years of Basilica, I’ve never spotted anyone in attendance wearing a flower crown. 

In an idealistic, punk, all-inclusive sense, anyone can put on a festival. But, in reality, it takes a certain kind of person. You have to be detail-oriented, obsessive, and able to deal with major setbacks (and major personalities) without passing out. That said, if you find yourself tempted by the proposition, and want to test the waters and your own mettle, it’s helpful knowing where to begin. Here are some basic steps to get you started.

First off, ask yourself why you want to book a festival. There are tons of festivals, more than anyone needs. What will make yours different? Meditate on this. Think about Altamont.

If you think you can bring something unique to the festival calendar, choose an interesting place to host your event. A lot of festivals take place with fairly boring backdrops; if you have an unique place to host things, you’re already a step ahead. Still, unless you want a special smaller destination-festival, where the journey to the festival is part of the fun, make sure it’s easy for the audience to get there. I remember going to a festival on an island years ago, and most people left before the last band was halfway through (and the last band wasRadiohead) because they were all afraid of waiting in line to escape.

But be adventurous! I’ve done shows in basements and attics and backyards. Once I booked three floors of the New Museum (Grimesplayed in the glass-walled Sky Room, while Trash Talk destroyed things in the basement theater). I’ve also done shows in record stores and garages. I once had Pharmakon play in a bookstore, Björk DJ in a parking garage, and amateur wrestlers fight before a black metal show in a warehouse.

Keep in mind if you’re using a space where shows don’t generally happen, you’re going to have to spend money on a sound system and anything else a traditional venue might’ve supplied. You’ll need staff, too, if there isn’t one attached to the venue—people to handle the doors, security, bartenders, stage and production managers. The benefit to using a readymade club is that they’ll have a P.A. and staff on hand. And a liquor license (oh yeah, you’ll need one of those, too). The downside is that it can be kind of boring.

Now, this is crucial: No matter where the festival ends up being, make sure you have enough toilets. When I put on that festival at my dad’s farm, I only rented one Porta Potty. It filled up quickly. Major miscalculation. The event happened over the Fourth of July. I managed to find someone to drain it half-way through the weekend, and we survived, but we were very close to a fairly disgusting disaster.

Don’t overbook the festival. You also don’t need to book every band in a 100-yard radius. Be picky. Think of yourself as a curator, not just someone mindlessly adding all the “big” bands in any given genre or scene. Try to connect the bands in an interesting way. Think of their histories or some overall themes. Include non-musical stuff, too, like art and literature. But stay as rigorous in those zones as you would with the music. Focus on maintaining quality across all aspects of your festival.

As you book the bands, you’ll begin receiving lengthy hospitality riders. Don’t panic. In festival situations, you generally don’t buy everything on the rider for each and every band. It’s too expensive, and when there are dozens of acts on a bill, bands don’t really expect to get all of it anyway. When I was in college I booked an experimental guitarist in my friend’s attic, and because I didn’t know any better, I bought everything on his rider. He almost fainted when he showed up: I think I was the first person to ever fulfill it completely. I was out $350 for something that hadn’t even been expected.

Of course, this can be a case-by-case thing. If you book Kanye West, make sure to get all the stuff on his rider. And other stuff pops up, too. I recently booked a show where I was repeatedly asked to get hot water for a singer with a sore throat. I kept sending someone from the venue to the coffee shop next door, but by the time he’d find the singer, the water would be “too cold.” In situations like this, you can’t just bash that singer on the head like you may want to do. You have to smile, say you’ll get some more water, and move on.

Pay attention to the tech riders. These are more important than the right brand of hummus. If someone needs a special hand drum or in-ear monitor, and you don’t have it when they hit the stage, there will be issues. If you’re not familiar with tech and sound, make sure to hire a production manager who is. This is probably the single most important role at a festival. If the sound sucks, nobody will be happy, even if you’re in an amazing space with very good hummus.

Also, hire a good sound person. If you don’t know a sound person or anyone who can help with tech riders, and you’re starting to get nervous about all of this, then hire a production company. You can stick to your role as “curator,” and they’ll do all the other stuff.

You have the venue lined up, the staff in place, and the lineup booked… now you need to figure out how you’ll sell tickets. Will they be online only? Will people be able to get them at the door? Both? You’ll also need to set the price so you don’t lose your shirt. The price will be affected by whether or not you have sponsors. This is another big question: Do you want sponsors, which can make life easier, but can also be a pain in the ass? Or do you want to do it without sponsors, which can be stressful, but can also give you more control in the end? Up to you.

Once all of this is set, you’ll need to promote the festival on social media. You may also want to organize a street team to hang up physical flyers. Even with the internet, these are still really useful. As the festival date gets closer, switch up your promotional tactics a bit so people still pay attention. If you use the same approach each time, it’s easy for people to tune it out. See if any of the artists are up to tweeting the info or doing interviews. Speaking of which, if you have the money, you may want to hire a publicist.

Final tip: Don’t drink when you’re putting on a show. If someone needs your help, and you’re a sloppy mess, things won’t end well. By the end of the event, most folks will likely be wasted. They’ll need you. Stay the course!

All said, it comes down to controlling the things you can control, and dealing with (or working around) the things you can’t. Like, for instance, the weather. What if it rains for the entire event and you’re doing it outdoors? Did you think ahead and get a tent for over the stage? Did you provide ponchos? That’s the tip of the iceberg. Bands will have vans that break down. People will get lost. People will have meltdowns. People will have bass amps that explode (maybe more than once, speaking from memorable experience). People will shit themselves on stage and keep playing (another true story). And when this kind of thing happens, you’ll be standing there, smile on your face, knowing you did the best you could do, and that things will all be OK. And then you’ll tell the band it’s up to them to clean up that shit and you’ll go home and go to slee

National Affairs: Jamaica Farewell, my perspective on the Presidential visit

Leonard Thomas photo

Leonard Thomas photo

It was not the largest public turnout, nor even the most robust; greater crowds greeted the then newly freed Nelson Madela when he and (then) wife Winnie made Jamaica one of their first post-Apartheid stops. Jamaica's own Usain Bolt, returning after smashing his own world records in Berlin, had to crawl through molasses-thick crowds that amassed at the international airport in Kingston and stayed with his mini-motorcade all the way to New Kingston's Pegasus Hotel.

Yet there was a discernibly different energy to this visit, a sense of history that set it apart from the two foregoing examples. It was more than the interval - 33 years - between the the previous Presidential visit and this one, more even than the fact that this was a Black president coming to a predominantly Black country, and the country which offered to the world the greatest Black nationalist/Pan-Africanist yet seen, in the person of Marcus Garvey (more on him later)

Much of what made the Obama visit unforgettable can be encapsulated in two moments, one

NY HeraldRecorder/AP

"unscheduled" and the other organized almost to the minute. As hard as it is to believe that none of the Jamaican co-ordinators even suggested it, the visit to the Bob Marley Museum was the kind of communications and social masterstroke n which Obama built his two successful election campaigns and even his administration as a whole. Eschewing the kind of formal gathering in Government halls or ritzy hotel ball rooms, the President made a point of paying public homage to the man billed as the "first Third World superstar" Leaving himself, ostensibly in the hands of the tour guide, Obama seemed genuinely awed and gratified to be in the 'House that Bob Built". It was, by any measure, magic and the international media picked up on this aspect of the visit as if the coming deliberations with Jamaican PM Simpson-Miller and the visiting CARICOM heads was all hogwash and hot air.

"Beast Mode" the Obama vehicle makes its way up Hope Road

His next triumph came the next day, further up the long dual carriageway (and minutes above the US Embassy complex. On the campus of the University of the West Indies, the President held court with arguably his natural and most sympathetic audience: students and young adults. Before enduring all manner of questions (from the inane to the inspired), Obama gave a typically polished yet relaxed preamble and announced two significant initiatives: the Young Leaders of America project -a regional initiative aimed at offering young social entrepreneurs and others opportunities to intern with companies in the US among other activities, and an energy fund to support clean energy initiatives. The latter is interesting as the President's visit put him just outside the worst effects of the  disgusting  and calamitous fire at the Riverton landfill, the latest - but largest - in a long series of mishaps at the city's major refuse dump.

The visit yielded the expected communiques and joint statements of the kind that the general public absorb next to nothing from even as they observed in rapt attention from bars, banks and supermarkets. It also served up controversy, none initiated by Obama himself, but one episode which continues to simmer even as the President enjoys the Panamanian hospitality (hard to ignore the irony that Jamaicans, as detailed by Olive Senior in her book "Dying to Better Themselves" were an integral part of the labour force that built the Panama Canal, now being expanded).

In preparation for the visit, the Jamaican Government embarked on the kind of infrastructural "sprucing up" - road-repair and other urban beautification - that typically attends the impending arrival of important foreign visitors. It seems to be the Jamaican way, never mind that aid roads had lain unattended and threatening the life, limb and undercarriage of many Jamaican motorists. But in this case, an extra step of "sanitization" was taken. Crab vendors at the southern end of the broad ring around the National Heroes park (itself formerly a horse racing park, still known to older residents as "Race Course") were high-handedly and unceremoniously removed, their livelihoods disrupted, and their dignities assailed in public view.

A large, but sadly not well-sustained outcry ensued, with some quarters countering that the vendors - some established for over 40 years and counting local politicians among their customers - were there without formal permit and without the kind of sanitary conveniences and inputs that might make the granting of such permits moot. The latest on that situation is that Kingston Mayor Angella Brown-Burke has publicly informed the vendors that they may, in the wake of the President's jet trailed departure, they may return to their "Race Course" roost.

Another controversy still emitting some heat concerns the remarks from "New Reggae Revolutionary" Chronixx. In an Instagram post, the already revered singjay led with a reminder of the ongoing issue of a full pardon for the aforementioned Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey who was found guilty of mail fraud and deported from the United States at the height of the global growth of his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Against an image of Garvey in his famous regalia, Chronixx opined "this man still have a criminal in the United States, and we glorifying some waste man!"       The term is roughly equivalent to "punk" or even to "scoundrel" or "wastrel".

This time a resounding chorus of disagreement across social media and a public rebuke from Jamaican Minister of Youth and Culture Lisa Hanna, with whom Chronixx has previously exchanged some not too pleasant words. Though the singer, as he pointed out, never referred to anyone directly in his "waste man" remark, the timing the background and the general flow of sentiment made a strong case for the inference, and many expressed disappointment with the artiste, viewed as part of the new revolutionary yet progressive element that had been sorely missing from the island's globally-adored popular music.

Like the Riverton fire, the President escaped personal presence in this last firestorm (a former Jamaican Senator has, suprisingly, sprung to Chronixx' defence), but no doubt he will have been apprised by his aides, and no doubt the US Embassy will be taking a new, harder look at future visa applications from the singer and his Zinc Fence Redemption band. this is not meant to be mean-spirited, it is merely the truth informed by experience.

But for all these factors, President Obama's visit to Jamaica remains a watershed, a brief but deeply affecting experience for both visitor and host. with the end of his term just a little more than a year away, there are certainly moments from this trip that he will ponder long into private life, and likewise, the populace is universally agreed that even if the interval between this and future Presidential visits is shorter (there is already much private anticipation of the expected candidacy - historic if it proves successful - of Hilary Clinton), we shall not again see the like of Barack Obama on our shores, at least not as leader of the free world

Thrilling x 3: The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest (Swedish version)

Facile horror and comedy franchises aside (just think "Saw") three seems to be the ideal number of instalments for extended feature film stories. Of course, author Stieg Larsson died shortly after submitting the three manuscripts that make up this series and, although all manner of reports are swirling in relation to the existence of a fourth, we're not likely to see anything develop in that direction for now.

So, on to film #3 and, after a minor slip in the second film (a matter of personal taste, really), this concluding chapter is a marvel of restraint and unfeigned intensity. After the ugly confrontation with her father that ended the previous instalment, Lisbeth Salander finds herself in hospital, having had a bullet removed from her skull, set to stand trial in connection with the murders of three people (including her abusive former guardian) and - worst of all - a few doors down from her father, whose head she attempted to cleave open with an axe.

A heady mix, to be sure and director Daniel Alfredson and new writer Ulf Ryberg walk the line between thriller and psycho-drama with surgical skill. Not ot give th ending away, and we have other matters in between, but the final denouement has just the merest shade of Francis ford Coppola's "Godfather" trilogy; multiple scenes cut together to "tie-up" the narrative, but done without confusing the viewer (even if you're watching subtitiles).

Her uneasy alliance with investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist continues, and its Blomkvist who supplies the legal help, in the form of his sister Annika (played with a disarming lightness by Annika Hallin).  Other than Blomkvist, there are precious few empathetic male characters; the Swedish Secret Police, the upper echelons of the regular police force, and a celebrity psychiatrist, peter Teleborian are all arrayed against Lisbeth. But of course, these entities and individuals all have skeletons in their respective closets, and those are largely displayed in a masterful courtroom sequence, which forms the centrepiece of the movie, with Annika an initially reluctant advocate and Salander in all her taciturn punk glory (and in the look which the producers of the Hollywood take-off adapted for star Rooney Mara).

Thankfully, the Swedish producers recognize that the end doesn't mean the clinical resolution of all issues and the series closes with its almost trademark image of the Stockholm skyline at dusk - gleaming and serene, yet darkly mysterious. whether or not  #4 is in the offing, this is really the only end that could do.

Skaal