In Defense of Harbour Fest: Truly Scary Festival Experiences and You Forgot the MUSIC

Hong Kong

If you are breathing, and you live in Hong Kong, you won’t but be able to hear a insistent whine of how badly promoted and ran a series of concerts called “Harbor Fest” is. I can’t disagree lots of money went to waste, and that it’s not the most finely run event I have been to, and but it’s not the worse, not even close.

Try getting out of a Festival with 20, 000 people in a field in Hackney, London that promptly ended at 9pm and the only way out was TWO double Decker Buses that you had to get on within a hour and half before the Train stops, otherwise you would be stranded in the middle of no where. (Essential Festival 2001)

Or be in an 18 hour Festival that ran out of water for hours, where it got so frightening that my friends and I had to pick up all the empty water bottles we could carry, run down the hill to the only toilet with taps and line up for ages in the middle of Orbital’s set so we could hand them out as people were dehydrating around us at 4am (Organic 96).

How about a Massive (Very Big Rave) that turned into a small Riot (Cars over turning and Crowds smashing stuff) in LA because it got shut it down 15 minutes BEFORE midnight on New Year Eve, to prevent “Further ODs on a bad batch of ecstasy”. Then lived through the mayhem of 10 000 people in various stages of intoxication drive out of downtown to find another party all at the same time.

Or even waking up to find someone had died from a freak accident (Burning Man 2003).

All of the above were run by organized, grown up promoters with experience. Not little punk ass 20 year olds wanting to have a good time.

In those you can get smashed against the wall by an over eager bouncer because you wouldn’t move where they told you. Watch a kid get sunk in the middle of a mosh pit and trampled and then sent off the hospital because the staff couldn’t get to him in time. Have your bag emptied in a middle of a field, all your stuff falling all over the place because some guy just finds it funny to do that to you. Being told to get out of the car, and watch your guy friends pat down, so you can be humiliated in front of a line of people because the guys don’t like the LOOK of you. Or the mixer or amps blowing half way through. Or drive 3 and three and a half hours to get somewhere only to find out it was cancelled because they didn’t sell enough tickets to pay for the sound system.

What about the rapes and riots in Woodstock 1999?

Did any of the above made me or others not have a good time and stopped those events creating positive lasting memories in our lives No. We all know it’s part of being a music fan. Things don’t go right, people who run events aren’t always on the ball, and shit happens. In the end, we have a good time, and love the MUSIC despite of all this stuff.

And really, what I have experienced, Harbour Fest is NICE. It’s CLEAN. The Bands turned up. Cool. Sure, the ticketing system was dumb, they should have let the cheap tickets holder in to fill it up, and security a pain etc.. etc.. But it does not deserve the crap laid on it.

There is definitely room for improvement, but it’s the first time these guys done it. Our Tax Money was a bad idea. But as I said, my Tax Money Goes to reclaiming, destroying the environment and plenty of ideas that I don’t agree with all the time. A bunch of concerts that I truly have a good time at, don’t seem like too bad a thing in the scheme of things.

Can we have some PERSPECTIVE please?

I haven’t heard the blogs, the papers, the radio, or the people around say one thing about the MUSIC.

The MUSIC.

You know the magic that happens when people who are good jam together, and the audience screams, shouts and claps? People who don’t usually get together dance away?

And do you realize this Festival is one of the smallest places you will ever get to see the Rolling Stones or Prince or Neil Young? Another huge music fan and I constantly talk about how we can’t believe how intimate it is going to be, and how close we are to the Mick and Keith even if we got the cheapest most far away seats. My friends in the US are going, “You’re going to see the Stones in a stadium HOW big? (15,000) and you got FRONT ROW for Neil young for HOW MUCH? That’s sooo cheap. Get me a guitar pick!”

I understand a lot of people couldn’t afford it, or aren’t interested. In that case it does nothing for them.

For me personally it’s really the first time I have seen a whole bunch of people since SARs. It’s the first time we all call each other up and blab about the shows we went to and work out where each other is sitting beforehand so we can meet up. For the first time in ages we had something other than the economy, our dull lives, or our work to talk about.

If this thing is supposed to give us a boost after SARs, it’s done it for me and the group of people I know. That’s good enough.

Go download some Rolling Stones, (Ruby Tuesday, Can’t Always Get What You Want.) Go download some Neil Young, (Old Man, My My Hey Hey,) Check out how great they are and why they are icons and legends. I hear there are still tickets lefts and go have yourself a ball.

Keep On Rocking in the Free World.

Yan

PS: Neil Young in Concert: I Want To See You Dance Again, Because I Am Still in Love With You

Post Post Scriptum: Satisfied: More Thoughts on Rolling Stones in Concert