In the first of an ongoing series of rants, man-about-town Aarom Wilson gives us a piece of his mind — it’s Aarom with a View (the whole existence of the column is really just an excuse for that gag). Anyway, article number one is about, um, number twos.
When Life Is Noise sillily accepted my offer of a column where I would just talk about shit that annoys me, I certainly didn’t envisage writing the first one about, quite literally, shit. But as it turds out, Stereosonic landed in Perth last Sunday like a solid one dropped from an aeroplane through (stinking) hot weather, some rather disgusting antics lodging firmly in our brains. Cutting through the festive atmosphere of the day, the post-festival media circus’ crap-flinging saw Town Of Claremont Chief Executive Stephen Goode alleging the council has photos of festival goers ‘defecating, urinating and vomiting’, outside the venue.
Well, look, out of 30,000 plus people and no bathrooms on the outside of the venue, you’re probably going to expect a few trees watered and maybe the odd vomit or two. Not that it should be condoned, but it’d be a more than decent bet ol’ Goode two shoes has at least been involved with mates at some point in the past where these things have occurred in public after a few too many. Sure it may have been before cameras were invented, but here’s again betting they didn’t make a new story about it. And considering only eight arrests, 60 move-on notices, 27 drug busts and two convictions actually resulted from the 30,000 potential gurn horror stories, it’s actually not too bad a result. Not good, but admissible.
But ‘people’ (not one person) crapping for all to see, really? Whilst the Claremont Council are a particularly prickly bunch when it comes to having fun in their hood (take Soundwave’s battle with them as a perfect case example), if these allegations are actually true then, holy shite balls, it’s difficult not to wonder whether humanity may actually be devolving. What’s next, dumping loads on James St before hitting The Paramount?
Now, this scribe doesn’t so much mind if people defecated in such venues because they’ve basically elected to go to a venue that really has nothing interesting about it. Thing is, despite the laws of logic pretty much always dictating there will be more dick/shitheads the bigger any festival is, there actually are people who are actually interested in seeing many of the acts at these festivals. In fact, if you look at the upcoming line-ups, no matter what your thoughts are on the festivals (or least their reputations), there are some pretty good options for those whose tastes are aligned with the sorts of delicacies proffered by Life Is Noise. Southbound has the likes of The Flaming Lips, Flume, Beach House, Best Coast and Sbtrkt; Big Day Out has Foals, Animal Collective, Hunting Grounds, Sleigh Bells and Deathgrips; Laneway has Alt-J, Shlohmo, Perfume Genius, Nicolas Jaar and Yeasayer; Summadayze has Disclosure, Hudson Mohawke, Carl Craig, Scuba and Araabmuzik; and so the list of examples goes on, each with at least the most part of a day’s-worth of worthy ear options.
Stereosonic this year also had the likes of Nina Kraviz, Adam Beyer, Joris Voorn and more playing, but it’s shit like this that puts people off attending such festivals. While some aspects of the barrage of abuse covering Facebook on the day of ‘Steroidsonic’ was hipster bullshit (why do you care if punters are wearing fluoro singlets – shouldn’t they be free to wear whatever the fuck they want?), once you start shitting on the dancefloor or the surrounds, well, we have some serious issues.
So please poople people, stop giving festivals a bad name. If you can’t control your poo distribution, you’re not the kind of person who should attend festivals, where toilet lines are sadly the norm. And in case you’re still not quite getting it, here are a few golden (brown) rules:
1. Don’t shit where people can see you.
2. Don’t shit anywhere that you shouldn’t.
3. Don’t act like a shit.
It’s that simple people. There’s no excuse for not understanding, even if you really do have shit for brains.
