Venue: Orto bar, Ljubljana
Gig date: 30.10.2006
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: 6000 SIT/ 25 €
First off, we owe you a sincere apology: this time you won’t be reading anything concrete about the metal gig of the week. It could have been that, if things had been handled with a bit more thought and a healthy dose of the logic you need when you’re luring big names from the music world into our little Alpine corner of paradise. On Tuesday, Halloween, a handful of heavy metal fanatics showed up at Orto bar, the ones who managed to get their hands on the small stack of tickets that were available. Because Napalm Death were playing, the fathers of grindcore, who have been loudly broadcasting their critique of the rot in the social system for a good twenty years (or, to be exact, since 1982). The support was a promise of a good night, with Mandeed and Born From Pain warming up the room, also treats for connoisseurs who crave somewhat newer rhythms and sounds. The criticism worth voicing isn’t aimed at the lineup, who do their grunt work as well as ever, but at the organizers. Napalm Death have played our stages three times now. They’re not some small band from, I dunno, some village in the middle of nowhere. This is a prominent, established name that you couldn’t miss or overlook even if you tried. Somehow, mostly back in the eighties, it just burned itself into our subconscious, even if plenty of people couldn’t name a single song. And when they finally come to Slovenia after years of silence, there’s exactly one show, with room for 100 fans max, and if more turn up, well, they’ll just have to squeeze into the tiny strip between the bar and the stage. That would be survivable if there had been at least the basic infrastructure for decent media coverage. This time I tried to combine my regular job as a music journalist at one of the TV stations with my reviewing debut for rockline.info. Damn it, I also work on the show Aritmija, where my humble self takes care of blasting out your earwax and waxing your legs if you crank the TV too loud, since as a music journalist I cover the part of the spectrum affectionately known as hard’n’heavy. Thanks to the organizers’ tin ear, we didn’t make it to the gig, even though we’d been told everything was sorted. Juvenile reactions from certain people in charge mean that if you so much as mention any requests or needs, the media presence simply isn’t wanted anymore. I’m sure plenty of you would love to see how it went, and you just won’t get to. For stating our basic needs, we got struck off the guest list.
To sum up: Dirty Skunks have picked their path, one where big names get crammed into a room the size of your bedroom. That’s the first complaint, or remark, because I’m sure more people would have wanted to see this show.
The second complaint is more of an observation: T-shirts, CDs and everything else can be sold right next to the toilets. Sure, today’s youth is used to all sorts of things, but the smell of feces doesn’t exactly make me want to buy the latest record from any band…
The third complaint is about a failure to understand the basic needs for normal work, and let’s flatter ourselves here, of journalists. You need at least a clearly announced time for the interview, who you’ll be talking to and how long you have, what the deal is with filming the gigs, and so on. If we’re talking professionalism, the feathers most people love to preen themselves with, then that’s the baseline. Furthermore: the media, whether print, video or anything else, are (!!!) the advertising for any given event. Advertising sells events that are coming up, and every band that’s going to play here needs certain information about how gigs are organized and what their predecessors thought of our little stages. Basic communication between the media and the organizers (two-way communication, exchange of basic information, cooperation on both sides) is a must for success. The question is how real the ambitions are to keep inviting big names in the future. If it’s all just posing, where any random Joe can be a concert organizer, then, my dears, we shouldn’t be surprised that so many gigs simply fall through, get poorly promoted and, last but not least, are poorly attended. Anyone who thinks they can pull off a gig should pull it off properly. It’s not just about selling tickets, printing posters and renting a venue. There’s a lot more to it. And let’s be happy we still get at least the little bit we’re offered and that actually happens. I’m not saying things haven’t improved. We have more gigs than, I dunno, 15 years ago. The names are bigger too. Turnout was good for plenty of organizers. They were rubbing their hands. They’re still rubbing them now and they’ll keep on rubbing them. Just for the record: that’s about as much as we can say when we compare ourselves with other countries. Why not try copying the promotion of gigs from those who do it somewhat better and actually have something to show for it? Then we won’t get more screw-ups like Marilyn Manson, Michael Jackson and similar events in Slovenia (by the way, neither the one nor the other actually happened…). The question is what kind of taste in their mouths Napalm Death and their friends will leave with. Even more important: when (and if at all) will they ever come back to our neck of the woods… Either way, this is a vote of no confidence in this time’s organizers, who were, to put it mildly, amateurish, narrow-minded and shady in their business dealings.
