Jazz Fest Sells Shelter To Highest Bidder
Jazz Fest 2008 by Often Absurd in the Humid City, on Flickr
The Following is the text of an email I received today. I was carbon copied along with the TP at my request. Since this very subject was the topic of much conversation during the afternoon torrents I felt it deserved to be shared. What are your thoughts? -Loki, HumidCity, Founder
It is 4:30 and I am writing this letter from the WWOZ hospitality tent (because I happily plunked down $380 to go to jazz fest and support WWOZ). For me to stop listening to the music to write the TP is phenomenal, but this time it has gone too far. I have been going to jazz fest for 40 years (1969 Congo Square before it was jazz fest). I worked there seven years for free and another eight for minimum wage. The last years I was the day fair book keeper and I know better than most how expensive jazz fest is to produce. So I have defended jazz fest when they added corporate sponsorships, when they sold areas for private parties, and when they increased their daily cost.
But today at 4:00 pm on my way to Bobby Lounge, I looked up at the grandstand and it was empty. Maybe 20 people inside away from the rain and another dozen on the balconies. In the pouring rain????
Well this year, the jazz fest closed the Grandstand to everyone but the Foundation and the Big Chief Experience People. So if you came thinking that you could run to the Grandstand if it rains, next year you will have to pay $500 or so to get in. Or you will have to have a friend on the Foundation willing to share the perks and highly expensive catering they enjoy. Shame on the Foundation, shame on AIG, and shame on FPI who was forced to sell their soul to the Foundation and AIG.
How many seats does jazz fest have to sell at $500 to make up for the $50 tickets that were locked out of the Grandstand today? Think about it.
Pat Williamson
April 28th, 2008 at 10:43 am
I’m usually skeptical when people claim to have been at Congo Square, since that universe is less than maybe 2000 people tops, but this letter rings of credibility. Let’s face it, Da Fest has become Disney on Ice in all too many ways, and the clip-joint prices illustrate it all too well.
April 28th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
It’s almost 24 hours after the close of the first weekend of Jazz Fest where a huge controversy, hassle and inconvenience was thrust upon the loyal supporters of WWOZ who bought into the “come and go as you please” bullshit. BrassPassers are now only allowed to enter the fairgrounds through the Sauvage Street gate. Whether the shuttle drops you off at Gentilly or choose to park in the DeSaix neighborhood and enter on Traflagar. (When were the disclaimers added to the website? They were not there when I looked up the BP pick-up locations and dates.) Why was a typed statement not handed out with the Brass Passes when we picked them up? Or even a courtesy e-mail with this information? And still 24 hours after the close of the last weekend and nothing on the website as to how this is going to be resolved. If I had known that I would have to access the fairgrounds at the most inconvenient entrance from where I live I would have bought seven tickets @ $ 43 = $ 301. Like my late father would have said, “Son, think you bought an ASS PASS!”
I guess if the reasons that I am getting are really true it proves what happens when you let the bean counters and carpetbaggers take over a good thing.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:59 am
It seems as though the organizers discovered they had created an atmosphere of suck and then a light bulb went off in their head that it might be good to PROFIT off the alleviation of that suck rather than just giving it away for free.