No Rock And Roll Fun

ESSENTIAL TRUTH?: So, the festival season has kicked off with a massive fuck-up - promoters of the Essential Festival in Bristol last weekend are acting all surprised that people are a bit fucked off that they axed a large chunk of the bill for the rock day. They pulled a third of the stages, losing Reef, Therapy and Hell is for Heroes in the process. Organisers say that the site was waterlogged and wasn't safe for all the tents, but, strangely, the rest of the weekend the ground was fine. Happily, those days happened to be the ones that had sold out, whereas the rock day hadn't. Lucky that the weather was there to scale down the smaller day. The essential people claim that there were signs outside saying that some bands weren't appearing, and that people could get refunds providing they didn't go in, which is fair enough. Although its not like it was a gig in a city where people would have only travelled a couple of miles, is it? The thing with festivals is people invest a lot of time and money getting there, and chances are will go in because otherwise they'd be stuck in fucking Bristol with nothing to do all day until their train will take them home. So while, yes, morally, the festival can say "you could have turned back", maybe they might want to say "but seeing as we sort of mucked up and weren't able to cope with what was by no means a remarkable level of rain, we'll give everyone a couple of quid off the Hackney Marshes re-run..."
Of course, there's a petition - somehow, I doubt if they'll take any notice
BBC reports - but remains tight-lipped about Radio One's part in promoting the sorry event in the first place