The Great Divide
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I’ve made no secret of my hostility toward Jazz Fest’s VIP package that allows high rollers to buy their way into a special enclosure in front of the stage. It not only takes the front row away from the band’s biggest fans, but it backs those fans further away from the band because of the space created by the pen. It turns out I and fans aren’t the only ones displeased by this development. Onstage, Britt Daniel of Spoon commented on the gulf between the band and the audience, and in Keith Spera’s story today at Nola.com, so did Wilco’s John Stirratt:
Stirratt picked out “tons of familiar faces” in the Jazz Fest crowd. He liked the standing-room-only space adjacent to the barricades, but was thrown off by the premium ticket corral directly in front of the stage.
“The premium area wasn’t very well-attended — not that many people ponied up the premium money for Wilco. It was weird to see faces in this sparse area, then it was jammed behind it,” he said, adding that some guys in the premium area “were moving and wrestling around. Looked like they got their money’s worth.”
 I’ve never had an issue with the Big Chief package, and if I were a business owner, I’d purchase a pair of Big Chief tickets so I could sit comfortably with a client, drink beer and watch the show. Those grandstands aren’t taking prime real estate from diehard fans, so I have no issue with them. but if the VIP pens in front of the Gentilly and Acura stages diminish the experience for fans and distract bands, they’re a really bad idea.
While the “pens,” and I like the subversive nature of the term, are an issue, if you’re going to discuss the impact the VIP areas have on performers, you must also raise the issue of the chair people impacting the performers at Congo Square. On most of the days, huge numbers of people camp out waiting for the final act. They mostly ignore the music all day, some with their backs to the stage. Others try to exert their “I was here first” powers, while sitting in their chairs. I was asked to sit during Rebirth and Chuck Brown was basically ignored by the first ten “rows” during his set. Does this explain why both acts cut their shows early?
Comment by Jay — May 17, 2009 @ 12:24 pm
Both the chairs and the VIP (and the other various tiered schemes) are symptoms of the consumerist, market driven direction of Jazz Fest (and society as a whole) over the past 20 years ago. When I first went to Jazz Fest 26 years ago, it really felt like there was collective Jazz Fest “audience,” not an assemblage of market niches carefully cultivated to bring in maximum revenue. To some it may still feel that way, but not to me.
The Visions Festival, held in New York every June, is in most ways everything Jazz Fest is not: a true non-profit that puts its mission (to provide a space for the creative jazz community in gentrified New York) first; an expression of a particular community (and one that still generates good feelings in that community); staffed by volunteers, etc. So I was quite sickened to get e-mail from them touting a new VIP pass, with priority seating, and other more dubious “benefits.” This is shocking to me because of the egalitarian spirit that permeates the scene. (At the end of the festival the audience is asked to pick up the trash and stack the chairs–and it complies!)
Comment by belyin — May 17, 2009 @ 7:33 pm