Peace, love and the bureaucracy

The Rothbury Music Festival has been held annually in Rothbury, Mich., since 2008. For four days spread across July Fourth weekend, the population of Rothbury explodes, leaping from fewer than 500 people to more than 30,000 paying fans. The festival is a massive economic boon to the village and the surrounding area.

But, mysteriously, it isn’t happening this year.

Festival promoters announced last week that the festival is being postponed until 2011, ostensibly because they couldn’t book “the cutting edge roster that everyone has come to expect.”

I’ll be the first to admit that Rothbury isn’t my thing. It, like Bonnaroo, was conceived as a successor to Woodstock ’69—a four-day celebration of music and environmentalism, intertwining hippie music with hippie causes. There was a time when I’d happily accept the kind of dubious idealism that comes inherent in a music festival seeking to change the world. But these days, I find music that places its agenda above the craft tiresome, whether it’s punk bands supporting long-dead anarchists or Toby Keith supporting boots in peoples’ asses. Even at Bonnaroo, I bounce between rolling my eyes and pumping my fist in solidarity, depending on who’s on stage.

But, with that being said, I find the reasoning behind the festival’s cancellation fishy at best.

For one thing, Rothbury’s line-up hasn’t exactly been “cutting edge.” The bills for the past two years at Rothbury have been loaded to the gills with “festival safe” jam bands—Dave Matthews, Trey Anastasio, former members of Grateful Dead and Zappa Plays Zappa chief among them. These are the kinds of bands with fans who will follow them along on tour without hesitation, they’re the glue that holds music festivals together and they’re not going anywhere. Outside of the usual suspects, the festival has pulled a few major acts into their fold—Bob Dylan, The Hold Steady and The Black Keys for example—but they’re not Pitchfork and no one expects them to be.

A commenter on the news Web site Michigan Live has another theory. Earlier this year, the Grant Township Board of Trustees considered an ordinance on “mass gatherings,” particularly aimed at Rothbury, that could shut down the party at 1 a.m., put strict limits on attendance and tie up venues and promoters alike in increased bureaucratic red tape.
Music festival-goers aren’t the hardest bunch of people to please. They’re more than happy to wallow in the mud and enjoy sub-refugee camp accommodations if the bill is right. At Bonnaroo last year, threat of tornado wasn’t enough to deter music fans from huddling under tents to see their favorite bands.

The one thing that is bound to send these otherwise supernaturally resilient fans into fits of rage is government interference. Attendees of the Wakarusa festival in 2006 complained about increased police presences in and around the festival grounds, including the promoter, who believed the festival had become a “police state.” The ill will felt by music fans nearly torpedoed the festival for good,

Governing bodies need to understand that there is a natural risk to hosting a music festival. Strict, regimented control runs counter to the peaceful free-for-all that music festivals represent. Look at Bonnaroo, for instance. Manchester’s police and government know that drug use happens at the festival, but outside of a handful of drug busts targeting dealers, festival-goers are largely left to their own devices while the city rakes in millions in revenue.

I’d like to believe that we’ve learned our lesson from Woodstock ’99, when mismanagement led to the festival being burned to the ground by rioting fans. I’d also like to believe that attendees have enough self-control to responsibly co-exist with tens of thousands of likeminded individuals for four days and that the residents would happily put up with the four-day hippie invasion to reap the benefits of economy and notoriety. But, then again, maybe I’m fooling myself into a new kind of dubious idealism.

Lance Conzett, a senior in the
journalism program, is editor of the Vision.