moodmat

reporting: d.w. and seek

Hello there Paxahau.

We had a great time at Movement 2008. In fact, this may be the most we’ve soaked up in one festival (no after-afterparty recovery time for us helped a bit this year).

After you’ve recovered and done your own post-mortems, here are some things to consider as you begin planning the 10th (!) festival:

The Good

1. Sound
   Highest marks.

   The best part of your festival productions keeps getting better. Please keep booking interesting acts in the tent along the river — we may just camp there next year.

2. Scheduling
   It hit us a day or two late — every act we went to see started exactly on time, according to the printed schedule. Holy crap that’s efficient.

   Also, we did notice overall that 2008 saw at least a dozen more acts than 2007. So this is even more amazing.

3. The Return of the Underground (Stage)
   The sound is nearly impossible to perfect,* but we applaud you for tackling the toughest stage in Hart Plaza. The DJs facing south was a really great idea and made watching from the periphery above a worthwhile endeavor.

   *Arranging speakers underneath Hart Plaza worthy of an X-Prize? I think so.

4. Church and State
   Yes, there were giant Vitamin Water bottles. A PlayStation trailer. A (shudder) Skoal merch booth. But more than any other year we can remember, sponsorship was not intrusive to the overall experience.

   Or maybe Dan’s been working in advertising too long.

5. Overall Production Value
   The canopy over the Red Bull Music Academy Stage and tweaks to the Beatport Stage were visible signs of where the money is going. It’s to a point we think where other music festivals are going to start taking notes.

The Bad

1. Food, Drink and Alternative Currencies
   We realize that there are valid reasons to limit outside food and drink — to minimize the risks of glass bottles, underage drinking, and trash. It seems that things have tipped too far in the command-and-control direction though. Creating a self-contained economy inside the festival for essentials like clean drinking water just feels like taking advantage. Your audience doesn’t want to feel like they’re being played for chumps, and inventing your own Monopoly money doesn’t help — if anything, we feel even more resentful knowing we paid $3 for a bottle of water when we wake up Tuesday morning with a handful of useless unspent tickets, subsidizing margins that would make a movie theater operator blush.

   While acknowledging that concessions are an important part of the festival’s balance sheet, price gouging has no place at the festival.

   Here’s another anecdote: We gave ourselves a break on Monday and wanted to grab a drink. Instead of paying $15 for two beers (ticket systems are goofy and aren’t fooling anyone), we walked up Woodward (past Foran’s, which had a cover charge thing going on) and to the Hard Rock Cafe. With tax and tip, that tourist trap was still cheaper. That’s just kinda sad.

   If nothing else, let people spend U.S. currency at the booths next year.

2. Bathrooms
   We don’t remember this ever being a big issue at the festival. For some reason, one set of underground bathrooms was offline. This made a big difference and spawned a lot of queues.

   More reasons not to buy big cups of beer on site.

3. Scheduling
   This is more about announcing/confirming the lineup. The longer you wait, the fewer international visitors make travel plans and the less it’s hyped in the media.

   Lead times are a bitch.

4. Ticket Prices at the Box Office
   The increase from $0 to $25 per day (for single-day casual visitors) has been a dramatic (if gradual) change over the years. Can’t the “sucker fee” be a little less than half of the 3-day pass?

   $18-$20 seems a lot less harsh on those wandering up to Hart Plaza.

5. Line-Up
   This is where we get to fly the Moodmat flag. You know, after nine of these suckers, a lot of the lineups blend together, so there’s a good reason everyone keeps reminiscing about Year 2. It was one of the most diverse and the jumble of Autechre, Jazzanova, Tortoise and Kid Koala next to Inner City, Derrick May, Terrence Parker and Suburban Knight looked pretty cool on a flyer. We learned early on that Detroit has an appetite for a wide range of acts — which is part of the reason techno exists in the first place.

   Contrary to what you might think, we’re not in the camp looking for more “classic” Detroit acts. Movement has done a more than admirable job showcasing both established and new local talent. The balance is fine the way it is. At this point, I don’t think anyone’s going to forget the city’s place as origin and spiritual home.

   We understand the need for big draws — but there are many ways to do it. Girl Talk was an inspired choice (arguably worth the security risk), but we still want to see more branching out. You could go “stadium techno.” You could go Warp. But the easiest way to have it all we think, is to book some of the many hybrid acts out there. They’ll draw a slightly different audience, but that’s what makes for an exciting festival, yes? For every Moby and Benny Bennassi, you could shake things up with LCD Soundsystem or The Postal Service.

   Give us some whole-wheat buns to go with the cheese!