After Melbourne's Good Vibrations festival last weekend, many reviews praised the artists and the line up and shot down the sound.
Today, the festival issued a statement in a press release, which rather than paraphrase for you, is here in full:"In response to reports in the media over the past few days, Jam Music (the promoter of the Good Vibrations Festivals) wants it to be known that the sound levels at Saturday's Good Vibrations Festival held at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl were under the direction of the venue, not the promoter. Sound levels are monitored and policed by an independent contractor hired by the venue who in turn instructs the promoter. The venue's licence to hold amplified music events is regulated by the Environmental Protection Authority.
"During the event, Jam received two noise level warnings from the venue and was put on notice that any further exceedance of the prescribed sound level would result in the power being cut and the Festival stopped. In addition to these formal warnings, Jam was told on over 25 separate occasions to turn the system levels down. On each occasion Jam complied with these instructions.
"The sound system used at the Good Vibrations Festival in Melbourne on Saturday was identical to that used at the Festival last year, but the levels permitted by the venue were significantly lower than previous years.
"Jam Music acted upon each of these instructions and warnings and was conscious of the venue's threat to cut the power, especially when the final threat to "pull the plug" was made in the middle of Kanye West's tribute song to his recently deceased mother. Jam believed the only way to ensure that the Festival continued until its scheduled finish time was to reduce the level of the speakers that fed sound to the top of the hill.
"The Good Vibrations Festival's ethos is always to give their audience a great time and the best possible experience. Unfortunately, due to the heavy handed interpretation of the EPA rules by the venue, Jam did not have the unfettered ability & control to do this in Melbourne last Saturday."
So does this mean the end of concerts at Melbourne's historic Myer Music Bowl? At the moment the law states that residents have the right to complain about noise, regardless of who was there first (and any St. Kilda road resident certainly does not pre-date the bowl, which was opened in 1959).
Artists who have performed at the bowl include Neil Young, Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Wings, Midnight Oil, AC/DC and of course the historic Seekers concert of 1966 where 150,000 people turned up to see the Australian folk troupe's homecoming.
If Kanye West had to put up with sound that awful and low (where a significant portion of the audience struggled to even hear what song he was playing), then what will future concerts be like?
