Accountability in Music • Page 275

That guy repeatedly deleted any mention of Spencer’s (the other co-founder and person convicted of child sexual abuse) actions from the MMF page. Then, when I shared MMF’s “statement” announcing Spencer’s departure from the fest and explained MMF’s lack of true accountability, he came into the comment section and essentially told me I don’t know what I’m talking about and everyone is being too hard on him. A real class act.

 

Usually in those cases, and the way he ranted, it's a sign that they're up to something as well that they don't want to make public.

Or he could just be a really shitty dude.

 

Thanks for posting this.

It's worth some reporter(s) time to ask more questions about how this guy ended up as co-founder of an apparently very popular regional metal festival, like who else knew of this guy's sex offender history yet chose to actively, directly work with him. I simply Googled the three words Spencer Robinson Michigan and I got a result in the first page with his name on a sex offender registry. It's a kind of willful ignorance to even miss the connection, and yet there's many people adamantly, articulately criticizing the decision to basically fire/remove him from involvement in the festival:
I don't mean just drunken-sounding rants, but articulate defenses of this guy and complaints of his removal coming from both women and men.

It's also worth noting that some of the defense of this guy is coming from people who say his sex offender conviction comes from some "sex tape" charge involving a 17 year old minor woman. Obviously there's more to the story than anything I'd trust reading from some unreferenced Facebook comment but he was convicted of a level 2 offense (https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/05/16/michigan-sex-offender-registry-critics-police-research-unconstitutional-tiers-restrictions-requirements/27453485 ), not of a lesser offense like harassment, and absolutely not someone one would want in a position of authority.

It looks like this Michigan Metal Fest is a big regional event, with a major local radio station that has promoted essentially identical metal festivals for many years (Banana 101.5 / Q101, Dirt Fest, Loudwire Live, etc) as a sponsor and Hatebreed and Chelsea Grin are among the headliners. It would be great if something could be done to prompt more follow-up from at least the metal press/media or comments from the radio station and some of the bands playing this year's festival, but it's at least worth asking publicly. Reposting the post from Steve Maple with all the asterisks might help make that happen.

It's ironic that there are a lot of festivals like this, and for all I know a lot of guys like Spencer who are involved in music festivals smaller than say Warped 2019, Riot Fest, Coachella, or the Governor's Ball who maybe aren't on some sex offender registry but have a deeply sketchy personal history which even a cursory search through social media would confirm.

Festivals like these are common in politically red states where right-wing and religious right groups are especially strong and one might think would be less tolerant of transgressive metal culture. Isn't it ironic that it seems like this culture may be actually a bigger part of those states' -- and the nation's -- music scene than hardly anyone wants to admit?

Frankenchrist on a crutch, where's Tipper Gore and the Parent's Music Resource Committee when you REALLY need them?

I'll bet that the cities that host these festivals would still MUCH rather have a Michigan Metal Fest or a similar event than a EDM or rap festival (maybe even more than an relatively edgy/outlaw C&W festival) anyway.

That's because there probably really are fewer arrests and ambulance calls for a festival like MMF, Aftershock Festival, Disrupt, etc than one might have at a similarly-sized EDM, rap, or non-family-friendly C&W festival. I doubt that organizers of festivals like those get much pushback from local governments over the content of the performances or the background of the organizers or staff but rather how many police and medical staff the tour is hiring for their event. While it's a good thing for an event to require fewer police and medical staff per concertgoer, it's still a cost that festival organizers want to minimize.

Even with a level 2 sex offender as one of the principal parties in charge, I think a lot of local governments would prefer to have a metal festival like MMF over those other genres -- though I'm sure local officials would deny it if you asked in so many words -- because I'd be surprised if anyone could show me any city or state with a law and or even a rule or policy against holding an event like this with a sex offender in charge, and I'm pretty sure most music venues and local promoters have no policy requiring background checks of touring bands much less their management or staff.

Maybe some background check is done by some local governments for what is usually the sole proprietor or principal partner in a promoter's business signing for a permit for a major public gathering, but usually it's more of a credit check than a background check.

I would also be surprised if any city demands a background check of all owners or all partners, much less for a festival's staff like lower-level supervisors, heads of security or production, etc. The agent signing permits may also be an attorney representing the festival or tour, who if they are licensed to practice law I'll suppose aren't on any sex offender registry.

No one should rest any easier that this particular guy is no longer some public face of this festival. Nothing will stop him from continuing on in the music scene in some other capacity, say as a stage manager or some coordinator of security and having even more opportunity to exploit or overlook exploitation and abuse of fans, staff, etc.

And the all of the bad PR that this might bring this festival could easily be undone and forgotten if they take on some social media campaign about sexual harassment and assault in the music scene, post some self-help memes, donate to RAINN or any one of many consciousness-raising, public education efforts that are trying to help concertgoers avoid harassment or assault or change their behavior, but who aren't clearly doing much at least publicly to hold the bands, the staff, or the business entities in the music scene accountable for more than donations, comp tickets, promotional shout-outs, and putting more women on stage and in positions of authority.

I also wouldn't be surprised if there are SOME women, somewhere in positions of authority at the Michigan Metal Fest -- maybe some of them are posting the more articulate, supportive comments in defense of this guy right now on Facebook -- but it's not them I'm most concerned about.

 

I agree with most of what you are saying but I don’t agree that an EDM or hip hop concert would have more arrests or ambulance calls.

 

Holy fucking shit

 

Thanks! I think there's obviously issues of bias that could be raised, but I think it's generally thought that rap/hip hop/R&B (sometimes overbroadly categorized as "urban") and EDM festivals and concerts generally see more serious incidents of violence and drug problems respectively, more than metal or punk. With rap in particular I know this is controversial and there's arguments that violence at those shows has greatly decreased over the last 10-20 years (see Rap Concert Shooting Renews a Racially Charged Debate on Safety from the New York Times in 2016 and Rap Music and Its Violent Progeny: America's Culture of Violence in Context on JSTOR from a peer-reviewed journal in 2002).

It's obvious though that the New York Times article describes bigger, better organized shows with security that has increased over the last 10-20 years to something like one might find at a small airport. Violence still occurs, less often in the crowd inside a show but it's hard to say it's better or worse outside the gates and security cameras, in part because how far beyond that perimeter do we go to define outside?

Whether or not one event or another has more ambulance calls or arrests obviously has something to do with the audience size, but I think rap/hiphop and also EDM events are generally thought to have more potential for the most serious, life-endangering incidents to occur, and more money that has to be spent on liability insurance and on hiring security including police and sometimes city ambulance services for those events.

You can see some evidence for that that by Googling the words "rap concert gang violence statistics" and "edm festival overdose statistics" respectively without quotes, especially if you do that as a Google News search. That will show it's at least the common impression given by articles published or aired by large, authoritative, mainstream media services throughout at least the United States, the kind of news services that Google prioritizes.

That's the same mainstream press that is accountable to the entire community, local governments and businesses as well as activist causes like civil rights and civil liberties groups that might have feelings one way or another on what kind of mass gatherings they'd want to have in their community. When I do a search for the more broadly worded terms "punk festival violence" or "metal festival violence" without quotes I get very few mainstream news articles at all, few stories of any kind that clearly come from sources in the US.

This isn't meant to be some coded slap at rap/hiphop or EDM, rather I'm trying to show part of why when stories like this break in the punk and metal scene in particular it's so easy for the people in charge of these festivals, even including local officials to yawn or curse and either way do little more than pull the offender offstage with a cartoon vaudeville hook, add more acts with women and marginalized groups, donate to charity, and the show goes on.

On the other hand, hardly anyone tries to argue that metal or punk concerts and festivals are risky, dangerous, or that they have a negative social influence. Since the days of the P.M.R.C. most metal and punk acts, labels, etc big and small have greatly improved their public image. They've improved that image so much that they look more than desirable compared especially to rap/hiphop and EDM to political interests, businesses, and sponsors, as obviously was shown by 25 successful years of the Warped Tour, 7 years of the Mayhem Festival, etc as a part of so many cities' communities, deserving local support like a high school sports team might deserve sponsorship and support from a local department store.

But local governments have made exceptions, of course, for transgressive, even criminally-tainted artists who they feel may bring favorable attention to their community. A good example is the 2014 Fashion Meets Music Festival in Columbus, where local parties in the music/arts/local government were almost all on board on having R Kelly headline despite a Village Voice expose of his history having run a few months earlier, right up until multiple bands and a local radio station publicly withdrew or threatened to withdraw from the show -- which followed warnings if not threats being made against some of the smaller artists who wanted to withdraw if R. Kelly played the show.

There's a good history of this story at this link: Summer Guide: The inside story of R. Kelly's removal from FMMF This story comes from Columbus Alive / Columbus Monthly, affiliated with the Columbus Dispatch. This isn't a new story, but this article in particular summarizes a lot of my concerns with how events like these are being managed, with really little or no change despite claims of being "woke" on the issues.

Basically, the local powers organizing the 2014 Fashion Meets Music Festival in Columbus only backed down on booking R. Kelly after a clear, public trend started to develop with more and more (and larger and larger) name bands -- and a local radio station -- openly saying they wouldn't play or sponsor this mainstream, family-friendly event if R. Kelly played, and after some smaller acts were warned if not threatened with "blacklisting" (yes, that word) if they withdrew from playing the show. If you take the time to look at this closely the story doesn't make most of the people involved with organizing the event look good because it looks like the only reason R Kelly was removed was because his presence threatened to make the businesses and bigger-name bands involved look bad.

This is also a great example of how to win by playing both sides against the middle, because despite so many well-known figures in the music scene and in the Columbus, OH area in particular supporting an event that headlined R. Kelly despite (as the story documents) detailed knowledge of his history, everyone came out publicly looking better because the festival didn't have, you know, R. Kelly playing. Marvel Comics and the Michigan Metal Festival could learn something about "retroactive continuity" (retconning) from this.

For anyone at all who reads this Accountability in Music thread, that article is really worth your time. It isn't long, it names lots of big names in local government and the regional music scene, including the music scene that a lot of people reading this work with, way bigger than the Michigan Music Festival.

 

Billy Bragg rules

 

Keep Flying is JJR's band

 

I get not ending a long friendship with the guy or whatever, but giving him a platform and continuing to take him on tour is so wrong (looking at you too, FYS)

 

I completely forgot that one wrinkle of the story was JJR working as TWY's merch guy and telling people he'd give them free shit if they burned Hotelier stuff lol. Riles me up even more that TWY stayed silent

 

Pronoun!?

 

Love to feel that every single thing I ever wrote abt accountability in music and every tweet and every time I got threatened by men was completely pointless because nothing can touch uhhh a mid level mediocre man who knows how to play a guitar or something

 

Like lmao remember when everyone was like “oh wow real friends are actually woke they’re using their platform for good!” In 2015 and actually they were just biding their time till they thought everyone forgot and they could bring their shitty friend on tour because nothing is more important to men than their Bros.

 

ugh

 

Can't wait to hear the deafening silence from Blink-182 fans.

 

I'm really disappointed to see her on this tour. :/

 

I have to say, JJR is kind of around all the time in my local scene and if I never used this website I would have absolutely 0 idea that there was anything problematic about him at all. Based on what I know, I absolutely don't support his actions and the fact that he never gave an apology, but I think there's a reality that a ton of people genuinely have no idea

 

I'm not willing to give artists a pass because they're "in the scene" and they probably know. At the very least we should be asking artists to do their own checks before signing on to tours. There's no excuses at this point, people should be paying attention, especially if they're working in music.

 

That’s part of the problem, no one knowing because it got swept basically under the rug.

But their manager definitely knows.

 

Real Friends was never good anyway

 

These sort of comments aren't helpful/productive to the conversation at hand.

 

Perhaps but it says a lot about a band if they’re gonna willingly worth with JJR so there’s that.

 

The issue is more that if they're boosting shitty people, whether they make enjoyable music is irrelevant, nahmean