September 09, 2004
Street Scene 2004: It Worked For More Than Just Rob
Rob Hagey, from George Varga's Pop Scene Street Scene 2004 wrap-up "For Street Scene chief, changes paid off",
"The risk was high, but it worked beyond all our expectations."It worked for me too, but it is a totally New Street Scene Thing and not the old Street Scene thing.
Full article text included here as a protest to the UT's policy of not creating a publicly and freely accessable archive of their stories.
George Varga, San Diego Union Tribune, Sunday, September 5, 2004, "POP SCENE: For Street Scene chief, changes paid off",
"Last weekend's 20th anniversary edition of Street Scene was a gamble that paid off at least commercially better than anyone could have predicted."The risk was high, but it worked beyond all our expectations," said festival founder-producer Rob Hagey.
Approximately 105,000 fans attended the Friday-Saturday event, which was dramatically streamlined (two days, three stages and 30 bands, down from three days, nine stages and 89 bandPs in 2003). It took place for the first time in the parking lots next to Petco Park, having outgrown downtown's now bustling Gaslamp Quarter and East Village (both moribund when Street Scene debuted in 1984).
Traditionally held the weekend after Labor Day, the festival was moved up to late August and open to all ages in its entirety for the first time since 1994. The festival site, 600,000 square feet, was nearly twice as large as in 2003.
Equally notable was the festival's musical shift this year, after three years of trying to appeal to both younger and older listeners with mixed results. It was revamped to draw a young audience that favors hip-hop and punk over blues, zydeco and the other roots-music styles that were previously a staple of Street Scene.
This shift fueled complaints from longtime attendees (present company included), who felt they were being cast aside after years of loyal attendance.
"The decisions and changes we made were an absolute necessity; Street Scene wasn't selling," said Hagey, who saw attendance drop from a then-record 105,000 in 2001 to 70,000 last year.
"People had this (negative) attitude about what we weren't doing, instead of objectively looking at what we were doing. We knew that if the lineup was strong enough and was skewed to a younger demographic, they wouldn't worry about what Street Scene was in the past. If we were going to do (the event) this year, we had to make changes."
Those changes led to the Street Scene debuts of Foo Fighters, Ludacris, Jimmy Eat World and other acts whose youthful appeal is undeniable, for better and worse.
Witness AFI, whose Friday-night show drew such a crush of people that a metal crowd barrier near the front of the stage collapsed.
The collapse led to a pileup of fans, five of whom were transported to local trauma centers, according to Chris Brainard, battalion chief of the San Diego Fire Department's medical services division. Fifteen more were treated on site, said Lt. Michael Cash, the San Diego Police Department's special events unit commander. None of the injuries was life-threatening, Brainard said.
"What happened is typical of a concert crowd that wants to get close (to a band)," said Cash, who commended AFI singer Davey Havok for calming fans. "That barricade breaking who'd have known?"
Both Cash and Brainard praised the audience.
"Despite the large crowd, people were extremely well-behaved," Brainard said. "Sometimes when you say, 'Please move back,' people get mad. But we found even the intoxicated patrons to be very amenable to our requests. In our estimation, it was a very benign crowd. I usually oversee the medical resources in San Diego for everything from the Super Bowl and (the Gaslamp Quarter's) Mardi Gras to Street Scene, and I think this crowd was very civil. Mardi Gras tends to be much rowdier."
Not surprisingly for such a large event, there were pedestrian traffic jams, although Saturday's crowds generally moved more smoothly.
"We made some major improvements between Friday and Saturday," Hagey said. "We took some of the fencing down on Park Boulevard, and the flow was much better. Certainly, we could do more signage next year."
Hagey plans more tweaks for next year's Street Scene, which he hopes to stage at the same location. The entrance on Park Boulevard will be expanded, while the 10th Avenue entrance may be augmented with another entry point on 11th Avenue. Performance schedules which were conspicuously absent this year will be given to attendees as they arrive.
Hagey acknowledged complaints about the long beer lines and the requirement that patrons show ID each time they entered a drinking area.
"The 21-and-up bar areas came about because we were told by the San Diego Police Department and California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) that, as an all-ages event, we needed areas to control drinking and prevent (any drinks) being passed to minors. And wristbands (for drinkers) are too easy to take off and give to minors."
The festival's emphasis on punk and hip-hop will continue, the better to draw young fans. But Hagey contends that this year's narrower musical focus and reduction to three stages yielded artistic benefits that can be repeated in 2005.
"In the past, if we had international acts performing on the World Music stage, only World Music fans would go," he said. "When there are less stages and choices, people find themselves enjoying something they may not have heard before.
"This year we had 16-year-olds liking music they'd never heard before, as was shown with Patti Smith, Toots & The Maytals and Ben Harper with the Blind Boys of Alabama.
"There will be people who criticize what we do. The older group will say, 'Why don't you do it this way or that way?' Well, they don't sit down with me to meet with the police and the ABC, and look at the challenges of being downtown.
"And they don't know what it does to your pocketbook as an independent promoter, with regards to what acts work or don't. It was our first year at a new location and, yes, there were some bumps. But we'll change it next year and make it better."
In its heyday, Street Scene was both a commercial and artistic success that attracted an adventurous, eclectic audience. With any luck, the festival can regain that balance in the coming years.
George Varga: (619) 293-2253; george.varga@uniontrib.com
September 05, 2004
Street Scene 2004 Early Returns Good
George Varga in last Monday's UT: Younger Folks Flock And Street Scene Sets Record,
"San Diego's biggest annual music festival looked, felt and sounded more youthful, literally and figuratively."
I'm posting the entire text because I want a record and UT doesn't let me into it's archives...the link above will probably not work in week or two, so...
George Varga in last Monday's UT: Younger Folks Flock And Street Scene Sets Record
Out with the old, and in with the new! Street Scene was younger this year, how about you?San Diego's biggest annual music festival looked, felt and sounded more youthful, literally and figuratively.
It was held this weekend in a new location (the three enormous parking lots next to Petco Park), and shortened (two days, instead of three, for the first time since 1994).
It was also streamlined (15 bands a day on three stages, down from nine stages and 89 bands last year), geared to younger tastes (hip-hop, punk and breezy surfer-songwriters dominated), and open to all ages in its entirety (last year was 21-and-up Friday and Saturday, and all-ages only Sunday).
The result was a smashing commercial success, after several years of declining attendance at Street Scene. Approximately 50,000 (mostly) young music fans came Friday, followed by nearly 55,000 merrymakers Saturday both record turnouts to hear such fan favorites as Ludacris, Jack Johnson and Foo Fighters. And while there were two brief but scary bumps in the event's new road both related to crowd management and safety issues they were each smoothed out quickly and professionally.
"This is awesome!" said Colin Larkins, 16, as he and his friend, Dan Hernandez, 17, chilled out Saturday night. Both are students at Trabuco Hill High School in Mission Viejo.
"It's a good atmosphere, the weather is great and it's so much cooler than (at the) Coachella (festival near Palm Springs)," Larkins said.
"We definitely want to come back next year," Hernandez added. "You get to listen to your favorite music and get to go crazy."
On Friday, thousands of fans went crazy for neo-punk band AFI (short for A Fire Inside), which led to the most alarming moment of the weekend.
The crush of people caused the collapse of a bike-rack-like metal barricade near the front of the stage, followed by a pileup of bodies. Fifteen people were treated at the scene for minor injuries, according to San Diego Police Lt. Michael Cash, who is the department's special events unit commander.
"It was a result of the pushing and shoving you have at any concert," said Lt. Cash, who has overseen Street Scene for the past four years.
"But it was extremely well-handled. The crowd was very cooperative and AFI's singer (Davey Havok) slowed things down, and that speaks volumes."
Havok stopped his band's performance four times to calm the crowd, which included Nicole Ruggiero, 15, and Jenny Neufeld, 16, both of Berkeley Heights, N.J. They were attending with Nicole's brother, James, 7, and mother, Lori, 46.
"This guy I was with in the front was holding me up so I wouldn't fall. But we tripped on something and everybody fell down," Neufeld said.
"I was on top of the guy, Nicole was on top of me, and this other guy was on top of my head. I was very scared, but everybody was trying to help and was really nice."
Nicole agreed, adding: "You have to realize that stuff like that will happen when you get in a big crowd. It got rough, but I liked this festival a lot. We went to the Warped Tour this year, which was all the same kind of music. Street Scene has a lot more variety, which I like."
Lori Ruggiero, who anxiously watched AFI's performance from back in the crowd with her son, was understandably relieved the two girls were only shaken, not injured.
"Davey from AFI did an excellent job," Ruggiero said. "He basically told the kids off and calmed them, which is what they needed. He was being their parent."
The only other incident of note occurred mid-Saturday night at the corner of Park Boulevard and K Street, one of two cross streets within the Street Scene site intersected by the San Diego Trolley.
The trolley, a favored mode of transportation for many festivalgoers, was operating as usual. Such a large throng converged en route to see Jack Johnson perform that the trolleys couldn't get through.
"It got to the point where people couldn't move or go forward, and the trolley was stuck, so we had to utilize six police officers on horseback to get through the crowd," Lt. Cash said yesterday. "Once we did, everything was fine.
"There were a lot of people. But it was very successful overall and we're very happy. We had no violence, no major crimes, and no major injuries. In our book, that's a success."
The AFI and trolley incidents aside, the vibe at Street Scene was of a big party where the emphasis was on music, dancing and having a great time in a colorful setting awash with sound and lights.
The record two-day attendance of approximately 105,000 was a triumph and vindication for Street Scene founder Rob Hagey, whose decision to dramatically retool the event to draw a younger audience was questioned by some longtime festivalgoers.
There were some justified complaints that the wait in line at the beer garden took up to 45 minutes and that no printed performance schedules were handed out. But the overall atmosphere was suitably festive and the smooth operation of such a massive event is a credit to the audience and to the teamwork between the city's police and fire departments and Street Scene founder/producer Rob Hagey and his staff.
Memorable performances were delivered by veteran acts (Toots & The Maytals, Social Distortion and the galvanizing Patti Smith), comparative newcomers (Jimmy Eat World and San Diego's Accident Experiment, a last-minute replacement for P.O.D.) and acts in between (Foo Fighters, reunited hip-hop innovators A Tribe Called Quest and Ben Harper, who soared when he was joined by gospel-music legends the Blind Boys of Alabama).
The generally excellent audio quality was a welcome improvement over the muddled din at recent Street Scenes, although some veteran festivalgoers complained that the event isn't like it used to be (and they're right).
But Street Scene celebrated its 20th year with a dramatic rebirth. And that's fitting, since many young fans were attending for the first but surely not the last time.
THEN AND NOW
How has Street Scene grown and changed since its inception 20 years ago? Let us count the ways.
1984
Location: Two stages on Fifth Avenue in the Gaslamp Quarter
Duration: Five hours
Performers: Los Lobos, the Blasters, Joey Harris & The Speedsters, King Biscuit Blues Band and the Rebel Rockers
Tickets: $5
Attendance: 5,000
1994
Location: Fourteen stages in the Gaslamp Quarter, between Third and Seventh avenues and Market Street and Harbor Drive.
Duration: Two days
Performers: More than 70 acts, including Sheryl Crow, Neville Brothers, Richard Thompson, Chaka Khan, Ben Harper, Pato Banton, Angelique Kidjo, Joe Lovano, Cracker, Ike Turner Revue, Mahlathini & The Mahotella Queens, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Buddy Guy, Boukman Ekspyrans, Z, Roy Hargrove, The Staple Singers, War, Dave Alvin, The Rugburns, The Wild Magnolias and Zap Mama
Tickets: $25 per day; $39 for both days
Attendance: 55,000
2004
Location: Three stages in the three parking lots next to Petco Park
Duration: Two days
Performers: Thirty acts, including Ben Harper, Ludacris, P.O.D., Patti Smith, Jack Johnson, Social Distortion, Foo Fighters, A Tribe Called Quest, Ziggy Marley, Wyclef Jean, Jimmy Eat World, Cypress Hill, John Butler Trio, The Killers, Loque, Dilated Peoples, Louis XIV, AFI, The Killers, Scarlet Symphony, Brazilian Girls, Blackalicious and Slightly Stoopid
Tickets: $39.50 per day; $65 for both days
Attendance: 105,000
GEORGE VARGA
Then and now
This year's Street Scene differed from last year's edition in many ways. Here's a quick comparison:
CROWDS
Last year: Approximately 70,000 over three days.
This year: Approximately 105,000 over two days, but with nearly twice as much space (620,000 square feet) as in 2003.
WEATHER
Last year: Hot and sticky.
This year: Picture-perfect and pleasant, with a steady ocean breeze.SURPRISES
Last year: Just by turning a corner, you could stumble on an unexpected musical treat.
This year: No corners to turn onto, but several local debuts (Amp Fiddler, Brazilian Girls, Loque) helped spice things up.
NOISE BLEED
Last year: The nonstop techno that blasted down the length of Island Avenue was a constant annoyance, especially for performers on the intimate Southwest Airlines Stage.
This year: The three stages were well positioned so that none detracted sonically from the others, except in a few very quiet musical moments.
PLACES TO CHILL Last year: Attendees could grab a seat and stretch out at the outdoor Starbucks Coffee Jazz Lounge, a welcome oasis with some of San Diego's top jazz and blues acts.
This year: No jazz, but scattered seats in the food court and bar areas were welcome, if too few. Sitting on the asphalt was not as inviting, though many fans did.
MOST FREQUENT SHOUT-OUTS
Last year: Variations on "San Diego rocks!" and "This is from our new album..."
This year: Vote for Kerry; vote Bush out; vote, period. Frequent references to marijuana consumption.
GEORGE VARGA
Union-Tribune researcher Beth Wood contributed to this story.
September 02, 2004
Street Scene 2004 - Day 2 Pictures
Here are some pictures from Street Scene 2004 - Day 2, from backstage, frontstage, and everywhere in between.
Authority Zero Opening Day 2 at the Time Warner / Road Runner Stage
Here's the recap...