The Soundwave Festival concluded its 2013 run at Perth’s Claremont Showgrounds on Monday, and while over 70 bands rocked multiple stages all lined up to the strict 10pm curfew imposed on the Perth leg of the one-day event, Soundwave boss AJ Maddah has publicly claimed that power cuts that ended the show and affected headliners’ sets were a “cheap political stunt” pulled by the Western Australian State Government.
Maddah took to his regular social media platform on twitter to vent his anger over the power cuts that affected the likes of The Offspring, The Amity Affliction and Pierce The Veil, as Crave Online reports. Despite reshuffling their lineup and plans to meet the conditions of the 10pm curfew placed on the event after a single resident made a noise complaint over Soundwave 2012.
In response to a user’s accusations that it was the WA Premier Collin Barnett who was responsible for the power cuts, Maddah wrote:
@ohheyymanxd not til I find ot exactly what happened. Trying to be less reactionary! But looks like cheap political stunt.
— AJ (@iamnotshouting) March 5, 2013
“Definitely not a life or death situation. Just a power tripping State Gov arsehole by the sound of it,” he wrote in another post. “Bit of election grandstanding would be my guess,” he says of the reason to kill the Soundwave sets early. While in another response he notes conspiratorially; “larger game is afoot. They’re trying to starve RAS (Claremont Showgrounds) of funds to force them to sell land to developers.#corruption”
The Town of Claremont’s lack of love for music festivals is no secret, council representatives and the state government have been butting heads not only with Soundwave in the week leading up to its Perth leg, but also placed a similar 10pm curfew on January’s Big Day Out, and labelled the punters of electronic music festival Stereosonic “the worst ever”, even after deciding to give the green light to the large-scale festival.“The fuckwit from Dept Envir & Consv was too gutless to shut down the big stages. [He] knew that if they cut Metallica 45000 fans would set the town on fire.” – AJ Maddah, Soundwave
Love Pierce Brothers?
Get the latest Pierce Brothers news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more
At the time of Stereosonic’s approval in November 2012, Chief Executive Stephen Goode said, “they had no blemishes last year so their approval is in the system at the moment ready to be signed off,” adding that, “Soundwave is the one that’s caused all the angst and all the breaches of conditions.”
Maddah criticised the council for tarring Soundwave’s punters with the same brush, saying “they can’t be bothered to differentiate between an event w/ no drugs/antisocial behaviour or a total abortion like Stereosonic… So Stereosonic crowd go mental on meth/GBH and shit in the local church and in return Gov makes life hard for BDO and SW.”
As previously reported, the local council in the Town of Claremont originally rejected both Soundwave and the Big Day Out’s applications to use Claremont’s Royal Showgrounds, effectively forcing the decision up to Environment Minister Bill Marmion, a member of the Liberal Premier’s cabinet, leading to the hour earlier starting and finishing times on both events.
Mayor Jock Barker has also spoken openly about his distaste for hosting music festivals in the Perth town, telling Big Day Out organisers they were “not welcome’ by a number of local councillors, and adding “I don’t want to see it back [here]… I was happy to see the back of it. It does nothing useful for the town.”
The Soundwave boss has noted he plans to get to the bottom of the matter, proposing that the power cuts and “election grandstanding” could jeopardise the future of Soundwave returning to Perth, “sadly if the State Government is against events coming to Perth then we can’t fight them.
@amberpiccoli Sadly if the State Government is against events coming to Perththen we can’t fight them.
— AJ (@iamnotshouting) March 6, 2013
