The age old battle between live music venues and disgruntled residents reached fever-pitch last month, when one person’s complaints caused live music to cease in a New South Wales venue, and now sadly, a very similar fate has fallen on a laneway gig for Melbourne Music Week.
The ill-fated event is Magic Mountain Saloon and Westwood Place Laneway party, hosted by Melbourne CBD live music venue Boney, a part of the Live Music Safari that was to be held on Thursday 20th November, will now be shifted indoors due to neighbouring resident complaints.
Boney’s music and venue coordinator Stephen Wakefield has issued a statement on the matter, “The decision to consolidate the event in to Boney and not run an external stage in Westwood Place has been made following a spate of sound complaints from neighbouring buildings. Boney management do not feel confident that we can operate the event without exacerbating these issues.”
“Our first priority is to address any noise issues with our neighbours to ensure that Boney is able to run great parties with great sound well in to the future” he writes.
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This is gravely disappointing for Melbourne’s live music fans, it being well known that laneway parties play an integral role in the city’s iconic live music experience, and despite Melbourne’s major win against noise complaints shutting down venues, Boney’s movements to not piss-off residents is a safe one.
Although the shift of location definitely sucks, the most important piece of news to note is that the full existing line-up of live music will still perform, just solely inside Boney both up and downstairs.
Melbourne Music Week’s Westwood Place Party kicks-off at 4pm on Thursday 20th November and is a free event. The killer line-up will see Dylan Michél, Kane Ikin, Coup D’etat and Nic Hamilton (visuals) take over the topfloor bandroom whilst Julien Love, Silentjay and Versaj will perform downstairs.
