How the Duck got fucked

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by SCOTT C

They said it couldn't happen--and it looks like they were right. Last weekend's A Great Adventure, the monster outdoor party with a lineup of DJs that read like a who's who of dance music, was greeted with disbelief by most when flyers initially hit the streets over a month ago. That disbelief was confirmed with the last-minute cancellation of what would have been one the biggest parties the region has seen. So what happened?

Jeff (no last name, please), a promoter for the event, explains things this way: "It was destroyed by politics. We had everything 100 per cent organized, until the last two days leading up. We had certain money allocated for certain things, including buses, sound, light and tents. At the last minute, the sound and light company, who we'd agreed on a $15,000 deposit, demanded $45,000, in cash, up front. It's an astronomical figure to come up with in one day. Banks demand 48 hours notice for that kind of liquid cash. The company wouldn't even accept a certified cheque."

Jeff attributes the sound company's sudden change of faith to sabotage, playing on a history of no-show DJs that Montrealers have come to take for granted. "They'd gotten a call from somebody telling them we hadn't sold many tickets. Thing is, the last few weeks they'd been selling really well, because the credibility of the event had finally been stamped. Interviews were happening, people were seeing that the artists were really coming. Everything was confirmed. One reporter who I spoke to recently had a lot of trouble believing in the event herself. She had someone research it, calling all the agents, and her researcher came back and said, 'Yes, they're all booked.'"

The dirty pool which Jeff suggests is hardly news for the local dance music scene. This is a youth-based musical culture, which means young promoters and the attendant lack of experience, professionalism and even ethical judgement. It's also a culture with roots in dubious legality and a code of secrecy--a noble and necessary thing, when you consider the efforts of law and order to squash the culture throughout its early days, but also a precedent for deceit as "business as usual."

"Call us naive, but we just weren't expecting this bombardment of foul play. We had to work hard just to put the event together, and at the same time it was continuous damage control." The damage control continues, as Justice Entertainment, the promoters of A Great Adventure, have to prove that the cancellation of the party was not simply a matter of cutting losses and skipping out on unacceptable ticket sales. There's grumbling in the local scene about local DJs not getting their deposits. Moreover, there's a history in the DJ scene, complementing the tales of inter-promoter treachery, of artists getting ripped off by shifty promoters. Even if Justice make good on every last promised cent, the masses may well continue to assume the worst (the worst being the aforementioned "business as usual").

"If you hear something bad about an event," says Jeff in his own defence, "you have to keep in mind that other promoters in this city would stand to lose if it went off well, because the whole standard of parties in this city would change." :