Here is five solid reasons why you should spend your hard-earned cash on making the Legion Festival a reality. Australia’s first crowd-funded rock festival could rock your summer every year forever if we ALL throw in and make it happen. Let’s do this!
1. Crowdfunding is your chance to make the choices. You call the shots.
When bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails made albums via crowdfunding, they proved that all they needed to make music was their fans. The ONLY thing. That means the only people making decisions about the art are the artists and the people who appreciate the art. This means no lame suit compromises – that shit is pure. You now have the chance to contribute to creating a festival created by artists, for YOU. Did you know Melbourne rock band Ne Obliviscaris raised a record-breaking EIGHTY THOUSAND dollars thanks to their wonderful fans and have gone to Europe three times this year as a result, spreading Aussie heavy music to the masses? Imagine if ten more Aussie bands could do that. Imagine how many hot meals and sick shows that puts on the table and the stage for our best and brightest. YOU have the power to keep your favourite bands active, on the road, feeding their family, making exactly the music they want to make. And with Legion Festival, you can do it for a whole day of bands!
2. This isn’t just about March, this is about a metal festival every summer in the future.
Do you know what happens if Legion Festival meets its fundraising goal? They prove the idea of a heavy metal festival where Australian artists are given top billing alongside the world’s most significant artists is a viable concept. That it gets bums on seats. That it gets a stage set up, flights booked, and you get to discover your new favourite band, over and over again. That it will eventually grow and grow, and they will be able to afford bigger and bigger bands and a better experience. Do you know how much it costs to give you a million more sunburnt memories? A couple of cases of beer. A new dress. Ten packs of cigarettes (if you smoke, seriously, give up and make a festival happen). Do you have any idea how scared of heavy metal most of the commercial music industry are? How much they don’t understand it, they don’t know anything about it… so they avoid it like the plague? It’s not even them being mean, they just don’t get it. So don’t take it personally. But what the industry will always respect is numbers. Ten thousand kids means something to even the most musically ignorant of money men.
+More On Music Festivals: Ben Ely Of Regurgitator on The Big Day Out
3. Because festivals are special, unique moments in time that are fucking alchemy. Magic.
Do you remember when the thunder cracked overhead in Sydney at Tool’s Big Day Out show then they launched into songs so many of us got through the darkest times with? Do you remember when Rage Against The Machine launched into “f**k you, you won’t do what you tell me” and tens of thousands of kids screamed back?
Do you remember when that mystical 2013 Soundwave Festival attracted the biggest crowds we’ve ever seen for heavy artists and we all got to see Metallica slay? Or that year we got to see Iron Maiden (who came out on a plane Bruce Dickinson flew)? Or when Faith No More stayed the crowd, or when you walked around a corner at Soundwave and heard a band you never would have discovered otherwise who you listen to every day?
Well, guess what. It takes MILLIONS of dollars to make a festival happen. To build the stages, to drive around the artists, to fly over the artists, to pay the bar staff, to pay the road crew, to ensure there’s clean water and fences and a plentiful supply of drinks. To make sure there’s an ambulance crew if anything goes wrong. Do you know your tiny contribution makes this kind of magic a reality?
4. The Legion Festival lineup is sick and will only get better.
Do you have any idea how incredible Devil You Know are live? Do you know Ronnie James Dio loves singer Howard Jones’ cover of Holy Diver, do you know John Sankey is one of Australia’s most talented and successful drummers, that guitarist Francesco Artusano is a guitar virtuoso who has dedicated decades to his craft? Do you know how many amazing Aussie bands you could then see live on the regular if you help make this happen? Have you ever seen Devildriver do a circle pit at a festival, have you seen the grins on their faces and their happy bruises? Have you seen the love and passion Dez from Devildriver has for Australia, for playing live, for music? Have you seen how killer his band, who have invested years and years to putting on the best show possible? Well your contribution is helping these guys make you smile harder than anything.
5. It’s time to start a new chapter for Australian music festivals.
The contribution to the Australian music experience that the folks behind Soundwave, Big Day Out, Homebake, Splendour, Unify, Laneway, Falls and a million other epic festivals is huge and should always be respected, appreciated and valued. Putting on a show of this scale is gambling with literally millions of dollars and it’s countless hours of back-breaking work for everyone involved, from logistics to the top. Unfortunately what has happened in many cases, is the fanbase ages, the music scene splinters, the new kids want something different, and basically it becomes fucking impossible to please everyone, not to mention the promoter to put bands on that are meaningful enough to them to justify mortgaging their houses over it. Maybe the old model of music festivals (back when there was a mainstream, before every kid on a phone became their own niche market), like the old model for making records just can’t continue. But maybe, just maybe, if we work together and have an open dialogue with the creators, when you get to feel like the promoter this time, because you are – we can make sunburnt days where we get to drink in show after show, run in circles like crazy people, chill with strangers, fall in love with new bands and make musical memories we’ll have forever.
Do what you can do, however much you have to give. It means the world. Pledge here. Let’s make rock history happen.
– Christina Rowatt, The Void AU
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