I never write a 3rd blog about our no jazz festival but I am making an exception. One week to the day after my 'After Math' post, the Free Press jazz columnist / festival apologist did a thinly veiled 'interview' with the no jazz festival director.
Addressing things like whether they made money, what shows made money. Almost as if they read the blog and felt the need to counter little ole me...or just another in a series of coincidences.
You can read the article here
So in it, they team up to give a rosy picture of a bad festival (now there's some fine unbiased journalism for ya).
We have seen the 'things will be fine once the numbers are in' statements before, so this part is nothing new. Kinda like when an NHL president give full endorsement to a losing coach. But we never get 'the numbers are in and they are fine' let alone 'the numbers are in and they are not good' statements.
There is an attempted corollary between the rain cancelled free shows and the risk of not being in the black. Luckily they don't try to make that point directly because you'd have to be brain dead not to see how dumb that is. The shows that no one pays to see and JW gets funding for are cancelled and you blame that for losing money overall???
Luckily for them, they got more of our tax dollars to shore up their 'surplus' money from some past money making years. I don't know what years those are...the year they where begging for year end donations...the year they where giving away main-stage tickets because no one wanted to pay to see JATLC 3 times in 2 years.
Ya that's what we want to hear as jazz and arts fans and as taxpayers.
The second half of the article is the jazz columnist telling us there was too much to see each night.
Ya right, any local jazz fan had no problem finding the thin jazz on any night that they couldn't see for free the rest of the year.
But as I have noted before, outside of antiquated marketing their plan, as such, is a series of 'tactics'. Bogus Facebook profile, self serving print articles, passing off pop as jazz influenced, padded bios, hoping friends & family fill the seats of shows featuring 2nd year students, counting on tax dollars to shield their blundering, selling booze, etc.
What they need is a strategy but first they would have to know the difference
On the good side they are bringing Chick Corea's new group in Sept
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