Ridiculousness

So it turns out that running a venue comes with an interesting platter of side effects. Not the 'swollen head, migraines and extensive bleeding' type, but the angry Christians type - which might well be worse.

As much as I bitch about it, I've got to expect noise complaints, bitchy neighbours and power-tripping police officers when we put on drum & bass and dubstep on a regular basis (on two of the best systems in Sydney too). I might hate having 12 cops with sniffer dogs traipsing into my venue at 10pm then making snidey remarks when they find nothing and leave, or being made to stand in the road listening to the noise coming from the top deck of the building because the cop does not know how to do his job properly and I do know, but that comes with the territory of dance music. They hate it.

However, metal gigs are usually easy. They have their own gear, people like them and  if I book any band after 11pm they're up in arms as they all want to be home by midnight, so they never play late shows. Plus, anyone who plays in a metal band is necessarily nice, polite and somewhat shy. Even if the band is called C*nt Butcher, I bet they're exactly the kind of people you take home to your grandma for tea: totally mild-mannered.

I wasn't expecting the fallout, then, from booking a metal festival. I didn't even bat an eyelid at the name. But some crazy Christians did.

Everyone knows that metal is full of rhetoric, ridiculousness and general OTT behaviour, which most of the time is in stark contrast to the actual members of the bands. The 'Black Mass' festival then shouldn't even raise an eyebrow. But one group, trawling for no particular reason on an Adelaide underground metal forum, found the info and went apeshit, starting a campaign of harrassment against us, the venue and the organisers for alleged appropriation of 'sacred' Catholic symbols and putting on a 'satanic' event, which they believed was going to comprise of animal sacrifices and whatnot.

They complained so aggressively and so vehemently to the RSL board that the decision was taken out of my hands entirely, and as I've just found out, targeted the replacement venue so much they they too had to cancel the event, leaving the organisers thousands of dollars out of pocket and seriously gutted. They were aggressive on the phone, threatened physical violence against the performers and made it their own little pathetic crusade to have this harmless event shut down.

Along with being absolutely ridiculous, totally hypocritical to supposed Christian traits of tolerance and runing someone's livelihood for no real reason, this brings up the question of why your beliefs should dictate what is out of bounds for someone else. Does me wearing a ring on the 4th finger of my left hand despite not believing in marriage mean that I'm desecrating the 'holy union of marriage'? Does some metalhead wearing a pentagram misrepresent Pagan beliefs? I don't think so.

Anyway, its all a learning curve, and next time I'll know to book an offensively-titled metal fest on Christmas Day or something when they've got better things to worry about, like non-virgins playing Mary in nativity plays and Christmas puddings not containing the right amount of holy water.

The upside of this is that everyone knows about them, and they called me "fairly contemptuous" on their Facebook page. Anyone who knows me will realise that having personally annoyed a fundamentalist religious group totally made my day.

If you fancy checking out these psychos, and marveling at their lack of tact when protesting at abortion clinics,  the 'gay mass' and other insane actions, here's their website: http://www.catholictakingaction.blogspot.com/