The Fyre Festival lives on as yet another reason to Never Trust a Trailer.
Important Note: To ensure that the festival is judged with a clear mind and the hatred isn't just a knee-jerk reaction, as well as to allow opinions to properly form, examples should not be added until at least one month after the event. This includes "sneaking" the entries onto the pages ahead of time by adding them and then just commenting them out.
- The Altamont Free Concert
, or "Woodstock West", as infamously documented by the concert film Gimme Shelter (1970). The Rolling Stones booked and headlined this show, which took place on December 6, 1969 at the Altamont Speedway in Alameda County, California. It featured many of the big rock bands of '60s counterculture America... as well as four deaths, countless injuries, massive property damage, and an attempt on Mick Jagger's life. Among the worse decisions: co-organizers The Grateful Dead paid members of the wrong chapter of Hells Angelsnote to stand guard, allegedly in $500 USDnote worth of cold beer. This decision resulted in countless fights with the audience, injuries to the talent, the one non-accidental death,note and a Jefferson Airplane set so catastrophic (one of them knocked singer-guitarist Marty Balin out partway through) that the Dead canceled their performance and fled out of fear. It served as the antithesis to the "peace and love" atmosphere of Woodstock, and on the heels of the Manson Family murders, Altamont came to symbolize that the counterculture movements of The '60s had ended with the '60s themselves. - Travis Scott's 2021 Astroworld Festival was intended as the yearly festival's grand return after the COVID-19 Pandemic. Travis had high hopes for it, including a live recording of his concert on Apple TV. Unfortunately, as detailed on The Other Wiki, the festival went so disastrously that it was cancelled on the first day. The problems began before even the festival itself—the whole thing was understaffed and underplanned. Security consisted of 100 or so people off the street, who answered an online ad and were immediately posted at the gate without background checks nor training. No plan existed to prepare for a crowd rush. Thus, a crowd a mere quarter of what Houston's NRG Park was equipped for easily overwhelmed the staff. The first reports of overdoses, injuries and arrests came before the festival actually started. Scott's reputation for encouraging reckless behavior at his concerts came to a head when the crowd promptly rushed the stage, causing a massive crowd crush. He ignored the ensuing panic and cries to stop the show, only pausing three times to acknowledge when someone passed out. Not even the staff bothered to step in. All in all, 10 people died, 23 were hospitalized, and over 300 were sent to the field medic. Scott later apologized and promised to help out, but the damage was already done, not just to his reputation but to the many plans made for after the festival. He and the other festival organizers were sued for creating a one-man Altamont.
- Blue Ridge Rock Festival, a metal festival located in Southern Virginia, always had its share of controversies surrounding logistical problems in the past, and after several complaints about the 2021 and 2022 editions, the main promoter promised major improvements for the 2023 edition... Unfortunately, the exact opposite happened, to the point it has become one of the main contenders for the worst festivals of 2023. The festival actually started well on its first day, until a weather alert during the afternoon put an end to it. Festivalgoers immediately discovered that there was no actual evacuation plan despite a massive storm hitting the festival grounds. Not only that, but the shuttle service quickly became overwhelmed because there were not enough coaches for the number of people to evacuate, let alone to attend the festival at all. There has been accounts of people waiting in line up to 5 hours, not to mention the campsite being literally obliterated by the storm, with several tents torn apart. The next day went through without a hitch, despite the cancellation of Till Lindemannnote and a heated weather. However, the last two days were abruptly cancelled due to weather issues. This was the final straw for festivalgoers and crew, as accounts of bad experience of the festival immediately started to flock. A Facebook group was even created just for that. Almost every accounts showcased the same problems at the festival: overpriced food and water, lack of basic accomodations, lack of access to water note , long waiting lines just to get into the festival grounds to the point people left cars several miles away, an overall unsanitary environment with dirty showers, dirty porta-potties and trash laying around the festival grounds, little to no assistance to injured or sick people, and overall poor planning. The festival crew themselves also denounced these appaling conditions and lack of accomodations, to the point the staff reportedly walked out of the festival hours before it was permanently cancelled. The Health Department of Virginia even investigated the festival grounds because of the unsanitary situation and noted many violations, though they clarified they did not shut Blue Ridge down. Even a few bands that had to chance to play at the festival came forward with their experience at the festival. You can watch Tankthe Tech's video herenote , were he outright says Blue Ridge was his worst working experience ever.
- Frostbite Metalfest, held in Lahti, Finland on 6-7 February 2009, was organized by an 18-year-old boy with no prior experience of planning a music festival. The event promised several big names in metal music, such as Lamb of God, Arch-Enemy, Cradle of Filth, Gorgoroth, and, most notably, Mayhem. Unfortunately, all but two of the above had to cancel when the organizer slacked off on paying (or in two cases, outright didn't) the talent's travel expenses. Even the bands that could make it found that he'd completely failed to meet basic promises of accommodation. This lackadaisical treatment extended towards the audience; what little information they were provided turned out to be inaccurate. The announcement that Mayhem wouldn't play, a single piece of printer paper taped to a wall◊ with "MAYHEM CANCELED" handwritten in Finnish, became an internet meme in Finland. The event also functionally bankrupted its organizer, who was left €190,000 in debt. Otto Levijärvi, youth journalist for the Finnish Broadcasting Company, covers the story of Frostbite Metalfest here.
- 2017's Fyre Festival, co-founded by Ja Rule and Billy McFarland, was a promotional event for McFarland's Fyre music booking app, selling tickets priced at an average of $1,200. Fyre promised a luxurious 3-day festival on a private resort in The Bahamas, with headliners like blink-182, accommodations in "modern, eco-friendly, geodesic domes" and gourmet meals from chefs, and $1,500 wristbands in lieu of cash or credit. In reality, there was no lineup outside of some hastily-employed buskers, the wristbands were never issued (and wouldn't have worked), the accommodations were FEMA relief tents, open-faced cheese sandwiches, and undressed salad, there was no access to water... and all of this was on an aborted building site Fyre simply advertised as a private resort. On Great Exuma, which was already overcrowded due to the annual boat race.note The area was hopelessly understaffed, with a baggage crew given to stealing and outright destroying luggage. And to top it all off, all air traffic from the island stopped for hours on end, which left people locked in a hot building without food, water, or money. The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism went so far as to publicly distance itself from the event. The Washington Post has a pretty entertaining article on the affair here, and New York Magazine's article could offer an insider's viewpoint because nobody mandated an NDA. Double Toasted talk about it here. The organizers were sued eight times, one for more than $100 million—the ensuing investigation got Billy McFarland put away for fraud, in relation to this and another racket. Internet Historian has an in-depth looks at the festival. Swindled dedicated an episode to Billy McFarland's fraudulent activity up to and during the festival, while Netflix and Hulu premiered different documentaries on the disaster in 2019, respectively Fyre and Fyre Fraud. Taking Dueling Works up to eleven, both docs directly accuse the other of being ethically compromised in various ways.note
- During what was considered the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic at the time, a festival called the Herd Immunity Fest (later renamed the July Mini Fest) happened in Ringle, Wisconsin from July 16-18, 2020 in spite of repeated warnings against the festival occurring for three months straight. The perceived goal of the festival was to rock out to music during the weekend of July 17-19 while also making sure enough people potentially got immunized from COVID-19. However, its perceived goal immediately got undercut when city officials limited the amount of concert goers from a maximum crowd of 10,000 people to just 2,000 people total. Even with the smaller than anticipated crowd, however, the crowd of 2,000 people (maybe even 2,500 people according to The Oakland Press) did not care for the CDC's social distancing rules of the timenote , nor did the crowd bother to wear any face masks to prevent the spread of the virus in case they did have COVID-19. At least one band that initially signed up for the festival (Nonpoint) dropped out of the event due to the festival's name, two tribute bands for Metallica and AC/DC respectively were listed as participants for this small event, and some people (including the lead singer of Powerman 5000) expressed their thoughts on the genuinely disturbing behavior of the festival going on during a pandemic back when the vaccine for the virus was months away from being released to the general public. Since it occurred during one of the highest points of the pandemic, it can be considered likely that some of the concert goers were infected by the virus when it was all said and done. This link showcases how this was an event where the crowd and the organizers just did not care about their own health and safety during such a heated time in history.
- The 2010 edition of Love Parade in Duisburg, Germany predates Astroworld Festival by ten years, and could be regarded as the electronic music equivalent of Altamont. The venue was hosted at a former freight station that wasn't built to accommodate even a quarter of the projected turnout to begin with, and the people in charge of event safety had the bright idea of having both the entrance and exit paths go through a single underpass which resulted in such a large jam of people that by the early evening there was at most one person on crowd control for every 310 attendants. Eventually, the overcrowding spun hopelessly out of control, resulting in a crush with 21 people dying from suffocation and over 500 more injured. The festival was permanently canceled, and the organisers were charged with gross negligence while blaming the city council of Duisburg for shoehorning the festival into the area as a source of profit. In the end, the courts ruled that no party was responsible for the tragedy, and a second attempt at prosecution was ended in 2020 due to the statute of limitations expiring, allowing all the accused parties involved to never face any consequences for their actions. Dark History details the timeline of events here.
- Metal Open Air, in 2012, was styled after festivals like Wacken and meant to bring high-end metal bands such as Megadeth, Blind Guardian and Anthrax to the huge metal scene in Brazil. Unfortunately, it went down as a spectacle of potential wasted by lousy decisions. For one, they hosted it at a fairgrounds in Maranhão, a region well away from any major cities, known for poverty, violent crime, low population, and very high temperatures. Well below half the talent even made it, due to careless handling of visas, nonstop clerical errors, and a complete failure to accommodate many of them for the trip. Those who did found themselves playing on deeply faulty equipment (through constant electrical blackouts), to a crowd deprived of food, water, or toiletries. In lieu of the advertised food court and bars, the organizer simply hired a couple food trucks at a steep markup. Reporters found themselves in a room with no Wi-Fi, phone reception, air conditioning, or basic security; predictably, much of their equipment was stolen. The festival was cancelled on its final day, after police involvement—and the audience and musicians alike had to sue the people in charge in an effort to get anywhere near what they were promised.
- The Newport Contemporary Music Series, organized by 25-year-old Paul Van Anglen, was an ambitious 2017 Rhode Island music festival featuring over a hundred professional musicians from various backgrounds, including award-winning soundtrack composers and the legendary Philip Glass. Never mind that it was competing against the nationally-renowned annual Newport Music Festival, that Newport wasn't famous for classical music, or that they couldn't actually kick it off in Newport for want of a suitable venue (they instead went with Jamestown, the next island over); Van Anglen was simply a rank amateur. He missed payment after payment, as he was relying entirely on donors. It got to the point where Glass pulled out—and Paul would've had him and his orchestra playing in the dinky auditorium of the dilapidated Rogers High School. He was such a lousy conductor that during rehearsal the performers simply counted the meter themselves, and the one world premiere that wasn't scrapped could not be performed in full. And his communication was so lacking that, at one point, him and concertmaster Harris Shilakowsky spent over an hour yelling and crying. It was three days before Van Anglen ended the festival, admitted he was out of money, ultimately apologized for his failures, and was sued in small claims to the tune of hundreds of thousands combined.
- The Redneck Rave was an annual music festival held in Kentucky that promised "five days of mud, music, and mayhem", and was well-known for the chaos it caused. However, none got quite as bad as the 2021 Redneck Rave in Edmonson County, Kentucky, which is considered to be the country version of Woodstock '99. Given the Redneck Rave's history of rowdy crowds (with one person having died during the prior one), the police worked mandatory overtime in anticipation of a mess. This still wasn't enough, as the sheriff said that the crowd was so bad that any ambulance sent in had to be accompanied by a deputy, and they eventually gave up trying to even enforce the law within the festival grounds and opted for trying to contain it. As for the festival itself... well, it certainly delivered on the mayhem. 48 people were charged with crimes and 14 were arrested, a woman was strangled to the point of unconsciousness, somebody's throat was slit in a drunken brawl, and there were many injuries that ranged from a lost finger to impalement on a log. Despite all the negative press surrounding it, the event's organizer, country rapper Justin Stowers (better known as "Who TF is Justin Time?"note ), decided that there was No Such Thing as Bad Publicity and flaunted all the headlines about the chaos that went down, along with him boasting that the festival had become international news. This article by Blake Montgomery for The Daily Beast and this post-mortem by Jeremy Chisenhall for the Lexington Herald-Leader going into detail on how it turned into such a mess.
- If the 2010 Love Parade was electronic music's Altamont, then TomorrowWorld 2015 was its answer to Woodstock '99. The event, which was created in 2013 as an American sister festival to the Belgian music festival Tomorrowland, was held in a field near the town of Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia and started off swimmingly. However, by the second night, bad weather kicked in and things went downhill fast. The festival grounds became saturated and muddy, causing a massive backing up of transportation services. Attendees that weren't camping on the festival grounds, an option traditionally offered by its parent event, were forced to wait for hours on end, putting up with cold temperatures and a lack of basic necessities like food and water, some growing frustrated enough to just try walking back to town.
- The final day was no better: in an effort to reduce the impact of the transportation issues, the festival decided that only attendees who were camping would be allowed to attend the final day of the festival, and everyone else would be refunded. After dealing with the PR blow of their lousy planning, which alienated audience and performers alike, and the festivals' parent company SFX Entertainment going bankrupt and being sold to new ownership note , the 2016 festival was canceled, and there hasn't been a TomorrowWorld festival since.
- Woodstock '99 ranks next to the Altamont disaster as one of the worst mass live events in America, and a complete disgrace to its namesake. It was planned horribly from the get-go—staged late July at closed-down Griffiss Air Force Base, a former toxic waste site, during the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony. The two main concert stages were a mile and a half apart, with no natural shade in-between, causing hundreds of heat exhaustionsnote . Few people left the shade of the hangars holding the Emerging Artists and rave stages. In the hopes of turning a profit, they jacked prices and lowered expenses wherever they could. Toilet and washing facilities amounted to port-a-potties and a mere 100 showers; they broke in little time and the resulting waste would flow directly into the camping area. Sanitation and security workers were overworked and underpaid, to the point of simply walking out on their posts. Meanwhile, outside food and drink were discouraged in favor of gouged vendor fare. In response, attendees tore open water fountains and picked nearby grocery stores clean. Parking was so dismal that, in the three-mile traffic jam, cars were left abandoned as they overheated or ran out of gas idling. And yet the organizers paid through the nose for talent; Insane Clown Posse alone got $100,000. It was scheduled horribly; on one stage, The Tragically Hip, Counting Crows, and the Dave Matthews Band played right before Limp Bizkit and Rage Against the Machine. A few performers handled themselves so poorly that it's not clear which of them drove the crowd to riot: Fred Durst ranted to the crowd and had his band play "Break Stuff." Kid Rock demanded the audience to throw water bottles at the stage. Insane Clown Posse threw beach balls covered in hundred-dollar bills into the audience, causing fights. And Red Hot Chili Peppers, after covering Jimi Hendrix's "Fire"note handed out candles. But no small part of it could be blamed on the crowd—fights broke out over who came to see who, even mid-concert, and TRL's staff was abused so badly they needed counseling. This escalated so quickly that state troopers and local police were overwhelmed. What finally lit the powder keg was the final "act"; after the festival had spent all its time hyping up a surprise final act that would blow everyone away, it was revealed to be archive footage of Jimi Hendrix playing "The Star Spangled Banner" at the original Woodstock festival. At that point, the audience's collective rage boiled over, it outright became a riot, and fires started springing up everywhere. By the end, people were smashing ATMs, booths, vehicles, a gallery, and audio equipment, stealing from one another nonstop, and lighting everything in sight on fire (including the borderwall mural commemorating the original Woodstock). There were six serious injuries, and at least eight confirmed countsnote of rape—including statutory, in a stolen truck that was driven through Fat Boy Slim's audience. The final scheduled event, a midnight DJ set by Perry Farrell, had to be cancelled, and the New York State Police had to be dragged in to clean up the mess.
More than one report made the requisite "Ms. American Pie" reference, while Anthony Kiedis compared it to Apocalypse Now. MTV evacuated its entire crew for their safety—MTV News anchor Kurt Loder, who is an Army veteran, likened the scene to an all-out war. Spin also did a post-mortem feature on the festival, and MAD Magazine responded with a hilarious, merciless send-up◊ by way of the original 1969 Woodstock poster. Festival organizer and Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang declared that there would be no further Woodstock events; true to his (initial) word, he could not get another one booked before he died, despite attempts to do so. In 2022, a documentary was released on Netflix detailing just how bad it got.
