When he’s not beefing with the Madden brothers or getting called out by rival festival promoters, AJ Maddah spends most of his time on Twitter running Soundwave. Celebrating it’s 10th edition, this year’s festival should have been a victory lap of sorts with a mammoth line-up and impressive crowd figures but thanks to some dangerously moronic flair-happy revelers and and NSW’s inclement weather, we bore witness to how hellish life can be for a festival promoter – one Tweet at a time.

With a successful Brisbane leg and the obligatory celebrations a foggy, nauseating memory, we can only imagine the gut wrenching fear Maddah must have felt when he arrived on sight to learn that Garbage and Paramore’s gear was missing in action. 

In addition the inevitable game day quibbles that Maddah regularly addresses online e.g. no U/18’s in D-barrier, reports of over zealous security, groupie-themed band info request, Maddah’s attempts to co-ordinate an air/road/rail retrieval mission didn’t hamper his zeal for responding to disgruntled fans. Not exactly text book customer relations, but with a crowd of 75 000, you’re always going to lose a few. May as well lose them in style.

Considering he’d gone as far as to call a customer a “c*#t”, his tirade against the tardy delivery drivers was pretty subdued by his standards*.

With all the gear finally on-site, the Garbage performance cancelled, Paramore delayed, and a bunch of other time-table tweeks, the real drama started with reports that flares had been ignited within the crowd. Unfortunately the news got worse when it was confirmed that a teenage girl suffered a serious burn on her forearm after she was hit with a burning piece of stage rigging. She was rushed to hospital for emergency treatment. Predictably Maddah hit Twitter to vent his disgust.

Sooo that’s what it’s like to run an insanely entertaining Twitter account a music festival. Well played AJ, you can have that to yourself.

* When the suggestion that the offending drivers
may have spent the day engaging in lewd conduct at every stop along the
pacific highway instead of delivering their goods on time is considered
subdued, that’s saying something.

via Triple M

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