As locals know, one of the staples of the music scene in Cincinnati is MidPoint Music Festival. From its humble beginnings in the early 2000’s to the City Beat buyout to yet another sale recently to MEMI (Music and Event Management Inc.)
I’ve been able to attend parts of almost every one of those festivals, and have had more than a few memorable experiences. I love MPMF and when I was running Each Note Secure, we dedicated almost 100 posts to covering the festival. And the experiences aren’t just limited to the music. There is something special about walking the streets of OTR during MPMF and running into friends, musicians, and locals who are all hopping from one set to the next, hungry for that next experience.
This year, MidPoint isn’t going to look like it did in the past. Actually, you could make a case that other than the general vicinity of the shows and the name, it’s nothing like it’s been in the past. This summarizes the changes.
“The festival will host more than 60 acts on four stages near Main and Sycamore streets, organizers announced Wednesday, instead of having bands play in neighborhood bars and at Washington Park as in previous years.”
Some of the early acts announced include Band of Horses, Frightened Rabbit, and Reggie Watts. Actually, the list looks pretty good. And it kinda spoke to 2010 me in many ways. That’s not a bad thing either.
Yesterday, mixed reactions started to pour in. The reactions from the MPMF purists like former festival head honcho and legendary Cincinnati booker Dan McCabe, who had this to say on Facebook.
“Our Symphony is tone deaf.
MidPoint Music Festival was a distinctly Cincinnati event for 15 years.
It could not have happened anywhere else.
Only Cincinnati’s MidPoint Music Festival filled sidewalks with kinetic energy amidst the largest concentration of historic Italianate architecture in the country.
In and around unique businesses, a nationally recognized start-up culture, stories-high murals, breweries and all the folks we’d meet along the way.
Nothing showed off Cincinnati like MidPoint Music Festival did.
Any city, anywhere, can slap bands onto a parking lot and call it a music festival.
But they shouldn’t try to call it MidPoint Music Festival.”
Venues that have hosted MPMF like Arnolds, MOTR, and others are not going to have MPMF shows this year for the first time in forever. You will no longer be able to bar hop around OTR and stumble into something great. Actually, is the festival even located in OTR? According to the maps I’ve seen, it looks a lot more like Pendleton.
It’s tough to disagree with Dan. MPMF was pretty unique in this day and age. That being said, from everything I’ve heard, MidPoint was a financial loser. Here’s a Facebook quote from another great booker in town and the man behind CincyMusic.com, Ian Bolender.
“The reality is that we almost didn’t have a MPMF. Thanks to a certain non-profit we still do. The model MPMF was running for years BLEEDS money & doesn’t make any sense. I know hipsters like to talk about how making money isn’t cool, but it’s kind of how you put food in your mouth. If they don’t like it they can start their own thing, and then they will finally understand.”
And those are basically, the two viewpoints. The purists and the realists. I’ve seen the argument from both sides with lots of fans being stuck in the middle showing an appreciate for the great lineup that has been announced so far. (And it is great.)
And it’s tough to not think of it as Bunbury Light, with acts that are more accessible for more people. Of course, this makes the other argument that Ian addressed above. If you don’t bring in acts that can bring in people, you don’t make money and die!
Trust me. I know this. I was a DJ for WOXY.com for almost four years and as a station we always had more people that loved us than that actually listened. When the station died it was largely due to mismanagement, but none of us were rolling in cash either.
I can’t help but think MidPoint is similar. If the amount of people that are upset about its demise were enough to keep it pure, it would still be that way. Sadly, that’s not the reality we are facing. And this isn’t an indictment on the purists, they / we really tried!
So did MPMF sell out? Are the new organizers betraying the legacy of the festival and ignoring the people that made it what it is today? Is our “Symphony” tone deaf?
No. I’m not going to side with any of that. The purist in me wants to, but it’s just not going to move the conversation forward. The sad truth is that the kind of music and the kind of festival I’d prefer to attend usually loses. The radio station I want to listen to is always the underdog and usually dies a quick and painful death at some point. Many of the bands that I love have to tour for a decade and work their asses off before they can “make” it, and most never do.
I’m a little sad about that, but I also realize that it’s the reality. It’s not trading cool for cash or selling out, it’s the world we live in.
So make a decision.
Do you want to support a Cincinnati festival that just happens to be called MidPoint (and maybe it shouldn’t be called that, to Dan’s point.) Or get upset and ignore it. You have the right to do that and I wouldn’t be upset if you did.
But when the venting is over, don’t forget that this is still a festival in our city being put together by local people. They are working hard and deserve credit for carrying the torch, even if it barely resembles the festival we loved.
So lets mourn the loss of a great festival and celebrate the fact that we still have festivals with great bands in Cincinnati, most cities don’t.
