Today, in “Can’t see the Big Dumb Forest for the Also Stupid Trees” news: A Wisconsin-based music festival has announced that it’s dropping its uber-classy branding as “Herd Immunity Fest,” after at least one band decided to drop out upon hearing about it—but is holding firm to the general, possibly-even-worse idea of holding a public music festival next month, period, in light of the ongoing global pandemic.
The festival, now sporting the extremely catchy name “3 Day Mini-Fest,” has been organized by Wisconsin’s 107.5 FM radio station, in what we can only assume is an extremely misguided interpretation of all those platitudes about the healing power of music—a metaphor which generally isn’t considered to have much weight in the face of viruses with high transmission and hospitalization rates, and no vaccine. (It’s possible scientists just haven’t thought to apply Wisconsin metal bands to the problem yet, though.) Nevertheless, per Consequence Of Sound, the organizers have asserted that they’re going forward with the project, laying out their rationale like this:“When the lock down first happened my first thought was OK we can all do 2 weeks, then it went on and on, things were getting cancelled, I started to worry about people not only for this Covid but mental, physical, financial. As humans we NEED other human contact.”
We would point out that, as humans, we also need functioning lungs, but hey: As neither doctors nor the people operating “The coolest station in the nation!”, what could we possibly know? And so the show must, apparently, go on, with the Mini-Fest scheduled to run from July 16 to July 18, featuring bands including Static-X, Dope, Bobaflex, Royal Bliss, AC/DC tribute act Thunderstruck, Blacktop Mojo, Flaw, Kaleido, Saul, Versus Me, and Metallica tribute act One. Also, Adelitas Way has been added to the bill to replace Nonpoint, which dropped out of the festival because, well, see above.
To be fair, the organizers have stated that they’ll be implementing plenty of safety precautions—although not the really big safety precaution of not bringing thousands of people together to stand near each other, screaming the contents of their lungs out onto each other in pursuit of a rocking good time. Only 20 percent of the outdoor venue’s 10,000 person occupancy is being sold, for instance, “so anyone has the choice and ability to social distance.” So there’s that fixed.