Rock the Mill

We're a band featuring members from Guelph and Kitchener. I moved to Guelph from Sudbury for school, and now work full time in Cambridge. We've played shows and festivals around this area, and have always been pround to be part of the Kitchener/Waterloo/Guelph/Cambridge area due to it's rich contribution of talent to the Canadian/World music scene as a whole. We've seen the impact underground music culture can have on the lives of young people in ourselves and our friends and feel it's one of the most important things to keep active in communities.

I don't think we're a terrible band. If I did, then I wouldn't put the time/energy into it, but threads like these on www.fiveonenine.com keep us thinking we're doing something that people enjoy, and so should keep doing: The Decay are soooo awesome

Which is why it has been puzzling for us that we can't seem to play a music festival that showcases local music in our area, while dozens of bands with less connection to the area, or bands we've been on bills with over and over again get selected for the festival. Yet, we have played Scene Fest, and NXNE, which are arguably "bigger" and have nothing to do with our area.

Rock the Mill is a youth oriented alternative music festival. It is in part supported by the city of Cambridge and is (primarily) volunteer run.

We have applied to their festival for the last three years. Last year, given the gamut of bands that played who were in the same "league" as the Decay, we didn't understand why we couldn't get on the bill, but chalked it up to "well, we'll try next year after exercising more".

This year, things were a bit different, and a fair amount has been said on FiveOneNine/519punk boards about it, so from our perspective this is our final take on it:

• Rock the Mill band application committee member (Chris Taylor) sends out invite to apply
• Erik from the Decay sends application and $10 to Rock the Mill c/o the city liason as required
• Couple weeks go by, Erik is depressed/hungry because he didn't hear back from RTM
• Chris Taylor indicates on FiveOneNine that he's excited for us to apply, but didn't get the app
• Erik, still hungry, sends out the second application and $10. He's out $20, and Erik loves money
• More weeks go by, Rock the Mill line up is posted. The Decay is not on it
• Chris again tells us he didn't get the applications
• The city liason tells us HE doesn't have the applications, so either didn't get them, or RTM has them.
• People, from RTM start talking on 519punk, tell the Decay:"Sorry, try next year"
• Brian Santos, who is managing RTM in the future, puts a stop to RTM staff talking publicly about it

Now, going back to previous attempts to play RTM:

• A former RTM committee member tells us, that last year out of 150 bands, we were voted #14 by the committee for bands to be on the show, and should have been on last year. What? Rats.
  

The Decay were #14 on the list. Looking at bands that fell below you guys, this is who I can recall that made it into the lineup: ___ (#18), ______(#21), _____ (#22), ________ (#29), _______ (#36), __________ (#47).

From that first list I posted, I can let you know that our __________ is the tour manager (or something) for _______ and I believe he is good friends with ______. The _____person I believe is also friends with ____.

I guess we suck

• The Decay meet with Brian Santos. Brian tells us (I'm paraphrasing) there's pretty much nothing that can be done, and no-one he can blame, but insists next year will be better.

We're not naive enough, or inexperienced enough to not know this is how the music (and most) industry tends to work, but given Rock the Mill receives what I can only guess is a large amount of funding from the City of Cambridge, (Budweiser sure isn't bankrolling them) and given they are requesting an application fee, there is an expected duty of care to seeing that we get a fair application process. At no point in time did anyone from Rock the Mill say "Hey, you said you sent in your application, twice and we didn't get it? Well lets just look at your band right now".
Instead we just got "I don't know who lost it, better luck next time"

$20 is like two burritos+nachos man!

Rock the Mill is a festival with a lot of potential, and as a resident of the area, I would like to see it get as big as possible, but not at the expense of Erik's sanity, or the legitimacy of a city event, as people suggest on the most important message boards in the world.

I'm not trying to whine, we're okay with not playing it and hell we have enough band problems, but we know how to mail stuff, I swear.

I also don't want to knock the efforts of volunteers who care enough about the music scene to invest their time and effort into such an event. Huge appreciation for that - and without the volunteers something like this wouldn't happen. But if some of the people volunteering have a business stake in what gets decided on with regards to the festival, then are they really volunteers or are they just doing their job?

I could go on making conclusions given how this all relates together, and back to the city - but I'll leave that up to all you, true believers.