Wednesday, October 6, 2010

HullabaLOU Doesn't Wanna Play Anymore

Jake from Ville Voice says that the news that Churchill isn't going to be hosting a HullabaLOU 2011 is "the most non shocking move ever," but frankly, while I'm not "shocked," I am a bit surprised.  

Maybe it's the teacher-lady in me, but I'm disappointed by the decision.  HullabaLOU was a kid in a science class who has a really great BIG IDEA, but as she's laying out her experiment, she got a lot (a LOT) of the little steps wrong. And when the experiment failed to give her the results she desired, instead of going back and correcting her mistakes, she just swept the whole rig off the lab counter and sulked.

Heat? Economy? Those are things you CAN'T control, and those two aspects of HullabaLOU's meh turnout were actually very LOW on the list of HullabaPROBLEMS.

Too high ticket prices.  The lack of family friendliness (partially due to the ticket prices, partially due to the fact that there was nothing for the kiddos to do).  The really pathetic local food offerings.  The perception (somewhat deserved) that the music line-up was for old fogies. The list goes on, and I covered most of it in my coverage of HullabaLOU

But seriously, CDE... all that stuff??  TOTALLY fixable.  You can't fix the weather or the economy (but you can make your tix economical).  But you could've boosted the profile and the attractiveness of HullabaLOU with no problem over the course of the year.  The bones of a good festival were there.  Heck the bones were already in place because of JazzFest at your sister venue.  HullabaLOU chose to ignore some of the important things that make New Orleans Jazz Fest work year after amazing year.  Reinventing the wheel-- almost never a good idea.

So, CDE, I'm disappointed in you.  Bummer that you thought that the best idea was to turn off your Bunsen burner and go home.  

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