There’s always going to be battles between individuals, cities, towns, governments, venues, neighbors and more when it comes to music and people dancing. Just about everyone has seen or heard of the movie Footloose about a small town shook up over a dance craze. There’ll always be conflicts with music and Albany, NY is the most recent city to have such a conflict.
The city has said that the venue was essentially operating as an illegal nightclub by hosting touring events with DJ’s. City officials have yanked permission for the Washington Avenue Armory to host large dance parties and Supreme Court Justice Michael Lynch has backed up that ruling.
Tours with a handful of DJ’s have become more and more popular over the past few years and have acted more like concert tours but the city has said they amount to roving nightclubs that violate the armory’s zoning. The business model was to never operate as a nightclub but they now say that the Washington Avenue Armory has acted as one of the largest nightclubs in upstate New York.
Is this a new war brewing against electronic dance music? I don’t believe so. This involved a venue that had some issues that weren’t properly handled. There was an incident with over 1,500 party goers at an event where people fought to get inside and even fought with police. Events like Excision’s tour advertising over 100,000 watt’s of bone crushing sound have not sat well with neighbors either.
I’ve been involved with electronic music since 1999 when events moved from venues that often weren’t licensed or illegal and into legitimately run businesses like nightclubs, concert halls and even massive arena’s and things like this are isolated incidents. This is where all of us need to be responsible inside and outside of all venues to prevent things like this from happening anywhere else.
Is it right for electronic music to be singled out? Not in my opinion and probably not yours but a Supreme Court Justice says it’s ok.
More info available from the Albany Times Union here and here.
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