EXCLUSIVE: Warped Blame Government For Festival’s Perth Snub

The return of the Warped Tour to Australian shores will feel real this Wednesday when the line-up is announced, but Western Australian fans will be subdued as the tour will skip their state.

Promoted by Warped founder Kevin Lyman with guidance from Australian-based Soundwave boss AJ Maddah, the latter has told theMusic.com.au that he believes the state government's regulations have cheated the state's youth out of a proper music scene.

 “To be quite frank, the past few years, Perth hasn't been particularly kind to punk bands or to punk events,” he said. “For example, I had a bill of Panic! At The Disco, All Time Low, Yellowcard and somebody else [at Counter Revolution] that couldn't sell 1000 tickets in Perth.”

Maddah laid the blame for the scene's stifled development firmly at the politicians' doorstep.

“State laws have made it just about impossible to do all ages shows, and what's that done exactly is that a whole couple of generations of kids have missed out on going to shows when they're young,” he said. “Therefore [they] have grown up being into shit music, quite frankly, in terms of what's on at 94.5 and various other stations in Perth.

“Perth is great for P!nk and what have you, but it's not so good for punk rock.”

Unlike the 'monster festival' that Soundwave has become, Warped Tour will stick to its DIY ethos, with artists to driving between stops. For that reason, Maddah and Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman couldn't justify forcing through a Perth leg.

“It's just the fact that we would need to have x number of days off going there and x numbers of days off coming back. It means we would have to try and extend the tour to get there on a weekend date, and it just didn't add up.

“With the expense and the time it would take out of every band's itinerary we decided not to do Perth this year, but if we find that the support is there, we'll consider it for next year.”

Stay tuned to theMusic.com.au for the full interview with AJ Maddah and Kevin Lyman, as well as the line-up announcement, in the coming days.