Pill Tests, Dream Acts & Other Insights From Laneway's Reddit AMA

Make no mistake: as filled with weirdos as it can be, Reddit is a goddamned gift to the planet.

It has promoted the easy and free exchange of ideas and insights for years, and given notable individuals a platform to be interviewed directly by their audience in regular Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions, which are often incredibly revealing — or, at the very least, entertaining.

As Music Feeds has noted, today's AMA with St Jerome's Laneway Festival identities Danny Rogers (co-founder) and Dom O'Connor (A&R) was absolutely the former, with the pair of promoters explaining that the recent withdrawal from the festival of popular rapper Young Thug was less "cancellation" by the artist than it was "preventative measure" on Laneway's part.

Responding to a question enquiring as to whether they ever truly expected the Wyclef Jean hitmaker to turn up for the event, Rogers replied, "Yes we did, because his management worked very hard to get all of the visa process together."

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"Unfortunately as most of us know and saw over the past month, Thugger worked to his own timelines," he said. "Even though we had all indications that this was a goer, when it came to the absolute finish line and us pushing back on deadlines on various things til the 11th hour ... we started to realise that we might be working with an artist that might be somewhat unreliable."

Rogers says Young Thug's removal from the bill is the first such event in 13 years, but that the call was made "so that we didn't get into a situation right on top of the festival that we couldn't manage".

The truth behind Young Thug's absence from Laneway wasn't the only piece of trivia to take away from the AMA, though — in fact, the guys were full of interesting lessons…

on Pill Testing

"While we don't condone drugs at festivals we would love it if there was something set up that enabled for drugs to be tested both at festivals and in general." — Danny Rogers

on their Dream bookings

Danny: "I would love to book A Tribe Called Quest but I might need a GoFundMe or a start-up as I think it might be a little bit out of our budget — which is fair enough, they might be the greatest hip hop band of the past 20 years."

Dom: "My dream booking would be somehow getting The Replacements to reform again. They're my all-time favourite band, we've looked at them in the past and it would be incredible to see them live in my life."

on memorable moments

Rogers tips his hat to Les Savy Fav as the finest performers he's seen at the festival:

"Best performance for me was Les Savy Fav in Melbourne, where [frontman] Tim [Harrington] pushed all the rules. He jumped into the Maribyrnong River, doing a few laps and did probably the first-ever shoey with river juice! I think they stopped touring after this tour as Tim Harrington was seeing all sorts of things after this."

But neither will he forget his interaction with Ian McCulloch (of Echo & The Bunnymen), who apparently "would not get onto the stage without his special hair gel that actually only kept his hoody on his balding head".

"He was two hours late for his show and caused us tonnes of grief," Rogers said. "Fuck, he was good live though."

Meanwhile, O'Connor says the Parquet Courts guys are just ridiculously nice humans:

"I met them at the first Laneway I went to (2014) and I'm still friends with them to this day. Absolute legends, a great band full of wonderful people."

Oh, and that Mac De Marco's rider was probably the weirdest he's seen, asking "for four large Filet-O-Fish meals from McDonald's instead of meal tickets, as well as three pinball machines for his band to use".

on Gender Balance and diversity

With regard to striving for broader gender balance and diversity in their line-ups, O'Connor says, "It's something that we definitely take into account when booking the festival and believe that every festival should".

"Obviously there's still more to do but if you look at the line-ups of the festival we've always had strong female headliners (Florence and the Machine, Grimes, Chvrches, Lorde) and we will continue to in the future!"

Additionally, he says, he believes that 2017's events have made real strides in the area, citing it as one point he's most proud of in this year's offerings.

"Something I'm personally proud of this year is the high number of both Australian artists and women on the line-up," he said. "For me, Australian music is at an all-time high in both the music coming out and the public's perception of it, and it felt good to reward that with so many Aus artists on the bill.

"Similarly, we feel the conversation around women on festivals is an important and ongoing one and, whilst there's always more to be done with it, it's something we take into account every year and think about."