09/12/2012
Well, the time has come for our official thankyou post, but before I write it up, I would like to get in and deal with some sad news before the rumor mill runs wild.
I am sitting here right now reading over Harley's "This is the end" post from 2008 wondering how I can ever come up with something that convey's the same level of personal sadness whilst still maintaining some kind of composure and dignity, so here goes.
As many of you have probably gathered from the above statement, the time has come to put to an end to the magical journey we have all shared over the past 3 and a half years, and say goodbye to Asylum Entertainment, and once again lay Mayhem Productions down for another rest.
Before I go into a lengthy explanation of why we have arrived at this decision, let me just say the decision has nothing to do with being "over it" or Myself, Harley, Cottie & Stel have always, and will always LOVE our raves, Love our hard dance and hardcore and above all else - will always love you guys. We started as ravers before becoming promoters, and we'll continue to be ravers in the future, so if you see one of our faces bouncing around on a dancefloor somewhere come up and say hi. :-)
When we started Asylum, we were just three mates who saw that there was something lacking within the Brisbane Hard Dance scene. The time between the first era of Mayhem and the beginning of Asylum saw a steady decrease in attendance at raves in Brisbane and a corresponding drop in the quality of events as the promoters
of the time chased profits, instead of chasing a dream. We made the decision to step up to the plate and strive to re-build the Hard Dance scene to it's former glory, to re-populate our community and provide the Hard Dance fans of Brisbane with the same kind of high production, value for money events that we all knew and loved from the days of Advent*jah, Thrillseeka and of course - Mayhem.
It still amazes me how far we've come since that first party at hotel LA back on the 7th of August 2009, from that night we outgrew a venue on every second party, with our attendance numbers jump from a measly 198 to a whopping 912 at our biggest event.
It wasn't until our 5th event, the first at the transcontinental hotel, that we caught the eye of a man named Harley Jones, and quickly realized we all shared a common dream. The decision to revive the Mayhem brand as a team came almost immediately, and our first meeting (which has since become an infamous story among our close friends) was scheduled for just a few days after.
Personally for me, meeting Harley was a turning point in my life, the faith that he had in my own abilities gave the confidence I needed to really push the envelope of what we were doing with Asylum and with Respawn we stepped things up to a whole new level. Not many people know that Respawn was actually planned to be a one off event for Asylum & Mayhem (it's original name was marked down to be Project:ENCORE) but after the success of the event and witnessing the energy of a full venue of ravers jumping up and down to Scott Brown's closing set, we had caught the bug again, and decided to continue the new alliance and have a crack at pushing things up yet another level.
3 weeks later I signed the hire contract to host the first SummerBass at the Arena Entertainment Complex - and this was the proudest moment of my promoting career.
The next part is where I'm going to go into a small financial explanation as to why we are putting the project to rest, so if you're not interested, feel free to skip a little bit to the next paragraph.
As people may have noticed at SummerBass 2012, for reasons we simply cannot event begin to understand, our attendance numbers were down. While we have run a number of hugely successful events over the years, we have never been in this game for the money, and we have always set our ticket prices to give a result only just above breaking even on an event, just so we have a little bit extra to put into the next event and we can continue to grow. Unfortunately, running a 40 thousand dollar event budget on a knife edge doesn't allow a lot of room for error, and without going into actual numbers - the damage from Friday night was substantial to say the least.
As much as we would love it to be so - events of the size and quality of ours do not run on hopes and dreams, and as Harley himself put it Love and Hugs can't pay the bills.
This leaves us with only two choices - cut the quality of the events, or increase the ticket prices.
Because of the lower turnout numbers, our ticket prices have been positioned at the higher end of what is fair, and we would not feel comfortable charging people any higher than what we have been.
Cutting the quality of our events has never been an option for us as we are simply not interested in sacrificing the value of an event for the sake of chasing profits. We could continue running events with half the production, or half the acts, or half the decor, but this isn't what Asylum and Mayhem are all about, we have never run low budget "DJs on a stage" events and we never will.
It was almost 4 weeks ago we realized that SummerBass 2012 was going to be a financial struggle, and not a single cent was cut from the budget. We thought about making this announcement then, but in the interest of maintaining a positive atmosphere at the event we decided to keep it quiet until now. When we commit to something, we owe it to the people who have supported us and purchased tickets to deliver on our promises. Having them turn up to a part with Cellophane covered torches and music pumping out of a home stereo system is not our idea of a good night out!
I sit here right now typing this with such mixed feelings I'm sad to see the end of something that I have loved and have seen grow from a tiny little hobby project to Brisbane's largest rave production company. I'm proud of our achievements and have learnt so much from our failures. The friendships and relationships I have formed with our production team, performers and ravers alike will warm my heart every time I think back to this period of my life, these memories I have built with all of your will live on in my heart forever. It is sad to see there has been a recent change in the hard dance scene, and a lot of the original values, beliefs and ethics ravers once held as gospel aren't shared by a large portion of the new hard dance fans. I trust that in time we will see a return to the oldschool ways, I think people just need to remember it's all about that music and we're all in this together, it's not a popularity contest, and it's not a lifestyle you chose just for the image.
While this may come as a bit of a shock to some people, I do have a positive note to add here. The success of the Asylum & Mayhem team has seen our Brisbane scene FLOURISH once again, and we now have many quality event companies who are seeing rapid growth and run by like minded promoters who share the same dream we do. We have watched them grow from just an idea and a spark in the eyes of their creators to high standard events that we have been proud to have stand alongside us as equals. Affinity Brisbane, Evolution Entertainment and Adrenaline Entertainment will carry Brisbane through this next era of Hard Dance, and all of our team are fully confident that we are leaving Hard Dance in Brisbane in the safest possible hands. I implore every raver to support these brands and do not leave them out in the cold, this is NOT the end and the rave scene is NOT dying, in fact, I think we are about the some of the greatest years for hard dance EVER!
Newcomers Bamboo and Shokk are ones to keep on your radar as well, we should see some very big things from these guys over the next year.
I think I have said all that can be said on this subject. So I'll give one final thankyou to every single raver who has one of our flyers, ticket stubs or wristbands blu tacked onto their bedroom wall. To my business partners, my parents who have put up with my stressing and supported me through the tough times for the company. To every DJ who has ever played for us and to our highly dedicated production teams - thankyou. To Harley Jones for being a mentor, business partner and a true friend that I can always rely on, thankyou for everything you've ever done for me and thankyou for sharing your dream with me.
To everyone and anyone who has been involved in any event we have run THANKYOU for the past 3 years of absolute Mayhem that saw almost all of us locked up in an Asylum!
I think there is only one way to sign off this extremely lengthy post.
PEACE, LOVE, UNICORNS, RESPEKTA!!!!!!!!!
♥ Always Rabbit
Asylum Crew and Mayhem team.
