We have been receiving a lot of feedback in our DOA guest book, facebook and other ways regarding our latest news. This feedback varied from highly excited congratulations over concern to disappointment, so we figured we’d make our decision finding process of the past months a bit more transparent. In 2010 we had picked the theme “In Dong We Trust”, and we definitely want to keep that trust and let you in on how and why we decided to make the Dong this year the way we announced. Here’s an FAQ of the feedback we received lately!
Why did the Dong Open Air 2011 become so expensive?
We had to improve our stage and equipment. We have been keeping the technical equipment and hence the expenses at a bare minimum (although you may have noticed that we had to upgrade some stuff over the years) to keep the ticket price low for you. But in 2009 it became obvious to us that it was no longer possible to keep this bare minimum and to book the bigger bands at the same time – although none of the bands had any excessive requirements. In 2010, we had to cover up almost half the stage for the entire Saturday to make sure we could get the Apokalyptischen Reiter on stage without having to take an overly long change over break. The covered stage did not only look stupid, but it also limited the bands that played earlier that day in their performance. Of course we do not blame the Reiter at all whom we still like a lot, it’s just the way things turned out! This gave us three options:
Continue to face this kind of problems and risk a smoothly going course of the event as well as our good reputation with you and the bands. Discontinue the line-ups we have been offering the past years and size down what we and you expect of the festival.Keep up our and your expectations and adjust what’s necessary on site.
Our motivation is the very same passion for music which makes you come to festival. What do we do it for? A good line-up. And the positive feedback we have been receiving, particularly during the past two years, makes us feel like you have been enjoying our work, including our selection of bands. This is why we decided to go with the third option.
The result of this is that our tent is going to be taller and wider to make sure we can fit all the technical equipment. This is also going to reduce the tube character the tent used to have and will most likely result in better sound for everyone. You’ll get closer to the stage, and there is more of a first row for everyone.
Why do you book musical “giants” like Iced Earth?
Not because we have turned into megalomaniacs or are dreaming of becoming the next million people festival, but instead only because the planets were in perfect alignment to close the deal. Booking depends on a number of factors and this time, things just worked out incredibly well. It’s true that a slight bit of the ticket price is due to this decision, but it’s really just a tiny bit that’s attributable to Iced Earth. We still see this as part of the Dong’s overall motto “verhältnismäßig geil” – “pretty damn awesome”. Even more since Iced Earth have just announced that this will be one of the last shows with Matt Barlow at the mic.
The fear that the ticket price is going to sky-rocket due to big headliners is entirely unsubstantiated. But it is also not unlikely that bands who have not quite reached Iced Earth popularity yet are assigned the head lining spots of our billing. Don’t worry your heavy metal heads off, enjoy 2011!
Why an extra day on top?
For one thing, it doesn’t really cost that much extra, because a two-day festival doesn’t all of a sudden cost 50% more to run if you add an extra day. Also we figured it’d be easier for you to deal with the risen price if you get a third day in return. Our choice was pretty much: Almost €39,90 for two days or €39,90 for three days. The latter made a lot more sense to us. The atmosphere at the Dong has been called unique and awesome each year since 2003. And ever since 2003 people have been telling us that the festival just doesn’t last long enough. Finally we can give you three days of this unique and awesome atmosphere and also supply you with a couple of new great bands. To us this sounds like a pretty good deal.
We decided to pick the Thursday over the Sunday because we, too, need a day to clean up and take down the festival infrastructure. If you have to be back at work on Monday morning, we figured that’d lessen your fun in general and the overall beverage consumption in particular. Although your fun is important to us, so is the beverage sale as this is how half of the festival is financed.
Although Thursday is generally a working day, we deducted if other festivals can start on a Thursday, chances are that the Dong can, too. As we all know your work is important, we decided to start the festival on Thursday at 6pm to make sure all you busy bees have a chance to make it in time.
We waited to announce this third Dong Day, because we only recently received final calculation and didn’t want to announce anything that we possibly couldn’t end up fulfilling.
The sanitary infrastructure will be adapted as much as we can. We can only ask you to act responsibly and help us out a bit here. Last year we had already supplied water tanks on site with self-made shower heads to make it easier for you to use the water. Those shower heads had then been detached and people didn’t close the valves and the water was wasted.
Why didn’t you tell us right away?
Part of the team had planned to do so. The majority of the team decided it was a stupid idea to rub salt into the wound of the festival becoming more expensive. Instead we decided to present you with the above calculation of new price versus the surplus value of better technical equipment, better bands and a longer festival.
We hope this info on why we do what we do helps you understand and proves that we are not drunk and seeking world domination. We have been plotting this in our sober moments as well. ;) The Dong will continue to be small and cozy. Although we are always happy to have guests from all over the place, we would like to stress how important it is to keep you, our regulars, well informed and up-to-date on what’s going on at the Dong hill. Thanks to everyone who offered their constructive criticism. Changes are part of life, and part of the D.O.A., but come see us at the Dong hill this summer and find out that this is not a new Dong era, just a new Dong including everything you need: An awesome and unique audience at the same kind of festival! Rock with us!
Due to the current event, we would like to point out that we decided on our festival motto before the tragedies in Japan had started to take place and thus had picked it entirely independently from this. In no case would we want to be misunderstood to be impious! We would like to express the opinion that an invention, which can cost unimaginable numbers of lives and contaminate large parts of countries due to technical or human error, is not an invention whose use can be considered responsible.
Our thoughts are with the people on the other side of the world. Considering the remaining risk which exists there as well as here, we are going to stick to the motto we decided to use prior to the terrible events in Japan, although we are aware that some may consider the depiction we are going to use as going a little over the top considering the current context.
Source: Newsletter
