Maybe it’s because I like Clinic, but this is nuts. Apparently, St. Martins College, a small school in London, England, had students protest their upcoming performance there. The reason? They had too much school work to do.
As previously reported, the university was scheduled to host a sold-out Clinic gig on December 14, but due to “pressure from a small minority of students, who saw the show as a perceived disruption to their studies and were threatening to stage a sit-in protest” (according to the band’s website), the concert was canceled.
A sit-in protesting a rock show?! What decade is this again? The fifties?
Tickets for the canceled show will be honored at the band’s next London show, tentatively scheduled for somet time in February 2007. Tickets can also be refunded from point of purchase. [pitchfork]
Really, I don’t get it, and this is like a strange portrayal of a scene from PCU[imdb]. If there was to be a big show that I wanted to check out when I was in school, then I busted my butt to make time for it. More often than none, the main reason I would skip it would be due to lack of money. And it’s not like the band is setting up in your dorm room. Gigs like this last a couple of hours, not all day. There will be plenty of other time to do your school things. That’s what sleep deprivation and coffee is for.
“These, Tom, are the Causeheads. They find a world-threatening issue and stick with it for about a week.” – PCU[imdb]
This is such an old story if feels odd posting a comment, but I only came across all the internet ranting on the issue today. I was one of the students that protested about the gig, to be honest we were told it had moved venue and thought nothing more of the matter. However now I feel that I should set the record straight(although probably no-one will even read this).
The gig that was to “last a couple of hours” demanded that we destroy our sculptures in order to move out of the performance space; our studios. We were given one weeks notice. A couple of weeks after the scheduled gig we had a very important assessment that lead directly into our degree show. After three years of studying our result is determined by the degree show. This assesment was CRUCIAL. However we were told to remove everything from the studio(which demanded destroying many of the works). We would have less than 1 week to build new work before our 3 year degree began to be assessed on the basis on what was being presented.
Also in response to the endless record company lies, It wasn’t the first gig to be played there since the sex pistol. A year prior to the clinic scheduled gig a big promotional gig with the paddingtons had happened to mark the 30th anniversary of the sex pistol’s first gig. Central Saint Martins has used this fact to establish itself as a venue to whore band, making false connection with rock’s history, to create artifical connections between the music industry and art students, when infact its just the old money making men pushing promotional bullshit. It was a disguting act of record label PR/branding. Yuk!!!
And finally, not to be rude but St Martins is not a “small” school, it is internationally reknowned for its on going contribution to our creative environment. Its just a shame that the reality of this reputation (you see really the sex pistols played for 5 minutes before college heads unplugged them and chucked them out)is perpetuated by vulgar marketing, where the dean ignores his students in order to contrive PR stunts with money hungry record companies.