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Beef Of The Week #363: Blink 182 v Fyre Festival

By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 14 July 2017

You might think that the Fyre Festival ended in disaster due to poor planning. And bad infrastructure. Poor planning and bad infrastructure. And cost cutting. Poor planning, bad infrastructure and cost cutting. And inept senior management. Poor planning, bad infrastructure, cost cutting and inept senior management. But no. It was witchcraft.

Oh sure, you can protest. Just look at all the evidence that’s been amassed of the poor planning, and the bad infrastructure, and the cost cutting, and the incredibly inept senior management. Look at what all those ex-employees have said about how badly the whole Fyre enterprise was run. Look at all the lawsuits and the long list of management failings they contain. Look at co-founder Billy McFarland up in court on fraud charges.

Yes, I see all of that, but might it also have actually been due to witchcraft? Just a little bit of witchcraft? Alkaline Trio frontman Matt Skiba – now also a member of Blink 182, who were due to play the disastrous Bahamas party – certainly thinks so. Why? Because it was he who cast the spell.

“I had a bad feeling about that event”, Skiba told the NME. “I consider myself a pagan and a witch. With every inch of my energy I wanted Fyre not to happen. I put all the electricity and energy in my body against that thing happening”.

“I’ve been to the Bahamas before and it’s so crass”, he went on. “You land in Nassau and the whole island is replete with beauty and culture, but there’s a lot of poverty. It is a largely black population, then they build these places like Atlantis and The Cove that are walled off. It’s classist and racist and then they decided to park a bunch of yachts with models to show off in front of those poor people, going down there with all your Ferraris and bullshit and yachts”.

But didn’t Blink 182 pull out of their Fyre Festival set at the last minute because they were “not confident that we would have what we need to give you the quality of performances we always give to fans”? Oh sure, you believe what you want.

“We pulled out for technical and logistical issues and the rest of it crumbled to shit because that’s what it was”, he admitted. However: “It was bullshit. I used my witchy ways and it seemed to work. I’ll take responsibility and everyone can blame me. Shazam. I was on my couch feeling somewhat guilty, but very relieved that I wasn’t there with people stealing from each other”.

With so many lawsuits flying around already, it’s maybe not a good idea to start accepting any blame for Fyre’s collapse. Witchcraft or not, someone might say that Skiba never had any intention of performing at the event and did somehow contribute to its gloomy end through mystical means or otherwise.

I’m not saying that, because I’m not an idiot. But you might say it. I’ve never met you. You might be an idiot. And so might some of the people who ended up stranded on the Fyre island, eating disappointing cheese sandwiches. They’re probably idiots and might now blame Skiba. Though if you’re one of those people, please note that the witchy rocker didn’t want that for you.

“I didn’t want a bunch of people to be marooned on bullshit island”, he said. “I put all my energy into it not happening because for all the tea in China I didn’t want to be a part of something like that”.

Whatever, if you’re booking Blink 182 for an event, it might be wise to put a ‘no witchcraft’ clause in the contract.