Pres Release from the Vikings re: Tobago Jazz New Press release from the Vikings 27/04/2014- Bunji Garlin, Fay Ann Lyons and the Asylum Band take this opportunity to provide for fans locally and around the world a clear explanation of what transpired over the last forty eight to seventy two hours, which forced us to withdraw from the Tobago Jazz Experience. We have communicated with the media before, however we now detect an attempt to put a spin on the story that amazingly attempts to put our band in a bad light. The information provided herein should end all speculation and put all such thoughts to rest. The relationships between an event promoters and performers are governed by contracts and riders. Those relationships however are managed by good communications. From the inception of this relationship, communication from the Tobago Jazz Experience has been uniformly poor. The event manager has indicated that there may have been a communication problem, and he is half right, they did not communicate. No performance contract ever requires the performer(s) to make their own travel or accommodation arrangements, at least none that we have ever been involved with. One of our sound engineers, Mr Brewster, arrived in Trinidad to go to Tobago to help with preparing our sound on Thursday, as the Tobago Jazz Experience directed. We were therefore surprised to be informed that no accommodation was booked for him and the official who was assigned to room all guests was asking our management why is he here today?” He was told that they did not know that he was coming. This was at least strange, given the fact that they booked his flight. At this stage, we attempted to contact the organizers with no success. Fay finally got Mr John Arnold who then said unfortunately the hotel we originally requested was not available and after a little discussion they said the whole band would be roomed at the Grafton hotel. Nonetheless, on Friday we journeyed to Tobago, we encountered no problems with the flight, although we had to end up arranging different ground transportation since the one that was sent for us had to leave as he has a government contract to pick up school kids. When we got to the hotel, we discovered that only five rooms were booked. At this point our four hour ordeal started. Our management and the hotel attempted to contact the organizers. Being familiar with the myriad task associated with hosting an event of this magnitude, we expect such hiccups and a trouble-shooter type response, instead we were met with hostility. We had much difficulty contacting anyone as had the Grafton Hotel staff. One of the desk clerks said they have been calling the event’s rooming officials for hours to clear issues for other guests under their purview other than ours. The following is a sample of the responses that we did receive. “so I must call the hotel and say what”; “so what I supposed to do for that” and “all yuh hutting up mi head and raising my blood pressure”. We wish to restate that we were in the lobby of the hotel for going on four hours before we decided to leave. It should also be noted, that with Grafton Beach being an all-inclusive Resort hotel, we were unable to check all in since the rooms were THA reserved and the rest of the band had to be THA approved in order to even enter the room. We have also noted that there is an attempt to suggest that we somehow inflated the numbers in our bad with “joy riders”. The band which publicly performed for all of Carnival 2014 is the same one that travelled to Tobago, using tickets that were purchased and booked by the Tobago Jazz Experience. For further clarity, the following is a list of the individuals who travelled, and their roles. 1 machine/ percussionist 1 drummer 1 bassist 1 guitarist 1 keyboardist 3 horn players 1 back up singer 2 engineers ( 1 on stage one on front house) 2 roadies (equipment handlers) 1 manager 2 front line singers (Bunji & Faye Ann) 1 media liaison (cameras) The Asylum Family is firmly committed “to run and take the microphone and just sing and make people proud” We however have little control over the vagaries of promoters. While they admitted that they did indeed mess up on the issue of party/ rooming arrangements, we hope to see the false statement given to media by one of their officials that the row was because they expected 10 people but we showed up with 17 and that we wanted to stay where another artiste was staying be rescinded and corrected. We honestly and sincerely apologize to our true fans but an issue like this must never ever happen to anyone whether local or foreign.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Apr 2014 19:56:22 +0000
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