Steve Lawler's response pretty much says it all.
Not really imo ... his lack of taking sides is likely more to do with the fact Darius is about to walk from Viva! (to all intents and purposes - as a regular anyway) as he's always on warm up duty. He's not central to Viva! brand and the damage for the brand from Lawler taking up the cudjels is disproportionate. Darius is going to be likely headlining his own night at Sankeys and playing Sankeys Ibiza too (but not regularly under the Viva! Warriors banner at that party). It's the right thing to do. And he's certainly got people talking about him
.
The whole affair really reinforces the issue - the Viva! fees got pretty much soaked up by Lawler, Tanzmann & Steve Bug so $1000 a piece max left over for the bill-fillers (of which he was one of 3). The other 2 didn't show as their flights weren't paid for and likely Sante and Detlef don't earn enough to justify absorbing their fares with no other local paid appearances to cover their total costs. Bit embarassing for Detlef having this blown open when he'd said on FB it was because he had flu
. If Darius covered their sets he should have got their fees That would have sorted his air fare. Obvs Viva decided to keep it and let him play longer ("am I bovvered" ?). Hmmm.... The fee thing really is between Viva! and Darius and not a reflection on BPM and completely irrelevant. The club and BPM would not have had anything to do with this and could not have known those private fee arrangements. Or that Darius had done a one-party trip to the other side of the world rather than tagging BPM onto a North American tour to help balance costs. As he's admitted his agent "told him not to do it", so no sympathy on that front to be honest.
I bet Viva! communications also failed totally to communicate his needs / RQs effectively. They likely missed deadlines for GL too and probably didn't have the clout (or will) to make sure everything went as it should. Looks like he didn't even have the address of where he was meant to be staying so whole thing looks like a complete shambles to me organizationally and I'll bet Viva! were as much to blame as BPM for the conditions arising in which sh!t hit the fan. If they had been really on the ball they would have had someone checking DJ GLs with the door at the start of the night to make sure everything went smoothly. Again clearly not bothered enough. It's all that which basically ensured Darius was not profiled at BPM and probably set the conditions for what followed.
As far as the duffing up thing, threats and post-incident witch hunts are concerned, I believe him. Also that the GL girl likely threw a wobbly when challenged. Perhaps she was shagging someone important (one of the "Security" ? or Craig Pettigrew ?
) or maybe planning on pocketing the $40 entry fees to share with the "Security" and over-reacted to cover her tracks, etc. Or perhaps she was just "following orders" to charge and got upset when she got confronted, so organizers made a big show of it so the staff didn't cause trouble in protest and would continue to co-operate. Clearly there were politics going on and
can think of a whole host of reasons why this all led to the guy being duffed up and pursued when it got exposed beyond what's put forward on the face of it.
He's clearly no politician and probably isn't perfect at dealing with the PR side of things - so should have his own night and his own PR people who will look out for his interests rather than include him as a bit of an after-thought.
As for BPM - the whole "you were rude to our staff" thing is the feeblest excuse ever - about the level of call centre crew getting challenged being rude and not doing their jobs. This pathetic behaviour from people weilding massive power by spinning cash in a 3rd world country.... well .... however good the festival is that just smacks of a bunch of absolute tossers. The timing was clearly carefully orchestrated too so there wasn't a scene before the party was all but over and happy $600 wristband-wearing punters largely distracted. Obviously marching powder behaviour abounding left right & centre so not surprising a load of nasty cr*p over a small altercation blown massively out of proportion. In the DJ booth.