Fireside At Jannus Live While Rome Burns - by Rahoul Duke

“…and while many, crazed by the disaster, were leaping into the very flames that consumed Rome, Nero ascended to the roof of the palace, from which there was the best view of the inferno, and while playing the lyre, he sang the Capture of Troy.”
- Cassius Dio

And so it was, at Jannus Live on the evening of June 25th, Monsters of Sludge Rockfest, billed by its organizers as “a concert to benefit emergency needs caused by the Gulf oil disaster,” played to a half-full house of half-interested spectators. 

The lack of support for the event was equaled only by the lack of enthusiasm in the crowd, and while no concert goers “crazed by the disaster” of the impending crude oil tsunami “were leaping into the flames” there were many who did cannon balls into the torrent of draft beer that flowed from the kegs surrounding the stage.

Our coverage of the benefit started innocently enough.  We received an email plea from the promoters about 12 hours before the start of the event to help get the word out and bolster support.  At first glance “Monster, Sludge, Rockfest,” I thought the email was about some kind of red-neck, monster truck spectacle, but after seeing the lineup that included a who’s who of Bay area rock talent, it gelled.

The bands, the cause, the benefit all worthy in their own rights. Where's Bob Geldoff when you need him?

Given the call to arms, I sprang into action and barged in to see our graphic designer and web master (who’s normally unapproachable until he’s finished his morning pot of coffee).

“We’ve got to put a banner together for this thing at Jannus Live tonight and get it on our site ASAP,” I pleaded reverently.  “They’re trying to raise money and awareness for the oil spill and we gotta help ‘em.”  I tried to sound as desperately concerned as it would take to convince him to drop what he was doing without overplaying it too much.  It didn’t take a lot of cajoling.  He’s from Louisiana and he was in New Orleans when Katrina hit.

He knows what it’s like firsthand when the forces of nature strike like a million-pound shit hammer and reclaim the earth from man.  For those at ground zero who survived Katrina, the world will never be the same. 

If you’ve never had to put your life back together after losing everything you own, the words ”post-traumatic stress” are little more than psycho-babble bilge.  Those words take on entirely different meaning to someone who’s needed to use them to get different prescription drugs to fall asleep at night and others to want to get out of bed in the morning.

Like the rest of the staff and content providers at whatshottampabay.com, our web master is scared.  He’s scared that if the white sugar sands of our beaches turn into the la brea tar pits, the average Bay area property owner will be lucky to get 5 cents on the dollar, a trailer from FEMA and a spot on the sidewalk to panhandle.  So, we had a banner for the Monsters of Sludge Rockfest at Jannus Live on our site in less than an hour.

Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned, and in St Pete we drank draft beer and listened to rock music while the tide continued to turn into crude oil a few hundred miles off our shores.  

Why was I reminded of Nero’s insane callousness as I stared at the stage from the back of the house over the bald spots, died hair and black leather concert attire of the mostly middle aged attendees as they posed for pictures with their pit bulls and screamed idle chit chat into each other’s ears over the booming roar of “Sludge Rockfest”?

After consideration, I realized that it wasn’t because I was expecting answers to the problems we’re faced with:

Why are the thousands of skimming vessels that support oil rigs in the Pacific, Central and South America not skimming oil in the Gulf and helping prevent this crisis from becoming worse?

Why have we allowed a polo playing, yacht racing, aristocratic British CEO who lifts his pinky while drinking his afternoon tea to take charge of cleaning up our Gulf?

Why does the sense of urgency seem to be lacking in our government and our general population?

Why aren’t the vast, high tech resources of our Navy and the thousands of its submersibles, engineers and deep sea experience not on site and helping to stop the gushing torrent of crude oil?

No, answers were not what I was expecting.  What I was hoping for, in retrospect, is that someone would at least be asking the right questions.  Instead, I got business as usual on a Friday night at Jannus Live.  Don’t get me wrong, the bands were great, the beer was cold and the intentions were noble, but in the specter of a crisis that threatens to change the lives of every Gulf coast resident, I fear these things won’t be enough. 

If anything at all was learned from Katrina (and hopefully not already forgotten), it’s not to wait until the damage is done before reacting.