Things are not looking good for CY Fest, the underground punk/hardcore/metal festival that's supposed to come to Los Angeles in a week and a half. Last week, the Instagram page @Feral_bonobos, which lists itself as "the beginning of a decentralized feminist coalition within the punk scene," circulated many sexual misconduct allegations against festival promoter Ignacio Rodriguera, who goes by the name Nacho Corrupted. Since then, a number of bands have dropped off of the festival, and its immediate future looks truly dubious.
In the immediate aftermath of the allegations against Rodriguera, a number of bands dropped off the CY Fest lineup, including Iron Lung, Tørsö, Apartment 213, and Tripas Sangrientas. On Monday, Rodriguera announced that he be "stepping away" from the festival, focusing instead on legally fighting the allegations against him, which he denied. He wrote that the festival would still happen and that "an outside promoter" would come in to run it.
Since then, more bands have announced that they won't play the fest, including the planned headliners, reunited UK punk legends the Subhumans. Ghoul, Dropdead, Weekend Nachos, Mess, Resistant Culture, ACxDC, Triste, Antichrist Demoncore, Haggus, Hong Kong Fuck You, Bomber, and Hell Fire have also dropped. (Some of these acts were billed for a pre-fest event.)
In their cancellation announcements, some of those bands thanked Tankcrimes Records owner Scotty Heath. In a since-deleted video that he posted on Tuesday, Heath announced that he would take over promotions in an effort to save the festival:
Many of you know some controversy hit the fest a week ago, and it's now actually become a legal matter, so I'm not gonna comment on that. But things were falling apart, and myself along with a dozen bands have been, for the last week, on groupchats, phone calls, pacing around, trying to come up with a thoughtful solution to see if we could maybe save this fest. As a last-ditch effort on Sunday, I cold-called the promoter, who I didn't know, and suggested that he step down to save this fest, and he respectfully agreed.
Now, there's a lot of moving parts. Anyone who's ever even booked a local band show knows how much work goes into it. This is a 60-band international show that's been booked for over a year. We've been in contact with the venues, who are gonna step up with extra staff to help stage-manage and run the shows with us. I've got a small team of people in Los Angeles that are gonna help me with payouts, stage-managing, guest list, doors, all these things that need to be done. I'll be taking over the online promotions, and I will be on site at the festival if anyone needs anything.
There's over 1,500 tickets sold. There's over 50 bands coming from around the world. Many of these bands are close personal friends of mine, and we've really all been planning this for a long time, and we wanted to figure out if we could come together and still have a really nice weekend together in Los Angeles. And we're going to. So I wanted to get on here today and hopefully inject a little positivity into all the confusion.
One day later, Heath posted another video in which he said that he said that he won't take over CY Fest promotions after all:
I thought I could pull it off, and there's just — too many questions coming in from you guys that I don't have the answers for, so I just felt like I was in over my head. I did make a solid attempt, but I think I rushed the announcement. It was less than 30 hours after I'd done it, and everything happened pretty spontaneously, and I was just trying to get out there so quick because the fest is coming up so soon.
So I have bowed out of that, and the venues are still running the fest. They have very competent staff and in-house people that will be doing that. But because there are so many unanswered questions that I don't have the answers for, I can't do it. I'm sorry if I let you down if you gave me positive messages, and I'm sorry if you had questions that I couldn't answer because I can't.
Comments on the CY Fest Instagram have been disabled, and tickets are reportedly nonrefundable.
If you or someone you know is undergoing sexual abuse, please visit rainn.org or contact the National Sexual Assault Helpline at 1-800-656-467
