Image via Wikimedia Commons
So the long and short of it is this: Frank Turner recently announced that as part of his touring schedule for 2018, he'd be hosting a Music Masters camp next July. These are basically multi-day events which "bridge the gap between artists and their audience," and they involve guests paying various sums to stay in a specific location in order to meet, write, play with and watch the musicians they're into.Frank Turner's iteration of the Music Masters camp will be called "Campfire Punkrock," which, obviously, has meant that it has invited some of the internet's ire considering that the cheapest ticket comes to $999 (£740). And while it is certainly true that "Premium Cottage - Shared Room, Private Bath" (£1,770) and hors d'oeuvres on arrival do not necessarily read very "punk rock," he's not the first well-known artist to have done one of these camps. In a statement given to NME yesterday, he referenced some of those other musicians, and explained the decision to run the workshop:
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Let's just say it: 'Campfire Punkrock' is, on a surface level, weird and incongruous and laughable. It looks like a luxury event tagged onto the name of an artist who was all about resistance and protest or whatever – not £700 events. In these post-Fyre Festival times, it's also just one of many music events that invites people with money to piss away onto the pot, and it's also in line with the 'experience'-isation of big music events like festivals – remember when Coachella opened an offsite VIP weed-vaping area essentially so people could Instagram it? Or the fact that you can pay to stay in a weird resort-type thing with a Michelin-starred chef at Glastonbury? This is kind of just how it is now – it may not be in the spirit of things, but it happens anyway.Yes, this branding is particularly eyebrow-raising but there are a lot of people who it'll appeal to (it's also not like "punk" hasn't largely become a marketing buzzword outside of very small DIY communities). If those people want to pay £2000 to write a song with Frank Turner, that's their prerogative. It just has nothing to do with the original ethos of punk or protest.Follow Noisey on Twitter.Like Peter Buck, Melissa Auf der Maur, Todd Rungren, Richard Thompson and many others before me, I'm doing a Music Masters camp next summer in upstate New York, in amongst the rest of my regular touring schedule. It's an all-inclusive package, four nights full bed and board in a resort, so it might not be for everyone, but it's just one small event among everything else I'll be doing next year – releasing a new record, with the usual run of tours, festivals and benefit shows that comes with that.