Porter Robinson took the stage at Matador Music Festival in Santa Barbara as the event’s highly touted headliner and most anticipated performance. The set, originally scheduled for 9:30-11:30 pm , was cut short 35 minutes by Santa Barbara police. Of all times, they decided to shut down power right in the middle of ‘Language’.
After which Porter Robinson took to social networking to express his discontent:
the cops cut me 35 minutes short and shut down this show halfway through language. really sorry to everyone to paid to see this show.—
porter robinson (@porterrobinson) April 28, 2013
i got on the mic and said "guys, the cops are shutting us down in 5 minutes. gonna play language. don't get mad, stay positive."—
porter robinson (@porterrobinson) April 28, 2013
the cops cut the power two minutes after that, claiming that i was 'inciting a riot' by explaining the situation to the crowd.—
porter robinson (@porterrobinson) April 28, 2013
the sheriff told me he was going to arrest me and seize all of my equipment 'as evidence'. vindictive tyrant is embarrassed about the truth.—
porter robinson (@porterrobinson) April 28, 2013
Since twitter has a 140 character limit, P-Rob continued to tweet as the event unfolded:
the police are not on your side.—
porter robinson (@porterrobinson) April 28, 2013
Now Porter Robinson is not the type to tweet such strong, community oriented messages. The fact that he tweeted so much about the entire scenario makes it very clear that he was truly disturbed by the goings on of that day. The problem here seems to be with the way it was addressed by Santa Barbara law enforcement.
The fact that he was accused of inciting a riot was probably drawn by the misconception the general population has with dance music. The culture that surrounds dance music has taken the world by storm, and a lot of people aren’t willing to cope with it, probably due to the stigma of drug abuse that’s very commonly associated with any rave or music festival.
Meanwhile neither the authorities nor the event organizers, Disco Donnie and Collective Effort Events, have issued any comment on the entire fiasco. However, on the Festival’s Facebook page, this is what was mentioned:
“The event was scheduled to end at 11:30PM, but due to numerous noise complaints from local neighbors the authorities were forced to end the event at 11:14PM, cutting Porter’s set by 16 mintues. Porter Robinson has a deep appreciation for his fans and due to this he felt it best to explain to all who were in attendance why he was being forced by the Sheriff to end early. This explanation upset the Sheriff, and instead of allowing Porter to finish his last song, Language, the Sheriff pulled the power to the stage.”
Here’s a general glimpse of what happened. Not a very good quality video but it helps you get a basic understanding of what happened.