"Short of performing a skiffle set on the grass, we were going to have to pull the show."

Edit: the following attack has been resolved and Murkage's original post has been taken down. 

I still think this is a fascinating attack on a festival by a band, and so don't intend to remove this blog post. However, a clarification was posted in the comments by Anonymous (thank you, Anonymous). The text of this follows.

To respect the SEO aspect of this blog post, I have edited out the name of the guy Murkage wrote about. His name has been blanked from my blog post and from Anonymous's response (which is also why I've had to delete Anonymous's comment).

It should be pointed out that Murkage retained respect for Cloud 9 throughout all of this and there is no question that Cloud 9 clearly rocks. They just had a problem with one person.

Anonymous's comment: "____  ____ issued a public apology to Murkage for any upset that he caused.

"Just to clarify Hannah Cox is the promoter for Cloud 9 Festival and the band were dealt with by her in a professional manner throughout the event as they pointed out on their post. Following a series of emails between Hannah and the Artist this blog post was taken down. While I would decline to further comment on the contents of the article it should be made clear that ____  ____ as a volunteer for Cloud 9 was in no way responsible for Murkage not performing at Cloud 9 this year.

"'Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.'
Gilbert K. Chesterton"

Being a promoter must be the worst job in the world. Worse than working in sewers or being a bomb disposal officer or doing Cher Lloyd's PR.

When Manchester DJ and production crew Murkage (pictured) turned up at Cheshire's Cloud 9 festival, it seems the stage set-up wasn't to their requirements. They pulled out. And that would be the end of the story. Annoyed band, peeved promoter, life goes on.

Except...

The Murkage cartel launched an astonishing assault on the artist booker of the Cloud 9 festival after the stage mess-up, calling him a moron, rude and, um, unable to think beyond his genitals.

I don't know Murkage. I don't know the promoter in question, ____  ____ . It could all be guff.

But it makes for brilliant reading. It's worth taking in the whole thing, mainly because I never knew there was a spirit called Jeremiah Weed, but here are some edited highlights:

"The organisers had tried to put us in a tent which didn't have an actual stage. If you've seen us live before you'll know our show is made up of four vocalists, a DJ and sometimes a drummer. We're still baffled as to how they thought this was going to work...

"We realised that short of performing a skiffle set on the grass, we were going to have to pull the show...

"We would also like to take this opportunity to name a guy called ____  ____ as one of the rudest, most unprofessional, misplaced egos we have ever come across since we started doing music... "

Ahem. Allegedly.

"Sorting out the staging issue would have take approximately ten minutes maximum... we can only assume that ____  ____ simply didn't want us to play the festival for his own reasons..."

Here comes the fried gold.

"When did it start being ok for absolute morons to make decisions on anything at all..."

Miaow.

Egoistes like that dude should stick to being professionally cool, taking drugs and generally being part of the scene furniture, leave running festivals to the grown ups please...

"The inability to think beyond the end of ones penis should remain a barrier to entry when it comes to running festivals no matter how small in scale and, it's [bleeped out: probably libellous] like ____  ____ who give promoters a bad name..."

Except it's not gold, is it?

Whoever was to blame, it seems we have players in Manchester's music scene with teeth drawn and no intention to back down.

When Manchester starts biting itself, all you get are rotting chunks of flesh instead of a dancing, thriving scene. I hope this ____  ____ fella can patch things up with Murkage, I really do. Because Murkage's parting shot does not bode well:

"If we have learned anything over the years its this; piss on artists when they are on the way up and they will shit on you from on high."

Annoyed band, peeved promoter. Consider the defecation process complete.