The incident was short and, fortunately, harmed no one.
Five thousand dollars had never devaluated so quickly in Argentina before. It’s no secret Lollapalooza is one of, if not the, signature yearly festivals of South America. Argentina, Brazil, Chile and other countries hold their own versions of the gathering each March, bringing to the continent a plethora of different artists and genres. Among those, Dance music is always present. This year, artists like Diplo and Timmy Trumpet represented the scene, alongside Trance trailblazers Above & Beyond.
Celebrating their return to Buenos Aires for the first time since their last show nearly a year ago, Jono and Paavo were bringing the heat to the Perry’s Stage of the venue, playing banger after banger. The crowd was buzzing, and everything was going spectacularly well. Until it wasn’t.
The Incident
Right as they were hypnotised by the energy of the moment during ilan Bluestone’s remix of their hit track ‘We’re All We Need’, something unbelievable happened: the DJ booth tipped over and fell forward, taking with it the entire DJ equipment, as well as the boys’ laptop, which they use to write their iconic on-screen messages while playing.
Unsurprisingly, the music cut off abruptly as cables snapped and detached from the players. Jono and Paavo were, well, speechless, but took the situation like champs and laughed it off from the beginning, while help came to work out a solution. Although witnesses recall buttons flying from the poor gadgetry plummeting onto the ground, not a single attendee was harmed. Everything was sorted in a timely manner, and the boys went back to playing in just over five minutes. Laptop and everything.
Culprits?
General consensus points to the festival itself as the one to blame for the incident. Poor — or rushed — building quality of a booth that was put there just after other acts which involved live bands and, therefore, forced the stage to be set up against the clock. Although others say Above & Beyond had a share of responsibility, from the video — attached below — you can see they didn’t push the booth forward. If anything, Jono tried to catch it mid-fall.
And, just to be clear, you can’t ask a DJ not to enjoy what they’re playing. We’re full of those guys now, let’s try and embrace passion again thank you. Plus, you’ve got people like Timmy Trumpet who played just hours before at the same festival. And he too jumps around, and he even climbs on top of the booth to play! I can only begin to imagine the chaos that would’ve hit the festival if this very thing had happened to him atop the decks.
Luckily, what happened was, damaged equipment aside, something we can now laugh about. Nobody was injured, the show went on, they even did their Push The Button moment afterwards, and closed their set in style, falling just a bit short of their original plans, just to stick to the schedule.
Watch the moment of the incident, below.