Oakland’s Total Trash Productions have severed their involvement with Burger Records and will rename their annual Burger Boogaloo to Mosswood Meltdown.
The production company, who have independently-produced Burger Boogaloo and underground shows since 2009, announced on their website that they were “horrified to learn of all the allegations” — in which hundreds of women/womxn came forward on social media and shared stories of alleged sexual misconduct, alleged sexual abuse and rape, involving the Burger Records culture and artists on their roster.
Burger Records initially responded to these allegations as “Burger artists engaging in the grooming of underage girls for sex, relationships built on power imbalance, and the solicitation of pornography from minors” during a “zero tolerance” post.
July 20,2020, it was later announced that changes within the label were to come including Sean Bohrman moving into a “transitional role,” Lee Rickard stepping down as label president with Jessa Zapor-Gray assuming the role as the interim label president, and adding an all-woman imprint to the label, BRGRRRL.
Today, Alice Bag announced that she will no longer be playing the event, which was re-scheduled to Oct. 31-Nov. 1, and once again re-scheduled until next year July 10-11 2021.
The Los Angeles event, Burgerama, co-presented by Echo and Spaceland Presents, has been canceled via emails sent to ticket holders. Spaceland Presents have labeled the event “postponed” on their website.
Full statement from Total Trash Productions may be found below and can be seen online here:
In light of the recent allegations against Burger Records and several of the bands on their label, Total Trash Productions has made the decision to end our long-standing partnership with Burger Records. We want to express our heartfelt support for the brave women who have come forward to share their stories.
We also want to sincerely apologize to anyone who has ever been victimized or harassed at any of our events. As the organizers of Burger Boogaloo, we accept responsibility for what happens at the event, and while we have always worked to take swift actions in removing individuals from the event or our line-up who have acted violent or inappropriate, we know that we can always do better. We owe that to our fans and our community.
As many of you know, Total Trash Productions has been organizing shows and music fests here in the Bay Area for well over a decade. We are made up of a small group of staff and volunteers who live and work in Oakland and the Bay Area, and we have always strived to create a positive, fun and safe experience for our community through our shared love of music.
Total Trash first became acquainted with Burger Records booking tours for their bands, and that led to the festival. The festival at Mosswood has always been produced by our Northern California production company, and we’ve hired Burger to do the promotion. While we personally had an overall positive experience in working with Burger Records, and had no knowledge of the allegations that came out this week, we understand that there are many young women and others who have suffered traumatic experiences at the hands of certain bands and individuals associated with Burger Records. We are disturbed and disgusted by the allegations that have come out, and we stand with the survivors.
Last night we severed our ties with Burger Records. Our production company was founded 10 years ago by a couple who have both been victims of sexual assault, and it would never be our aim to put people at harm at our event. Moving forward without Burger, our event will now continue solely as a Total Trash Production.
At Total Trash Productions, we recognize that we too, are not perfect. Organizing a music festival is not an easy task and we have definitely made plenty of mistakes along the way. Even after all these years, we are still growing and learning how we can do things better. But we want you all to know, that we see you, we hear you, and we’re listening to you. We are currently working to implement additional safeguards for our events to help ensure the safety of all of our attendees. This includes working on ways to make it easier for people to report abuse they experience or witness at our events so that we can act more swiftly in removing offenders and reporting them to the proper authorities, creating a stricter vetting process for bands and individuals on bands’ guestlists, further restricting backstage access and employing more security, continuing to diversify our line-ups with more acts that include women, LGBTQ and BIPOC, and working with local groups in our area to learn about actions we can take to help victims of sexual assault.
These are just a few of the ideas we are currently discussing. We will keep you all updated on our progress as we continue to flesh out our plan of action. Of course, we are always open to any other ideas or suggestions you may have of further actions we can take. We will be updating our website and social media in the coming days and appreciate your patience and support as we make this transition.
And to our male allies, please let’s all do our part to help keep the music scene safer for our female, LGBTQ and POC friends. If you see something, say something. Report it to the proper authorities. Do not let this shit go unchecked. We at Total Trash will do our part to be better, but we need the men in our rock ‘n roll scene to do better as well. Please take care of each other, we love you all.
Sincerely,
Marc and Amy, and everyone at Total Trash Productions
Cover photo: Courtesy of Total Trash Productions via Facebook
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