Mark Lyn­der­say

If there had been tum­ble­weeds in the Jean Pierre Com­plex, they would have made a quite cin­e­mat­ic sight as they rolled across the vast grey stage built for the So­cadrome.

Work­ers with heavy gloves pulled ca­bles through rout­ing troughs, a par­tic­u­lar­ly keen young man paced the stage dili­gent­ly with a blow­er, blast­ing un­see­able specks off its sur­face. Ace video­g­ra­ph­er Sel­wyn Hen­ry heft­ed and swung the mighty boom he would man­age for the du­ra­tion of the show.

What hap­pened af­ter all that prepa­ra­tion is now pub­lic record. On­ly three of the bands sched­uled to ap­pear at the new venue ap­peared, though they man­aged to ac­count for an al­most con­tin­u­ous stream of mas­quer­aders for four and a half hours of stage time.

So many ques­tions aris­ing. Like this one.

Why are we build­ing the North Stand?

Once the North Stand served a re­al pur­pose, along with the open bleach­ers that brack­et­ed the pa­rade route on­to the big stage. There were thou­sands of peo­ple who want­ed to see pan and mas and there was a re­al need to ac­com­mo­date them.

For most of Car­ni­val 2014, though, the North Stand was ef­fec­tive­ly, when it wasn't com­plete­ly, emp­ty of an au­di­ence. Or even the odd strag­gler. Even when there were peo­ple there, the Grand Stand could have hand­i­ly held them.

So let's stop wast­ing time and mon­ey build­ing it and just put up sol­id tem­po­rary bleach­ers in the Greens at pan se­mi-fi­nals to hold the few among that lot who ac­tu­al­ly want to see what a steel­band per­for­mance looks like.

Why doesn't Car­ni­val Tues­day in Port-of-Spain have a stage man­ag­er?

Part of the rea­son that peo­ple don't turn out to look at Car­ni­val any more is that they have no idea what they will end up see­ing.