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LOOZA ENDS IT ALL: Lollapalooza, the wandering festival, has been axed, just three weeks before the first date. Besides New York, it seems none of the tickets had exactly been flying out of booths, and the management (including Perry Farrell, of course) have decided that rather than running up huge losses bussing Morrissey, PJ Harvey, Sonic Youth and The String Cheese Incident round the US to play to virtually empty venues, they're better off knocking the whole thing on the head:
"On the average, the losses, had ticket sales not dramatically picked up — which they showed no indication of doing — the people involved faced losses in the mid-to-high six figures on a per-show basis."
It's slightly scary that a line-up like that couldn't move tickets - although the costs of mounting 'Looza are pretty steep, as you're looking at having a travelling circus even without the bands involved. We guess this must be a major setback to Perry Farrell's plans to bring the tour to Europe anytime soon.
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
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3 comments:
Matt M. -
I've been wondering about why this happened all day and my only conclusion is that, because the lineup (Morrissey, PJ Harvey, Sonic Youth) are mainly going to appeal to older people, or relatively so to maybe the old Lalapalooza audiances but anyway, I just kind of guess that not enough people are willing to pay to have to drive off to the middle of nowhere, take 2 hours to park, walk around and pay upwards of $8 for a beer, and just basically be trapped for several hours before waiting in line to get out of there, walking 2 miles back to your car, and being stuck in a traffic jam until you can get out of the parking lot. I just don't think most Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey, Morrissey, or Le Tigre fans are really going to actually want to do this. I think it's just that for older people, festivals generally are horrible experiences. It almost has nothing to do with the line up because yeah it is a good line up. I remember once, when Lalapalooza was at the height of its popularity in '93, they actually sold out the first day WITHOUT A LINE UP! Think of that. 27,000 tickets were sold in a day to an event that no one knew what the line up would be until the next week. Shocking. Anyway, when I saw the line up for this year's I thought, wow, that's really good. But I refuse to subject myself to the degradations of a day long music festival held out in the middle of fucking nowhere - and not charming rural English countryside kind of nowhere - this is like a corporate theme park. Hopefully Morrissey will schedule some proper US dates in the place of the LAla dates now. I'd so much rather see him at the Aragon Ballroom than at the Tweeter Center.
I'm with Abe Simpson, I'd rather go to Hullabalooza.
The only real Headliner they had was Morrissey, at this year's Lollapalooza. Having seen him before in San Diego, I relized that it was something I NEVER WANTED TO DO AGAIN EVER!!!!!!!!
Actually, I like Morrissey, I used to like him a lot more though. Whenever I had seen him, (prior to the last time...uugh),there was a cool crowd with intelligent vegetarian artsy people. THE LAST TIME I saw him, every reject from mexico came up and "viva la raza-ed" all of the San Diego kids, and were VIOLENT! Security was lax, and it was just awful. It was not a cool scene, and I didn't know how Morrissey's demographics changed so dramatically in just a few years... With his new quazi race issue song, I decided I WOULD NOT put myself in that kind of situation, and did not want a "repeat performance". Nope, no way, not worth it, not what I remember that kind of music was about. The la tigre bill solidified that notion of the event too. Go to tijuana and you'll do fine with your Lollapalooza line-up. None of the Smiths or Morrissey fans I know wanted to be in a violent, CONFRONTATIONAL situation, we decided to shine the whole deal. I'll keep my memories of a slightly saner Morriseey, and much cooler fans to be around.
Plus, a real kicker was what he (Morrissey) said about our president during a concert in England, wishing it was Geoge Bush who had died instead of Reagan...lame. Hey, your country can watch someone beat a dog with a stick and walk by, but the U.S.A. is gonna take the stick, heal the dog and punish the offender...
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