Wednesday, January 23, 2008

All American headliners for Reading/Leeds

While not giving away any specific details, festival organiser Melvyn Benn has said that all three headliners will be American acts, and that all have played the festival before but "not necessarily as headliners." Rage Against The Machine, Green Day, Foo Fighters, Metallica, The Strokes, Marilyn Manson and The White Stripes are all strong possibilities as previous headliners, while The Killers, My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy are possibilities for those that haven't previously topped the line-up.

Benn also stated that he has recently bought a piece of land that he'd previously hired for the festival as a way of ensuring the long-term future of the event and that they were putting more roads in on the site and would be making the main arena a lot bigger for this year's event. So, that'll either mean less overcowding in the arena or more people allowed in.

Friday, January 18, 2008

The Wonder Stuff at Reading 1992 on CD

Highlights of The Wonder Stuff's Friday night headlining slot from 1992 are now available on CD, along with sessions from the Janice Long and Mark Goodier radio shows. The second disc includes 16 tracks recorded in Leicester in 1994 and three songs from their 'farewell' performance at the Phoenix Festival, also in 1994. None of the songs have been released before. Here's the festival tracks:

Reading 28/08/92
Red Berry Joy Town BBC
Who Wants To Be The Disco King?
Radio Ass Kiss
Mission Drive
Cartoon Boyfriend
Donation
Play
Circle Square
Cabin Fever
Room 410
A Wish Away
Piece Of Sky
Give Give Give Me More More More

Phoenix Festival15/07/94
It's Yer Money, I'm After Baby
Unbearable
Good Night Though

You can get this 2CD set for just £5.29 (including postage!) from www.101cd.com

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Isle of Wight 'sold out'

The 2008 Isle of Wight Festival is apparently sold out. Headliners are The Police, Sex Pistols and The Kaiser Chiefs. Also rumoured to be playing are The Zutons, though they are keeping a very low-profile at the moment. Watch this space to see more tickets available nearer the time, just like every other festival...

Thursday, January 10, 2008

MPs reject call to ban internet ticket touts

Once again, after much debate a government committee has done sweet FA. In this case, they have rejected the idea of banning online ticket touts, despite recognising that there are "dubious practices" in place among some agencies. Instead they have recommended that artists and venues profit from the proceeds of these inflated ticket sales. Stupidly, they seem to have targetted sites such as ebay, rather than the organised touting agencies which buy tickets in bulk purely in order to sell on at huge profits.

The simplest solution would have been to make the selling of tickets above face value an offence. But no, we've got the usual ineffectual waffle.

Glastonbury organiser Michael Eavis made the frankly daft suggestion of pre-registering and putting photos on tickets, which doesn't seem really practical - can you imagine the queues at venues as everyone has their photo checked on entering? It's one thing to pre-register for a big festival, quite another for a gig in a smaller venue where you may not decide months in advance that you're going.

One thing's for certain, organised online touting will continue to blight the concert-going experience in this country.