No Love in the Hole for Limp Bizkit
Apparently the allure of heading Down Under in the summertime wasn’t enough for lead singer of Hole, Courtney Love, with the band pulling out of the February heavy rock festival Soundwave after discovering they would be playing below Limp Bizkit.
Love, whose career highlights include marrying one of grunge music’s icons (the late Kurt Cobain) and releasing a few questionable albums of her own, is no stranger to controversy. Things have only gotten worse since Ms Love discovered the joy of Twitter and the ability to spurt her spontaneous thoughts to the general public.
Upon hearing they were below the billing of Fred Durst and co, Love tweeted: “what flight of crazed fancy made you think we’d open for limp dude? no offence thatsnuts” [sic].
The organisers of the multi-city festival haven’t held back in their disgust at her actions taking to the tweet-waves themselves to voice their opinion of the singer. Promoter AJ Maddah let loose in response writing: ‘‘like we were going to ask her permission every time we book a band. No point taking her back, only for her to cancel later, or turn up & act like a rotten twat to other artists, fans’’.
It’s the kind of rock and roll spat we love at the Motherland. Both sides fought hard but we’ll give points to the promoters for, if anything, their care in spelling and punctuation. Looks like Courtney might not be back in Australia for a while, especially with Limp Bizkit. Mind you she’s slagged off most bands so she’s probably not the most popular person on tour.
Posters maketh the music
You see them in the streets, plastered on pub walls and you may even have snagged a few as concert souvenirs. We are talking of course about tour posters. Even in the age of social media you will still see the posters around, and the army of promoters pasting them up wherever there’s a spare public spot.
What is the staying power of the ordinary poster, publicising a bands upcoming tour, and why do they go from simple ads to sometime collector’s items? Simply really, art and music have always gone hand in hand. Many bands are also the designers of their publicity material and the chance to have their gigs displayed to everyone is another joy of the music journey. Plus for the punters they’re an exciting reminder of a long awaited gig, a chance to point and say to your mate in the street, ‘can’t wait for that gig’.
The good news is now you can get your hands on the raddest book to hit our coffee tables. Every Poster Tells a Story! is being released by Australian company Frontier Touring and will chronicle the best and most memorable tour posters of the past 30 years.
Over 500 tours and their artwork are on display in the book along with stories from leading music journalists, managers and industry figures. Founder of Frontier Touring Michael Gudinski, who provides the foreword for the book, told The Sydney Morning Herald, that the key is in their longevity and how they last in people’s memories:
“posters will last through the new technology and be around for the next 40 years”.
Melbourne Music Week program announced
A few months ago we wrote about this exciting upcoming event. And now with the Melbourne Music Week just around the corner, we’ve had a peek at the program. We’re going to be very cliché and say, ‘yes, it is more than just the music’.
Apart from the performances and industry seminars there will be the Kubik, an open-air venue constructed from glowing water tanks which change colour in response to the music. ‘The Live Music Safari’ will see over 60 acts perform in one night across different locations while obscure locations like the top of Melbourne Central Station will host performances.
Movie buffs can get along to ‘Playing Under The Influence’ where musicians including Tim Rogers will present films which had the most influence on their music.
Maybe Australian Times will send this writer over to cover the week (sorry Paul, the Publisher already called shotgun — Ed.)? No… Well it was worth a shot.