From Kings of Leon:
We are so sorry to say Kings of Leon are canceling their entire US tour due to Caleb Followill suffering from vocal issues and exhaustion. The band is devastated, but in order to give their fans the shows they deserve, they need to take this break. Unfortunately, the US dates cannot be rescheduled due to the band’s international tour schedule. Tickets will be refunded at point of purchase. Tickets purchased online or via phones will be automatically refunded. The band will resume touring in Canada at the Rogers Center in Vancouver, BC, on September 28th. That show was originally schedule for September 14th.
If you missed this news earlier today, Caleb Followill had a bit of an outburst on stage this past Friday night and it seems like the band needs a break to deal with the issues. Hopefully it’s for the best.
Happy Monday, folks! Phish returns to the Gorge this Friday night and me and a full @LiveMusicBlog crew will be there rocking our tweets and having way more fun than any of you will be (unless, of course, you’re there with us or on Couch Tour). It’s the main event for all of us, resulting in a series of countdowns and otherwise over-excited tweeting and anticipation for what the future holds for the band returning to the road for this brief Summer Tour Leg II.
Please follow along with us and we’ll have some updates later this week on who to follow and when. And as always, we can count on the folks at @YEMBlog and @ohkeepahblog (among others) to keep us posted while the rest of us at the show struggle with cell coverage and keeping batteries charged long enough to stay in contact with friends after the show is over. Ahh, the Gorge. I can’t effing wait, even if that stupid tarp is still up and I have to eat my words (kinda) from last year’s discovery around Sasquatch time… >>>
Two ways to look at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, in Indio, Calif., which begins its 12th edition on Friday:
- It sold out in less than a week — faster than ever before, according to Rolling Stone — when tickets went on sale in January. (Attendance is expected to hover around 75,000 for each of the festival’s three days.)
- When I tell friends I’m going to Coachella, they look skeptical and disapproving. “What are you looking forward to?” they ask, and they’re not just making conversation.
After an unusually long wait and months of speculation and anticipation, the lineup for Coachella 2011 has finally been announced. Headlining this year’s festival will be Kings of Leon, Arcade Fire, Kanye West with the Black Keys, Animal Collective and The Strokes supporting right behind…
This year the organizers have announced a special attention to art and collaboration with some of the festival performers, perhaps something resulting from Phish Festival 8 and something that maybe caught the attention of the Goldenvoice organizing team as they worked to plan this year’s festival. They’re dubbing this initiative The Creators Project, something that will likely enhance everyone’s Facebook status for weeks to come following the festival. I’ll be excited to see how this one comes together.
This year, at Coachella, The Creators Project will be collaborating with select headlining acts and curating a series of major art installations on festival grounds. Additionally, we’ve worked with Coachella to bill three of our favorite bands from China, Korea, and Brazil. These international musicians come from our very own Creator ranks — a diverse group of artists, musicians, filmmakers, and designers all using cutting edge technology to realize their visions.
Read on for the full lineup.
The second and final day of Outside Lands was a pretty successful music-filled day for me and my crew. I saw some seriously great music, ate some great food, enjoyed some $8 Newcastles, and generally left completely primed for the Worship My Organ face-melt that was planned for the late-night show at the Boom Boom Room. Mission accomplished.
The festival was solid, though. We came away with tons of memories and a bit more energy compared to the two previous years when the festival was spread out amongst three different days. The streamlined fest felt efficient and it felt like it was logistically successful, so for that we had hardly a complaint in terms of food, beer and facilities. Plus the music was pretty sick. READ MORE
This weekend was a weird and somewhat disappointing one for live music news (that is, unless you’re a String Cheese Incident fan — more on that shortly). The tragedy being what it is following Love Parade in Germany, I’d hate to highlight something so devastating when there’s perhaps a more useful, half-hearted set of headlines that can be shared to end the day on a better note. And while they can be taken lightly, it had me thinking more seriously about the role of live music in our lives and how sometimes our expectations aren’t really in line with what the artist is trying to accomplish. Are there times and circumstances when a band or thing gets too big and gets detached? Too hyped? Too misunderstood or too jarring for a populace that seems to wish they had it a certain way? How do our concert expectations get fulfilled and do some artists just go well out of their way to satisfy their own needs at the expense of the audience’s potential reaction?
Maybe those are a seemingly random mix of questions, but they seemed to flow together when I sat down to write a post on the news following the Kings of Leon show this past Friday night. I had also just read about M.I.A.’s performance this weekend and finally caught up with the Panda Bear photos and review over at You Ain’t No Picasso. Do these artists suck at concerts? READ MORE
Happy Monday morning, everybody. We’ve got some reports to get posted from our team at Bonnaroo this year, and all of the other coverage streaming in is quite impressive and exhaustive. It’s pretty clear this is the savviest of music festivals when it comes to online media, so I’ll be rounding up some of my favorite links later to check out showing how the festival went down. I was too busy watching Phish updates on Twitter this weekend and enjoying the sunshine here in San Francisco, which was obviously way nicer than the 100-degree heat that the folks at Bonnaroo were trying to navigate through. Despite the heat, our friend Eric Tsurumoto managed to get some amazing shots from the fest. Read on for his quick gallery from Day Two, featuring shots of the late-night Flaming Lips set and a few of the bigger headliners like She & Him and Kings of Leon.
READ MORE
npr.org/music
NPR Music strikes wonderfully again; they just announced that they’ll be broadcasting over 40 sets from this year’s
Bonnaroo Music Festival beginning next Thursday.
NPR Music, together with three partner public radio stations, sets up camp by the four main stages at this year’s Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, presenting three days of live webcasts with dozens of performances from popular musicians. From June 11-13, NPR Music, together with Member stations KUT Austin, The Current from Minnesota Public Radio and WFUV New York, team up to offer more than 40 full sets from acts taking the Festival’s Which, What, This, and That stages, including The Dave Matthews Band, The Dead Weather, Kings of Leon, Nas and Damian Marley, Phoenix, The Avett Brothers, Jimmy Cliff, The Flaming Lips (performing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon), Norah Jones, Jay Electronica, The Gossip, Dan Deacon, LCD Soundsystem and John Prine.
If you’ve followered their coverage of SXSW in the past, you know that these webcasts (and subsequently archived sets) are top notch. This will likely be a few sets I set my watch to. We’ll post the schedule when we get it.
