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Tuesday, November 27, 2007
C3 announces New Jersey rock festival
C3 Presents announced today the Vineland (N.J.) Music Festival for Aug. 8 to 10 to be held at a 500-acre farm in Vineland, N.J.,
The new Vineland fest is a partnership with U.K. festival producer Melvin Benn’s Festival Republic. Benn’s company produces the Reading (U.K.) Festival, the Leeds Festival and the legendary Glastonbury Festival, among others. The Glastonbury Festival all but kicked off the modern rock destination festival in the early 1970s.
The Vineland announcement comes two weeks after C3 seemed on track to produce a festival in Philadelphia, Penn., but Philadelphia-based company Electric Factory Concerts, wanted to throw a 40th anniversary concert at the same Belmont Plateau site that C3 was vying for.
On Nov. 14, Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park Commission tabled until next month a decision on which festival to select.
“The Philly deal looked like it wasn’t going to come off until ‘09 and we already had offer out to bands and a lot of money already invested,” Attal said. “We talked with Melvin over the years and this was a perfect opportunity.”
Festival fans will note that the Vineland Festival is scheduled for one week after Lollapalooza, also produced by C3 and scheduled for Aug. 1 to 3.
“Some bands will play both,” Attal says, “but the two festivals will be very different.”
Attal said Vineland would be of comparable size to the 80,000-capacity Bonnaroo, which is scheduled for June 12 to 15 in Manchester, Tenn.
In other C3 news, the company scored five nominations in the 2008 Pollstar Awards, including two noms for festival (for Austin City Limits Music Festival and Lollapalooza Festival), nightclub (Stubb’s), nightclub talent buyer (Amy Corbin), independent promoter (Charles Attal) and the Bill Graham award/ promoter of the year for Attal.
Plans to produce a festival on Mars in 2025 could not be confirmed at press time.
R.I.P. Obatallah
Obatallah Hayter, pianist, radio personality and “maestro of ceremonies” at many of the wildly popular Soul Happenings thrown by local vinyl fanatics Dr. Rhythm, Little Danny and Greg Most, died Saturday in Austin. He was 67 years old.
“I can’t overstate how much happiness emceeing the Soul Happenings gave him these past 10 years,” Dr. Rhythm wrote in an e-mail. “In times of sickness, the thought of the next event sustained him. He absolutely LOVED you, the people on the dance floor! Even just a few days before he passed, as he reminisced about past Soul Happenings, a smile came across his face as he said, ‘Damn, we’ve sure had some good times!’”
(Photo courtesy of Dr. Rhythm)
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In other festival news….
Get ready for the punk/garage powered Ground Zero fest the weekend of Dec. 6 through 8. It’s quite the line-up.
There’s a champagne toast and opening ceremony Dec. 6 at Sound on Sound, followed by a show at Beerland starring The Spits, The Reds, Nobunny, Cheap Time, Wax Museums and Hibachi Stranglers.
Dec. 7, get ready for a day show at 4 pm at Skatepark of Austin (1615 Rutherford Ln.)
with rhe Spits, Tunnel of Love, and Hex Dispensers.
That night check out The Bad Times (a underground/hipster garage supergroup featuring Jay Reatard, King Louie and Eric Oblivian), The Blowtops, Tunnel of Love, and the Barbaras at Beerland
Being the noise-rock nerd that I am, Dec. 8 might be my favorite night with (Expletive) Jeans, Die Rotzz, the almighty Snake Apartment, Total Abuse and The Young at Beerland
Dec. 9 closes out the fest with the Hex Dispensers, Don Juan and (Something we can’t put in the paper or on-line), the Teeners, Black Panda, the Hood Rats and the Pepperonis at Beerland.
Killer stuff, folks.
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Austin festivals take a quarter (or is that a third?) of the Plug Awards festival nods
No fewer than three Austin-based music festivals have been nominated in a for the independent music Plug awards.
The Austin City Limits Music Festival, Fun Fun Fun Fest and South By Southwest all took noms, as did the C3-orchestrated Lollapalooza.
Vote for your faves accordingly.
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Encore Top 10 for the week ending Nov. 26
Various Artists, ‘KGSR Broadcast Vol. 15’ (KGSR)
Dillinger Escape Plan, ‘Ire Works’ (Relapse)
Nine Inch Nails, ‘Yearzeroremixed’ (Interscope)
Electric Wizard, ‘Witchcult Today’ (Candlelight)
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, ‘Raising Sand’ (Rounder)
The Hives, ‘The Black & White Album’ (A&M)
Puscifer, ‘V is for Vagina’ (Puscifer)
Witchcraft, ‘The Alchemist’ (Candlelight)
Angels & Airwaves, ‘I-Empire (Universal)
Sebastian Bach, ‘Angel Down’ (MRV)
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Musicmania Top 10 Week Ending Nov. 25
Trae ‘Life Goes On’ (Rap-A-Lot)
Alicia Keys ‘As I Am’ (J Records)
Mike Jones ‘American Dream’ (Asylum)
Keyshia Cole ‘Just Like You’ (Geffen)
KGSR ‘Broadcast Volume 15’ (KGSR)
Jay-Z ‘American Gangster’ (Def Jam)
Plies ‘Real Testament’ (Slip-N-Slide)
Soulja Boy ‘Souljaboytellem.com’ (Interscope)
Kanye West ‘Graduation’ (Def Jam)
UGK ‘Underground Kingz’ (Jive)
(Musicmania 3909 D North IH 35 #1 451-3361)
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The new Austin Music Hall throws a cool opening bash
Well, it’s like a venue. And yes, it does sound a little better, especially for the second-floor deck area where the bleachers will go. Even without the delay speakers in the back. Or, um, walls.
Monday night’s unveiling of the new Austin Music Hall was a cool affair and by cool I mean everyone kept their coats on. The benefit concert for HAAM and the SIMS Foundation proceeded smoothly, if a little behind schedule in typical Austin music fashion.
It also proceeded with cold air coming in from the outside. Second floor walls were not quite finished and by not quite finished I mean largely absent. I’m pretty sure this is not what Direct Event head honcho Tim O’Connor meant by excellent air conditioning.
But in fairness, it is a neat building, from the ultramodern, unfinished outside, a visual tangle of steel and brick, to the second-floor balcony, which puts patrons within 15 or so horizontal feet (and about 12 vertical feet) of the stage. It going to be quite a place when filled with all 4,400 bodies it can accommodate.
But Monday night smelled of drywall and plywood. The box office was a hole in the wall with construction equipment behind the fellow handing out tickets. While drinks and cheese cubes were consumed by patrons in hats and scarves, O’Connor made the rounds, telling everyone with a perfectly straight face it was 95 percent done. (We kid. Based on the amount of underground pylon sinking, ductwork, electrical upgrades and build out O’Connor’s contractors had to do, 95 percent sounds about right.)
But please put tell us doors are eventually going on the men’s room stalls. Please.
The sound? Well, it wasn’t that great from the ground floor, improving a bit on the second floor. Acts such as Nakia and his Southern Cousins and Carolyn Wonderland boomed in the new room. The ceiling is a maze of steel and ductwork, the floor a concrete slab, the original floor for the original Hall in fact. (But he did get rid of the columns. And that is a vast improvement.)
The front of the house PA was clearly temporary, and Direct Events folks said this will probably be the case from here on out. This isn’t entirely unexpected, in spite of early indications that Austin Music Hall would be acoustically treated and permanently tuned. With so many big name acts traveling with their own PA (or requiring easily rentable speakers), it makes a certain kind of financial sense to skip a permanent front-of-the-house PA, sink money into the permanent speakers in the back of the house and tune the room for each individual act at sound check for that particular gig.
It was also nice to have a layout that didn’t require a lot of security. O’Connor (and his architects) specifically designed the backstage areas to require only one guard per doorway. This sort of minimal security makes for a relaxed atmosphere. Let’s hope they’re able to keep this up for bigger shows.
The Bobby Bones Show Anniversary Bash takes place Dec. 8 and features Lifehouse, Sean Kingston, Good Charlotte and more. I look forward to the finished product. It’s 95 percent there. They swear.
(Photos by Larry Kolvoord AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
