Re: [ONE] The U2 Millennium Gig Post

Elizabeth Platt ([email protected])
Tue, 8 Dec 1998 17:37:43 -0800 (PST)

Thanks, Des! A lot of times, concert promoters/hypemeisters will float
these sort of rumors in the media, just to get people all fired up about
an upcoming event...only to find, at the end of the day, that a band like
U2 were going to play at all...In fact, there was a big concert in
Germany some years ago, where U2 and a couple of other artists were
_advertised_ as being scheduled to play (I think Sting or Peter Gabriel
were amongst them, but I'm only certain about U2). The promoters were
even selling package tours to people in Britain and Ireland, etc., the
usual ticket-plus-transportation deals. U2's management and bookers blew
the whistle on them--U2 had never been booked to play! A couple of the
other "headliners" did the same--even if they had been _approached_ to
play, they never accepted the offer, and never had signed a contract.
Yet their names were in all the advertisements...Turns out a lot of
people spent time and money for some big concert that was supposed to be
celebrating the fall of the Iron Curtain, blahblahblah, but just turned
out to be a festival with a lot of second- and third-tier bands...I assume
some lawyers were kept busy in the aftermath of this affair!

Oh yeah--after U2's management went to the press to state that the band
would _not_ be playing, the promoters had the gall to reply that U2 had
"cancelled" their appearance! To which PM and U2's bookers had to come
back to point out that a band can't _cancel_ something they never
_confirmed_ in the first place...

Just goes to show that it helps to keep up a healthy degree of skepticism
about these things. It's too easy, especially in this day and age, for
various raconteurs to filter rumors into the Internet and then into the
mainstream media. There's no harm in reading and "tracking" these
rumors--some of them can be a bit amusing--but I'd advise waiting to hear
a confirmation from a credible source, e.g., U2's management or record
company, before treating it a something serious...

Slan,

Elizabeth Platt
[email protected]

On Tue, 8 Dec 1998 [email protected] wrote:

> From: [email protected]
>
> Good lord,
>
> Everyone needs to hold up a minute and take a deep breath. NO WHERE in the
> post from Much Music was it mentioned this was the party taking place in
> California or New Zealand. All it said was U2 was going to be playing a gig
> that would be broadcast on the internet. We had a post about this
> www.party2000.com site. A site that lists not one band confirmed. No one
> knows if this is a legit site or whether this is the gig U2 will be playing.
> Calm down and stop packing your bags and making airline reservations. U2
> could be playing their part of the gig from Larry's kitchen in Dublin for all
> we know. So, just chill until more information gets out. Don't read more
> into the Much Music article than what was said.
>
> VH1's site is now also reporting the same thing as Much Music (though they
> probably got it from there themselves :-)
>
> des
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Help support ONElist, while generating interest in your product or
> service. ONElist has a variety of advertising packages. Visit
> http://www.onelist.com/advert.html for more information.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> The homepage for ONE is http://www.potomac.com/deseree/one.
> View the One-ders Profiles at http://www.potomac.com/deseree/one/profiles.htm
>

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Tue Dec 08 1998 - 18:29:31 PST