So much for seeing Van Halen in Australia. It has been announced today that this year’s Soundwave Revolution traveling festival has been canceled. Apparently the Australian festival was canceled after the second headliner had pulled out.
Speaking to Australia’s Nova 969 radio station, festival promoter AJ Maddah said the following about the cancelation:
“The festival as we know it has been canceled. The situation is that we were scheduled to make a second announcement on the first of August, which had our festival co-headliner on that announcement. Their circumstances changed at the last minute and they had to pull out. And unfortunately we don’t have enough time to replace them. And we didn’t really want to go ahead with an incomplete lineup.
We were supposed to make the public announcement this evening anyway. But what we wanted to do — because a lot of those bands are still coming and we are creating packages and what have you, for them to do in clubs and other venues — we wanted to be able to make the full announcement at 1 p.m. [today]. So that we could say the festival in its format is no longer happening [and] that these shows are taking its place. Unfortunately, one of those artists jumped the gun.
The people that have already bought their tickets — I think it’s nice enough that people that have already purchased their tickets by credit card, in which case those tickets are automatically refunded. And the small percentage that might have bought it from outlets, they’ll be able to get a refund, I expect. Had we had been able to have our second headliner and make our second announcement, I think we wouldn’t have had any issues with the festival. And it wasn’t for the fact of not being able to attract the artists, I guess we were victims of certain artists’ circumstances or what have you. I think the Australian festival market is still very strong.
Obviously we love our fan base and we try to do what’s best for them. And we could have taken the option of limping through with the lineup as we have [it] now. It still would have obviously been a much better financial outcome for us than to go through the road we have — but we just didn’t want to put an inferior product on the market. Revolution was a one-off, but yes, Soundwave 2012 will be back in February and the lineup is massive.”
There’s no word as to who this second headliner was to be. However, something doesn’t really add up. Even if this was a major addition to the show, the bill not only still included Van Halen, but also bands like Machine Head, Alice Cooper, Hellyeah, Danzig, Bad Religion and many others. You’d think that Van Halen is a big enough draw and enough reason for a festival to continue on.
Whatever the reason may be, American fans won’t have to worry…that is of unless you were planning to travel to Australia for one of the festival’s dates (in which case, that rreeaalllly sucks for you since plane tickets are expensive).
