From Reuters:
“Woodstock 50 music festival
called off due to 'unforeseen setbacks'”
The troubled Woodstock 50
anniversary music festival planned for August was officially canceled on
Wednesday, with organizers blaming a series of “unforeseen setbacks.” The three-day festival, meant to mark the 50th
anniversary of the famed 1969 celebration of peace and music, was planned for
Aug. 16-18. “Woodstock 50 today announced that the three-day festival to
celebrate its 50th anniversary has been canceled,” the organizers said in a
statement. “We are saddened that a
series of unforeseen setbacks has made it impossible to put on the festival we
imagined with the great lineup we had booked and the social engagement we were
anticipating,” said Michael Lang, one of the original producers of the 1969
event. The cancellation was widely
expected after a troubled five months in which organizers were turned down at
two proposed sites in upstate New York, lost funding and headliners including
rapper Jay-Z and pop star Miley Cyrus pulled out. Tickets never went on sale for the festival. Organizers last week made a last ditch attempt
to put on a free, scaled down event at an amphitheater in Maryland, but several
of the 80 or so acts began pulling out despite having already been paid. Lang said in his statement that the smaller
event in Maryland would have been aimed at raising funds for non profits
fighting climate change and organizations encouraging Americans to vote in the
2020 U.S. general elections. Woodstock
50 was first planned for the Watkins Glen motor racing venue in upstate New
York, but the site pulled out in June. Organizers then attempted in vain to
seek permits in Vernon, New York. The
nonprofit Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the current owner of the field
where the 1969 Woodstock festival took place, also scaled back plans earlier
this year for a three-day anniversary event. It will instead host separate
concerts by Ringo Starr, Santana and the Doobie Brothers. “My thoughts turn to Bethel and its
celebration of our 50th Anniversary to reinforce the values of compassion,
human dignity, and the beauty of our differences embraced by Woodstock,” Lang
said in his statement on Wednesday.
^ It really says something when a
bunch of hippies who were most-likely on drugs the whole time were able to
create the 1969 Woodstock and yet no one was able to create a festival to remember
the 50th Anniversary. ^
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.