Ohana Festival Update

FNM (and others) being rescheduled to October (soccer stadium in LA)

https://twitter.com/FaithNoMore/status/1363912543408844802?s=20

Very interesting indeed.

JH6056 said:

Luckytwn1 said:

RatherStarved said:

matt84 said:

Obviously with Ohana there’s still a lot of a tickets left to sell. I wonder if the organisers are now going to put a limit on how many the venue can hold. That way if the festival is allowed to go ahead, it’s not going to have the capacity it’s had in previous years. I’m sure all this kind of stuff is being discussed.

I agree this would make sense, not to mention make for a more civilized experience, but I fully expect someone to jump in and say this will never happen because the economics only work with a full house.  We also don’t know if they’ve already sold more than whatever a reduced maximum might be.  

This, of course, is correct. A festival that has already signed contracts with acts can’t just reduce their pay without renegotiation and obviously the festival would get wiped out economically if they pay the full deals with a greatly reduced capacity. Now whether Ohana has room to maneuver since Ed and PJ are the headliners, hard to say without knowing specifics of the other contracts. 

As  previously stated, an equally big issue here is the fact that all of these things need to be cleared months in advance. So conditions could be much better in September but you would have to know well before to have the show. Especially here in CA, there’s clearly going to be a presumption against having large numbers of people in one place. There has still not been a single person to attend a sporting event in California since the pandemic started, even though other states have been allowing fans in for months. Hopefully Newsom is going to allow at least a very limited number of fans into baseball stadiums come April but there’s been no word on that yet. 

 

In terms of the contracts, I wonder what the insurance policy of the festivals say... Clearly a global deadly pandemic is not an expected obstacle and I wonder if the totally destructive impact on the live music industry means that everything, or almost everything, is up for re-negotiation?

Bands want to play, fans want to go, and for most crew, promoters and bands, some pay is better than no pay.  Playing is better than not playing.  So I wonder if it is possible everything would be up for re-negotiation just to get the fest to happen?  This all assumes no one is risking their lives for it to go on sooner rather than later.  Which may not be an assumption that can be made this far ahead.

For a promoter, “some” pay is likely not better than no pay because when the festival needs to be cancelled, that’s why they have insurance (assuming there’s no pandemic exclusion). And I don’t think bands want to play until they are 100 percent sure their fans will be safe attending shows. We know that is Pearl Jam’s position. I would bet strongly that if the festivals cannot proceed under almost normal circumstances, they will be postponed again. That’s what we are seeing time and again and it’s why the European festivals like Glastonbury are already moving to next year. 

Well, although I don't know HOW they are announcing this, given the current state of Covid & especially the UK variant and all variants... But so far THREE UK music festivals I've heard of (Isle of Wight, Leeds & Reading) are saying they are a GO for THIS SUMMER!  Here's one twitter announcement, but I don't see any details yet on what will be different or what modifications they're making to be confident that this will go off no matter what....

Fingers crossed.

I think he will play some PJ in his solo, but is unlikely to repeat any of those with the band the next day.  Now, whether this happens this year or not, that I’m not so sure.

matt84 said:

JH6056 said:

Well, although I don't know HOW they are announcing this, given the current state of Covid & especially the UK variant and all variants... But so far THREE UK music festivals I've heard of (Isle of Wight, Leeds & Reading) are saying they are a GO for THIS SUMMER!  Here's one twitter announcement, but I don't see any details yet on what will be different or what modifications they're making to be confident that this will go off no matter what....

https://twitter.com/OfficialRandL/status/1364526936660336643

By June, the UK is hoping to be back to the way it was pre-Covid so I doubt these festivals are making modifications or doing anything differently. 

The key word is "hoping" and there is no downside for Live Nation to sell tickets now, even if there's still a chance it winds up moving later.

Clapton postponed his 2021 European tour date (May/June) and moved the dates to 2022.

JH6056 said:

matt84 said:

JH6056 said:

Well, although I don't know HOW they are announcing this, given the current state of Covid & especially the UK variant and all variants... But so far THREE UK music festivals I've heard of (Isle of Wight, Leeds & Reading) are saying they are a GO for THIS SUMMER!  Here's one twitter announcement, but I don't see any details yet on what will be different or what modifications they're making to be confident that this will go off no matter what....

https://twitter.com/OfficialRandL/status/1364526936660336643

By June, the UK is hoping to be back to the way it was pre-Covid so I doubt these festivals are making modifications or doing anything differently. 

Given that the UK hasn't gotten control of the UK variant and now has people with the Brazil variant and the S. African variant, it just feels wildly irresponsible to announce based on the "hope" they'll be pre-Covid.  Literally NO signs point to being totally back to normal by then. Anyone who buys tickets without knowing what they're basing this announcement on in terms of Plan A (back to Pre-Covid) but also is there a Plan B & Plan C if Covid is still a big thing... I guess people trust promoters more than I do. And I know some good ones.

Given the developers of the Oxford vaccine were on Uk media this morning telling people to stop obsessing about variants then I wonder if a sea change is about to take place regarding summer events. The Uk is the world leader in identifying these variants - they don't emerge from the Uk - we just pick them up.

Covid deaths are plunging at 35+% per week in the Uk - will be down to very small numbers by April at that rate. June and beyond look promising.

Tjm007 said:

JH6056 said:

matt84 said:

JH6056 said:

Well, although I don't know HOW they are announcing this, given the current state of Covid & especially the UK variant and all variants... But so far THREE UK music festivals I've heard of (Isle of Wight, Leeds & Reading) are saying they are a GO for THIS SUMMER!  Here's one twitter announcement, but I don't see any details yet on what will be different or what modifications they're making to be confident that this will go off no matter what....

https://twitter.com/OfficialRandL/status/1364526936660336643

By June, the UK is hoping to be back to the way it was pre-Covid so I doubt these festivals are making modifications or doing anything differently. 

Given that the UK hasn't gotten control of the UK variant and now has people with the Brazil variant and the S. African variant, it just feels wildly irresponsible to announce based on the "hope" they'll be pre-Covid.  Literally NO signs point to being totally back to normal by then. Anyone who buys tickets without knowing what they're basing this announcement on in terms of Plan A (back to Pre-Covid) but also is there a Plan B & Plan C if Covid is still a big thing... I guess people trust promoters more than I do. And I know some good ones.

Given the developers of the Oxford vaccine were on Uk media this morning telling people to stop obsessing about variants then I wonder if a sea change is about to take place regarding summer events. The Uk is the world leader in identifying these variants - they don't emerge from the Uk - we just pick them up.

Covid deaths are plunging at 35+% per week in the Uk - will be down to very small numbers by April at that rate. June and beyond look promising.

I'm as happy as anyone to see signs of the sun coming up again over live music events and festivals. AND...the UK's numbers JUST LAST WEEK were still highly problematic. Hey, if you're right and they've got such a lead on this that we simply don't know what they know but you trust they know enough to back up their optimism, cool.  I just haven't seen any evidence of it and it was such a fast and huge jump from one British friend telling me JUST LAST WEEK that they were looking at another lockdown in London... and seeing this confident "We're doing this festival!" news.

I truly hope it's safe and that they're right that these events will safely happen, maybe even at full capacity, when they're scheduled. But pardon me if I reserve a very very healthy amount of skepticism about it really being back to "business as usual" by these dates, as much as I would love that to be true.

Isle of Wight festival moved to September. Seems like we really are going to have live music (if everything continues to go well) back in the UK come September time.

Hope the US follows a similar pattern to the UK and Ohana is a go!