HOT: Woodstock Woes?
Woodstock is perhaps the most iconic name in the music festival biz, but it’s not particularly renowned for its organizational legacy. As shown in the Woodstock film, the1969 event was run very on-the-fly and promoters were caught off guard when more people showed up than anticipated. And before Fyre Festival, Woodstock ’99 was the synonym for “shit show” in terms of big music fest ventures. Whether the curse will continue with the upcoming 50th-anniversary Woodstock concerts in August (featuring Jay-Z, The Killers, Imagine Dragons, Chance the Rapper, Miley Cyrus and several other heavyweight headliners) remains to be seen, but things haven’t launched smoothly. First, there was reportedly a delay in payments to the major acts performing and now the April 22 on-sale date for tickets has been pushed back to a date TBA. Promoter Michael Lang (also a co-founder of the original Woodstock) told Billboard that murmurs that the fest will be cancelled are “just more rumors.”
WARM: Ingraham Angles for Boycott
Outrage has been boiling over after Fox News host Laura Ingraham made dismissive and rude-as-fuck remarks about rapper Nipsey Hussle the day after his funeral. Ingraham seemed to take umbrage with the tributes to Hussle that praised him for his artistry and philanthropic work. Ingraham didn’t think the MC deserved any respect because he was on a song by YG called “FDT,” which featured the refrain, “Fuck Donald Trump.” Ingraham laughed and parroted Republican talking points to defend Trump, mockingly saying, “The chorus (of ‘FDT’)… is that related to lowest unemployment ever, basically, for African Americans?” Several artists, including Snoop Dogg, T.I. and Justin Bieber, have called for a boycott and for Ingraham to be fired. Last year, after Ingraham mocked a survivor of the Parkland school shooting, several advertisers pulled their ads from her show, after which the host apologized.
COLD: The Big Take Back
Drummer Jason Bonham, son of Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham, issued a very lawyerly statement on his website that walked back claims he made on The Howard Stern Show about Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. On the program Bonham said Page gave him cocaine when he was 16, but now he says he “unconditionally retract(s) all derogatory and defamatory comments relating to Mr. J Page” and that “it is wholly untrue that Mr. J Page offered me any illegal substances either when I was a minor or at all.”
This article appears in Apr 17-24, 2019.
