If you were planning out your festival diary for the remainder of the year, there’s two major names you’ll now have to unfortunately scratch from the list.
The Australian return of Vans Warped Tour has been axed for 2014, despite hopes that the AJ Maddah-presented event would be making a comeback. Meanwhile, Fat As Butter festival also won’t be returning this year, cancelling the event for the first time in its seven year history.
Last month, Soundwave and Big Day Out promoter AJ Maddah indicated that the return of the Vans Warped Tour to Australia was “unlikely” following discussions with the event’s US founder and co-promoter Kevin Lyman.
Now Maddah confirms on Twitter that Warped will not be staged in Australia and will be “US only” for 2014, while Lyman tells UK fans that he “could not get the lineup together that I think you would expect and did not want to force it;” as FasterLouder reports.
@IzzieOFFICIAL No Warped international at all this year. US only.
— AJ (@iamnotshouting) June 24, 2014
Maddah had previously pointed out the poor ticket sales and financial returns of certain dates of the Australian Vans Warped Tour last year, featuring The Offspring, Parkway Drive, Millencolin, The Amity Affliction, and Tonight Alive on the first Warped Down Under since 2002.
The Coffs Harbour leg was described by the Soundwave boss as an “attendance disaster,” Maddah explaining, “you can’t put on an outdoor show with $90 tickets for 1,800 people.” Likewise, the ACT leg had “very poor” crowd numbers in comparison to Warped dates staged in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.
[include_post id=”409577″]
The other event that won’t be returning in 2014 is Newcastle’s Fat As Butter Festival, cancelling for the first time in seven years due to being unable to secure a strong enough lineup.
“Despite six months of scouring the world we just haven’t been able to land a line-up that we reckon you guys would come and play with,” reads a statement on Fat As Butter’s Facebook page this morning, issued by the October event’s publicity agency Shake Appeal (formerly Reckoning Entertainment).
“It was a decision we agonised over, but sometimes the fickle gods of the almighty line up just don’t cooperate!”
Despite a successful edition last year, Fat As Butter was plagued by problems, cancelling plans to provide camping grounds for 1,500 festival-goers at the Newcastle Foreshore following backlash from local residents, even though the festival had the pledged support and approval of Newcastle Council.
[include_post id=”336775″]
The festival also had to scrap plans to burn an effigy of Flo Rida; designed as a ritual and symbolic purging of the international rap star’s blight upon Fat As Butter ever since his 2011 no-show, which eventually spiralled into a messy court case between the US rapper and former Fat As Butter promoters, Mothership Music, who slammed Flo Rida with a $400k lawsuit summons via email. The chart-bothering MC managed to evade the lawsuit, and the the fine, due to the unique court approach, which eventually led Fat As Butter promoters Mothership Music to enter into voluntary liquidation.
The positive news is that organisers are already planning a Fat As Butter comeback. “We’ll miss you all this year, but we’ll definitely be back in 2015 with a smashing show,” reads today’s statement. “Stay tuned in the meantime – we might just have something else to fill the musical void.”
Warped and Fat As Butter are the latest in a string of Aussie music festivals that have folded in 2014, following on from Splendour In The Grass offshoot, Spin Off Festival being canned, hip hop festival Come Together cancelling for the first time in 10 years, fellow rap event Sprung scrapping it’s return to Melbourne, and underage festival Push Over cancelling its 2014 edition after 21 years of service, shelved due to poor ticket sales.
