There is quite a debate raging over at the forum at Underworld’s web site dirty.org about the band dropping out of the Adelaide and Perth legs of the Big Day Out (BDO) tour in late January to early February next year.
You can guess how I feel about that, although I would not have thought BDO was the ideal festival for them to play anyway. But BDO does get very high attendance numbers, even in Perth and Adelaide, especially here in fact. And a far broader cross-section of people goes to it, as opposed to say festivals of electronic music only, like Two Tribes.
Other headlining acts like New Order can be bothered to play the whole tour. Why is Underworld doing this to us? It feels like the people of this city are being given a big FUJIA. Apparently the same thing happened last time Underworld did the BDO.
The Sydney-based list topic monitor and other eastern states list readers are essentially telling the Perth Underworld fans to shut up and quit complaining right now, while others are glad to share how they have plenty of money, time or whatever it takes to get to all shows or at least one of them, and so on. Posturing, posing and preening.
It is all very ugly, and not a sign of any explanation of why Underworld is not travelling with the whole of the BDO tour.
Why are people so upset? It might be the extreme joy of finding out that one of the most remarkable, perhaps the most remarkable, life-changing live performance acts is playing a national tour that travels even to this benighted city, but then almost immediately comes the deeply unpleasant news that, hey, too bad, they just cannot be arsed to appear in your city. And you can do nothing about it, and you cannot do anything about getting to one of the other cities either. People are shattered right now.
Shades of Adelaide and The Beatles, but in that instance fans put on major public protests and the band relented. Music is so sliced and diced into so many different genres now that there can probably never again be one single band with the stature of The Beatles, or an artist as important as Elvis.
An estimated 20,000 people would have seen Underworld at the BDO in Perth, but for most UW is one of several they will be going to see. In my case, Underworld is the only band playing in 2003 that I care enough about to see.
10:21:09 AM 
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