Promoters Testing a U.S. Festival With a British Accent

Lollapalooza was inspired by U.K. rock festivals--multi-day, multi-stage, multi-genre events drawing as many as 100,000 people from all over the British Isles and Europe. And last year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was in part built on the U.K. model.

But that kind of show has never been done in the U.S. by actual British promoters. Until now.

The English-Irish team that puts on the annual V Festivals--back-to-back, two-day events held in two England locations that sell about 220,000 tickets combined--is partnering with the New York wing of SFX Entertainment’s massive concert promotions network and the Little Big Man booking agency (which was behind Lilith Fair) to test the U.S. market. The plan is a single-day festival in the New York area in September--with hopes for five one-day events in different cities, including the Los Angeles area, next year.

Done & Dusted, as the event is being titled, will be held Sept. 9 in Liberty State Park, a scenic setting in Jersey City, N.J., in view of the Statue of Liberty. The date is just two days after the MTV Video Music Awards will be taped in New York, bringing many artists to the city.

The organizing consortium is not setting its sights on U.K.-like attendance, though, but rather is hoping to establish a beachhead for British acts starting to make progress here, as well as compatible American acts. Among the acts being courted and showing interest, Little Big Man President Marty Diamond says, are ex-Verve leader Richard Ashcroft, Primal Scream, Travis, Stereophonics, Charlatans U.K., the Chemical Brothers and Robbie Williams. The question is, with rock dominated by the aggro-Americana of Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine and Korn, is there a place for the more subtly textured U.K. stylists here?

“These are artists who are phenomenally successful in Europe and are beginning to get noticed in the States,” says Dennis Desmond, the Dublin-based co-organizer of the V Festivals.

“There’s a culture of kids who trot out to see these bands in the U.S., and we don’t provide them a lot of opportunities,” says Diamond. “A recent tour I did with the Charlatans and Stereophonics together did great business. I think a lot of people were surprised.

The D&D; team has relatively modest goals for attendance--anywhere between 15,000 and 25,000. And the intent is to draw from a wide geographical area in the manner of the European fests. With the SFX national network, the show will be promoted heavily not just in New York, but around the country.

The show will be broadcast live on the Internet and possibly packaged as a cable TV special, which Desmond says will be a prime attraction for European fans of the bands.

“We’re not going to try to go out and jam 20 cities and be too ambitious,” says Jim Glancy, vice president of booking for SFX’s DelsnerSlater concerts promotions firm. “But there’s a void of a lot of great stuff going out there. I hope it’s edgy and fun and challenging, and hope it pays off in the next years. And if not, this one will be terrific anyway.”

THE NAME GAME: With noted guest appearances on recordings by Rah Digga, Eve and others, rapper Sonja Blade had one of the hottest new names in hip-hop. But it was a little too hot in the eyes of Midway Games Inc., maker of the Mortal Kombat video games, which features a trademarked character named Sonya Blade.

So with her debut album due in early 2001 from the Body Bag label via Virgin Records, the New York rapper, whose real name is Sonja Holder, will publicly be known only as Blade. Her logo is being redesigned to reflect the change.

“I’ll still shout it out [on stage] anyway,” says the disappointed but defiant Holder, who says she started using Sonja Blade as a performing alias in 1990, and first used it on recordings when she guested on a song by DJ Clue in 1995.

“Everyone in the rap world knows her as Sonja Blade,” says Jasmine Vega, Blade’s publicist at Virgin. “So now we have to give her a new identity and reintroduce her a bit.”

Holder says that when the name was suggested to her by a record executive, who said, “Your lyrics are sharp and you have an edge,” she was unaware of the Kombat character. She did, though, become a player.

And how good is she? She has to admit she’s not exactly a champion.

“I get beat up every now and then,” she says.

THE WILD (WEB) FRONTIER: Add another established artist to the list of those exploring the world outside of major labels with help from the Internet. John Hiatt, who in the course of a 25-year career has been signed to Epic, MCA, Geffen, A&M; and recently Capitol, has made a deal with Emusic.com to release his “Crossing Muddy Waters,” an acoustic album of all-new songs due Sept. 26.

Emusic will sell the album as downloadable files, with a licensing deal with folk-rooted independent Vanguard Records to put the collection in brick-and-mortar stores for those who prefer to purchase music the old-fashioned way.

Ken Levitan, Hiatt’s manager, says this album was a side venture recorded after the singer-songwriter parted ways with Capitol earlier this year, but that it will serve as a good test to see if the Internet is viable for future releases. Hiatt is working on a “regular” electric album reuniting him with the Louisiana band the Goners, featuring guitarist Sonny Landreth, which backed him in the late ‘80s.