Familiar famous faces coming to summertime rock festival
A full three months ahead of the action, the promoter of the Rockwave Festival, an event that has developed into a summertime rock music ritual in recent years with numerous heavyweight acts featured on its bills, has just announced a preliminary list of confirmed acts – so far – for the upcoming festival. The Dandy Warhols, HIM, Pulp, The Cure and Mesh, as well as several «heavy metal» acts, among them Motorhead, Paradise Lost, Slayer and Dream Theater, have all been listed as confirmed bookings by the festival’s promoter and founder, Di-Di Music. Most will be returning acts, having given performances here in the past. Since its inception in the mid-1990s, the festival has been unable to settle at a permanent home for a variety of reasons, including distance and substandard venue conditions for concertgoers. The upcoming event, to be held between July 1-3, will switch venues again, this time to the Athens Horse Training Center (KEIPP), located amid pleasant and withdrawn parkland – a rarity in this congested capital – in the downtown Goudi district. The center had proved an excellent choice as a concert venue last summer for Greece’s first-ever Womad festival, a premier event in the blossoming international «ethnic» music circuit. The biggest break from tradition being planned for this summer’s Rockwave Festival, however, is the addition of two extra stages – each to focus on one musical category – making three in total. Until now, just one stage had been used. But the exact details as to how these stages will be split musically remains unresolved. «One’s definitely going to be a rock stage, the other metal, but as for the third, it’ll be either a dance or an alternative stage,» Di-Di Music’s press officer, Marcos Michailidis, said yesterday. «That will all come together depending on the makeup of the prospective bookings,» he added. The press officer, however, declined to elaborate on who these bookings could be. «We’re still negotiating with several acts, but can’t make any announcements yet,» Michailidis said. One of the more prominent bands being touted for an appearance at this summer’s festival is the top-selling American act Red Hot Chilli Peppers. If confirmed, it would be the band’s first visit here and a major bonus for the event’s overall appeal. Since its launch back in 1996, originally as the Rock of Gods festival, Rockwave has drawn major international rock acts including Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Portishead, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Sonic Youth, Moby, Prodigy, and, last year, PJ Harvey. After assembling mediocre bills in more recent summers, the organizer’s efforts to put on an improved event last year were marred by heavy rainfall during the planned second day, which was consequently canceled. Concertgoers were, as a result, deprived of seeing Cave and his Bad Seeds, the day’s headline act. But fans could not have been offered better remedy and consolation for the unexpected debacle on Day 2 than PJ Harvey, the event’s headline act on the final night, whose show, her second in Greece, lived up to this spirited artist’s well-deserved worldwide fame. As for the confirmed acts for this summer, the infectious American pop-rock act The Dandy Warhols, the star attraction so far, who have toured here twice over the past two years – for a smaller summer festival and two sold-out club gigs – will be returning a bigger act than ever before. Over recent months, the band has found itself sitting on an anthemic hit, thanks to the choice of one of its tracks, «Bohemian Like You» from the group’s third album, «Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia,» for a heavily played TV advert promoting a famous mobile telephony campaign. But make no mistake, this band is loaded with far more, as exemplified by its two-sided musical story, or songs that sway from wayward neo-psychedelia to compact garage-pop simplicity of the catchiest kind on three albums to date. Also here will be the top-selling veteran new-wave act, The Cure, who made their first visit here back in the mid-1980s and have since toured on many occasions, and the British pop band Pulp. Interested parties can keep in touch with developments, including additional artist bookings and ticket sales, on the promoter’s website, at www.didimusic.gr.
