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Most 'overbooked' headliner


airwaves
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Hi

Who do you think has been the most 'overbooked' main stage headliner - just those 3 acts per festival alone. That is, not someone who for 'taste' reasons you may or may not have thought should have headlined eg Metallica, Jay-Z, Beyonce etc etc who each split opinion but were (probably) big enough on the world stage to be 'worthy' of a headline spot.

No, rather someone who came from nowhere AND did relativly bugger all since/disappeared into oblivian.

I start you with 1999 and Skunk Anansie  !!! Who the F were/are they??

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Basement Jaxx, Gorillaz, Florence and Ash, although they were replacements in fairness.

Mumford & Sons (as CalGon says, they were big at the time but in hindsight they've bombed since). I'd argue that Rod Stewart was a strange booking. Actually, 2002 was an awful trio of headliners.

I don't think they get it wrong that often, to be honest. They're getting pretty good at this festival organising lark, aren't they?

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Arcade Fire for definite. Didn't 'come from nowhere and then go away again' as such, but far too niche an appeal for a modern Pyramid headliner.

Really do think it's overstated how much the Mumfords have dropped off - of course they didn't sustain the mental popularity they had on the Babel tour, but they haven't suddenly become a pub-size band. 

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52 minutes ago, airwaves said:

I start you with 1999 and Skunk Anansie  !!! Who the F were/are they??

Joint headlined one night at Bearded Theory last year along with Slaves, though were on last.

Apparently they were quite good.

 

Anyway... Shakespeare's Sister somehow headlined in 1992. They were on their second album by then which peaked at number 9 in the UK. Apart from Stay, only 2 other singles troubled the top 10.

Sub headliner was Lou Reed.   

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13 minutes ago, Gnomicide said:

Joint headlined one night at Bearded Theory last year along with Slaves, though were on last.

Apparently they were quite good.

I saw them play mid-afternoon at Highfield Festival in Germany a couple years ago. They were actually pretty good, Skin was on great form. Not sure if they warranted a Pyramid headline slot though, even at their peak. 

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Moby is someone you’d have to notice at the time to identify as a headliner. Saying that though, they need more overbookings (zeitgeisty shunts up the lineup) than overbookings in the other sense (repeats, legacy acts doing all the festivals, etc).

However, I can’t believe Skunk Anansie were ever big enough. They must’ve known where the bodies were buried.

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56 minutes ago, CaledonianGonzo said:

Skunk and the lads were basically the last gasp of the 80s/90s style of headline booking policy when acts like The Black Crowes and Lenny Kravitz wound up at the top of the tree.

Black Crowes is a bit of a shocker, isn't it. I mean, I absolutely love them and would be delighted to see them back in action but it's quite the thing to think of them as headliners. 

Looking at some of the old lineups, they were back a couple of years later as sub headliners to Oasis. Strange times. The only time I saw them at a festival around the same period, they were the opening act at Donington in 1991.

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18 minutes ago, Gnomicide said:

Looking at some of the old lineups, they were back a couple of years later as sub headliners to Oasis. Strange times. 

I think there"s a bit of footage of that on YouTube.  From memory it involved a lot of fairly stoned jamming and an extended percussion interlude from yer man during My Morning Song that went down like a tonne of bricks with the crowd.

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I guess all bookings can be justified at the time. I'm quite glad Glastonbury never went and booked Biffy as a headliner, would of definitely been a Mumford and Sons scenario.

Coldplay have definitely played too much, but I guess every festival has a house band. Will be quite shit if they reappear in the next few years though - I imagine they probably will in 2020.

 

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4 hours ago, The Nal said:

Travis, Arcade Fire, Florence, Kasabian, The Verve, Mumfords. 

I'm intrigued by people saying Florence was a bad decision. She was booked as a sub and (in my opinion) did a very good job at a headline slot. I imagine once she returns she will be taking headline bookings only, so will it look that strange in retrospect? 

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12 minutes ago, Matt42 said:

I'm intrigued by people saying Florence was a bad decision. She was booked as a sub and (in my opinion) did a very good job at a headline slot. I imagine once she returns she will be taking headline bookings only, so will it look that strange in retrospect? 

Maybe not but as you say, she was booked as a sub which is about right. Good decision at the time. They didn't have too many options though. 

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Arcade Fire, Florence, and Kasabian were all fine. Owen Pallett & The Lads and Ran His Dad Over & The Lads have both headlined a good crop of the other big UK fests before and since they headlined G, and Florence is just big and popular. If your headliner pool doesn't include them, then your headliner pool is too small/unrealistic. And if they're too small then your favourite off-pitch yodeling virgins Radiohead are as well.

And what is more; if you're only having incredibigs at the top of the lineup-, then tickets getting hoovered up by normie-ass, out of town shopping centre patronising, mason jars to drink out of buying, Radio 2 listening, ITV2 watching, some e-cards meme sharing, instagramming themselves on an inflatable couch in front of the Pyramid all day BELLENDS is completely YOUR FAULT YOU DISGUSTING FESTIVAL WRECKING TURD.

I'm fine with some of these shitty people turning up, maybe it will cure them, but it's just wrong that theres like three hundred and four of them to every one crusty. Which band do crusties like? Overbook them.

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