Cannibal Cheerleader

For all those who were at Monday’s sold out Crystal Castles show in Austin consider yourselves lucky – turns out that the band’s scheduled set the next night at Dallas’ Granada Theater was cancelled at the last minute! Horrible news indeed! Here’s the word straight from the band’s management:

Unfortunate stuff here Cannibal Cheerleader faithful, but let it be made clear, the band clearly had no control over this situation. While there will obviously be ire and indignation from the sold-out would-be audience, it wasn’t for lack of trying that Crystal Castles didn’t get to rampage in Dallas. Here’s hoping they come back soon to a stage with less of an alarmist manager. 

Comments? 

UPDATE!!

We reported this morning that Crystal Castles were not allowed to play their Dallas gig because the venue was afraid CC would “blow up the soundsystem”. However, looks like Mike Schoder of the Granada Theater is flipping the story on the band, offering this to say (via):

“Let me start with a definition:
Prima donna:
Prima donnas cannot help the way they are because their parents spoiled them and they are still developing their personalities.
All a prima donna has to do is whine and their parents give them what they want.

Here’s how our day went at the Granada on Tue:
Vega (Alan from Ghosthustler) opened for CC in Austin Monday night.
At 5pm (3 hrs before doors) we received a call from CC that Vega could not be on the bill.
Vega had been approved by CC in advance for the bill.
Early on Tue CC hired a light tech from Austin that is also a DJ to replace Vega.
CC could have communicated with Vega early in the day before they left Austin.
Vega was at the Granada waiting to soundcheck.
CC would not enter the building until Vega was gone from the premise.
Alan was super cool. No prima donna.
We’ve never seen this request. The other co-promoter out of Austin has never seen this kind of request.
CC whining…
CC soundchecked at 6pm instead of at 4pm.
CC didn’t “like the sound of their kickdrum”.
CC insists that “more woofers be brought in”.
Rental places close at 6pm.
It is now 7pm.
Granada has 16 – 18″ sub-woofers and 12 – 15″ sub-woofers. Also 32 – 8″ midranges. Lots of firepower.
Sound check was great.
CC says they would rather cancel the show than possibly not have enough kick drum.
Granada begs that the show goes on.
Granada even offers to dismantle sub woofer stacks and place them in different places in the room.
Granada was willing to do anything to have the show go on.
CC waits until after 10pm to give final cancellation.

The show must go on. Life is all perception. One person sees the day as beautiful, another sees the day as crap.
Why would any band crap on their fans like this?
Insecurity is a cancer. Love yourself. Love your sound guy and the system at the club you are playing.
Play the show. Then listen to your fans. If you don’t like the sound at a club never go back to the club.
We’ve had every big band imaginable in every genre imaginable and had amazing shows.
Nobody has complained about our sound. This is totally out of left field.
The sound at Granada is amazing…and would have been if CC would have just got on stage and played.

Today Granada is refunding ticket cost and entire service charge to each patron.
No one cares for live music more than we do. We’ve put together an amazing room, staff and sound system.
We’ll see you soon fellow music fans.

Mike Schoder and all the Staff at Granada.”

Still MORE interesting is Crystal Castles’ further response to this whole mangled mess. They say:

“CC obviously did not want to leave 1000+ people hanging outside. The people at Granada pulled the plug on CC during CC’s soundcheck, claiming they feared CC would “blow the soundsystem.” The people at Granada tried to rent (at the last minute) proper speakers that would not “blow” for the show but it just couldn’t happen on short notice. At one point they thought they had found professional speakers but 2 hours later this fell through and the decision was made that the show could not happen. Also of note, a DJ had blown their speakers a few weeks ago and they did not want this to happen again. They said they couldn’t afford to repair the speakers again. It would be nice if you knew the truth and were fair to the band since this wasn’t their fault. The blame goes to whoever booked this band at this ill-equipped venue.”

So who can we believe in this story? The true answer will probably lie in a mixture of the two stories. Undoubtedly Crystal Castles would want proper speakers for their kickdrum and the Granada couldn’t supply, saying the kind of speakers they had would ‘blow’ the soundsystem. Now it’s turned into a game of he-said-she-said and we may never get the story straight. Apparently Granada is giving refunds to everyone’s credit cards who ordered online and Crystal Castles is off to Coachella. We think this probably isn’t the last we’ll hear about this Crystal Cancels story, but we’ll keep you up to date folks!

Crystal Castles – “Knights”

Comments? 

Posted: April 15th, 2009
Categories: blow up, cancellation, cancelled show, crystal castles, dallas, granada theater
Tags:
Comments: 19 Comments.