FESTIVAL NEWS

Virtualfestivals.com reports that three outdoor events due to take place at Hylands Park in Essex this month have been cancelled as the organisers claim the site isn't "acceptable". Last Night of the Proms, which was due to take place this Sunday, September 7, and feature Aled Jones and the Philharmonic Orchestra, has been cancelled by the event producers (UK Events & Production) today.  The same production company have cancelled two more Hylands Park events this month: Flashback Festival on September 13th and Wet Wet Wet on September 14th. Flashback Festival was to feature some of the top selling acts of the eighties, including headliner Billy Ocean, Marc Almond, ABC, Hue and Cry, Go West, From the Jam, and The Doctor (of Dr & The Medics). In a statement, UK Events and Production indicated that the V Festival, held on the same site (16-17 August) was contributing factor in the decision to cancel the concerts saying "The site was recently used for the V Festival and after a recent site visit we do not feel that the area within the park we are using is acceptable to put on our concerts."

And residents in Clapham, London, are voicing concerns about the number of festivals on Clapham Comon afre recent rainfall  hit the end of an event and turned areas of the park into a 'quagmire'.  The Evening Standard reports that South West Four (SW4) attracted 50,000 party-goers on the August bank holiday weekend and starred DJs Deadmau5, Eric Prydz and Pete Tong. Heavy rain hit the clean-up, with lorries churning up turf and creating vast patches of mud as they picked up equipment. Campaigners are urging local authority Lambeth to introduce a cap on the number of major events, as Westminster did at Hyde Park last year. They also want a 20,000-a-day limit on the number of revellers. Similar complaints have been made about Finsbury Park after it hosted three-day Wireless Festival in July – which saw rappers Kanye West, Pharrell Williams and Rudimental perform – just six weeks after band Arctic Monkeys rocked the green for two days.

AlJazeera America hosts an interstung article on Adam Auctor, the founder of the Bunk Police, an organization that travels to summer music events in the USA to help test the purity of festival goers’ drugs. His business came about amid a unique set of circumstances over the last decade: a 2003 law that held club owners and music festival promoters criminally responsible for knowledge of any drug use at their events, the revitalized big business of music festivals, the rise of electronic dance music and the ascendance of the drug Molly. ..... more here. Bunk Police website here.

Bestival’s magnificent disco ball has set a new GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS title! Topping the tape at 10.33 metres, the dazzling disco beauty is as high as a three storey building, is covered in 2,500 mirrored tiles that would stretch out for a kilometre if you laid them end to end, and is filled with 350 cubic metres of air; equivalent to one thousand beach balls! Verified by Mark McKinley from GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS, the Disco Ball was measured by surveyor Ollie Salter at midday on Sunday (7th September), before clinching the record when it was raised and spun, with a suitably disco-tastic light show, at the start of Chic featuring Nile Rodgers’ epic finale set on the Disco themed Bestival Sunday evening. And Bestival now holds the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS title for the Largest Disco Ball.

The company behind Guilfest 2014 has gone into insolvency, Blaming, primarily, a lack of time to organise this year's event resulting in low ticket sales, and a forecast of bad weather (whIch didn't transpire).
Organiser Tony Scott also confirmed that certain artists on the 2014 bill, which featured headliners in The Boomtown Rats, Jedward, Kool & The Gang, Fun Lovin Criminals and The Human League, have yet to be paid. First established in 1992, Guilfest ran every year till 2012, when it went into administration due disappointing ticket sales), with its parent company Scotty Events facing debts of over £300,000. Live Nation staged an event in the town in 2013, but Scott regained the use of Stoke Park after a social media campaign, and his new company Trowfest Ltd was, back in February, given the green light by Guildford Borough Council. Interviewed by Get Surrey this week, Scott said despite this year's event being "fantastic", Trowfest Ltd had needed to sell a couple of thousand more tickets to cover its costs. He told the site: "Unfortunately we didn't get enough ticket sales to pay all the bills we have got to pay. One of the reasons was that we were a bit short of time to do it all in. We have never done a festival in three-and-a-half months before".