(CelebrityAccess News Service) – A new concept in summer touring is being launched by industry veterans Carl Freed, Larry Lieberman and Aimee Berger, who are producing a concert tour of summer sleep away camps in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states through their Alternative Venue Entertainment company.
The 15-date CAMPLIFIED 2003 tour runs July 14-August 13 and will makes stops in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Maine and Connecticut. There are three bands at each 90-minute afternoon performance.
Fifth Year Crush, an indie band from Florida, opens every show. Rose Falcon (Columbia) and FeFe Dobson (Island/Def Jam) are on the first two shows while Rose Falcon and Lucy Woodward (Atlantic) are on the third and fourth shows. The rest of the concerts will have Skye Sweetnam (Capitol) headlining with support from FeFe Dobson and Fifth Year Crush. Skye Sweetnam, FeFe Dobson and Fifth Year Crush will be performing with full bands. Alternative Venue Entertainment will bring full concert sound and a 25-ton mobile stage to each camp.
"In most cases the camps have asked us not to announce their shows in advance," Lieberman tells CelebrityAccess. "Some of them will be surprising their campers by announcing the concert just a few days before it arrives at camp.
"The tour audience is 12,000 campers (ages 12-16), 5,000 counselors and camp staff (17-22)," Lieberman continues. "All campers will meet and greet an artist on the tour and have their picture taken with the artist. Campers will be receiving CD singles from tour artists prior to the show to familiarize them with the artists' material, and all campers will receive a souvenir CAMPLIFIED 2003 tour t-shirt. And to help campers share the excitement of the concert with their friends at home, Skye Sweetnam will be giving them a DVD with music and video she shot herself.”
And the company has big expansion plans for next year.
"The way we can reach more campers in the short (eight weeks) camping season, is to put more acts on the road," explains Freed. "So, in 2004 we anticipate CAMPLIFIED to have three simultaneous tours, touring the Northeast, Southeast and possibly the midwest. — by Bob Grossweiner and Jane Cohen
After Six Years, Lollapalooza Returns
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Dubbed the concert that changed the world, Lollapalooza toured summer stages for six years in the 1990s with a tripped-out mix of sights and sounds.
One by one, imitators joined the fray. Ozzfest. Horde. Vans Warped. These festivals followed a blueprint almost identical to Lollapalooza's — the year's biggest acts featured in multistage, daylong events.
Lollapalooza returns this year, opening Saturday in Indianapolis after being gone since 1997. But many in music wonder if it can regain its place in a crowded summer concert market.
"I do realize that there are a lot of other people out there coming through the country these days," said Perry Farrell, the festival's 44-year-old co-founder and lead singer for Jane's Addiction. "But this is new and improved Lollapalooza."
With Audioslave, Incubus, and Jurassic 5 performing, Jane's Addiction will take top billing at this year's festival to promote a new album, its first since "Ritual De Lo Habitual" in 1990.
Aware of the difficulty in returning after so many years away, Farrell said Lollapalooza promoters set out to alter the festival's look, sound, and feel by morphing into a "fully wired" gig with corporate backing.
Sponsored by Verizon Wireless and X-Box, concertgoers can use cell phones to interact with giant plasma screens scattering the grounds, or escape to a tent where X-Box has set up 140 game consoles.
"It's kind of like being in a video game, but the grounds of Lollapalooza are the video game," Farrell said.
But much has changed since Lollapalooza — a name Farrell said he took from the Three Stooges — first swirled a mix of music into one marketable package in 1991.
With never-before-seen lineups that scoffed at genre, hundreds of thousands of flannel-clad Generation Xers swarmed to Lollapalooza, one of the first festivals where hip-hop stars and rockers shared a stage.
Metallica, Soundgarden, Tricky, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Snoop Dogg are all alumni.
Today's concertgoers are the younger siblings to those original fans, and they're interested in an experience — Spin magazine once labeled Lollapalooza "the No. 1 concert to change the world" — much more than good music.
"At one time, it really had a well-established brand name that meant something to the concert audience," said Gary Bongiovanni, editor-in-chief of Pollstar, a concert trade magazine. "That's basically gone at this point. Six years is an eternity if you're appealing to teenagers."
During Lollapalooza's twilight, attendance rose and fell as other concerts took a piece of the summer.
In 1997, Farrell broke from the tour before it had finished the summer. He said the rise of other festivals had splintered the pool of artists, just as it did his audience of faithful.
Promoters say ticket sales for dates on this year's 30-stop tour are mixed, but overall very healthy. They have not released the numbers for any ticket sales.
Until the tour begins, whether a fan base now nearing 30 will return to the festival or dismiss its new identity is hard to tell.
Farrell said he's confident in his brainchild's successful return, despite competing tours.
"The world is what it is and people are going to go out there and try to make a living," Farrell said. "I didn't want to present the same mundane idea."
TV Concert to Pay Tribute to Earnhardt
DAYTONA, Florida (AP) — Race car driver Dale Earnhardt was one of the few true originals, rocker Sheryl Crow said.
"You know, people who really set the pace, who really kind of personify the best aspects of a sport or of music or of art or whatever field they're in. And he really was that person," Crow told reporters. "I think people looked up to him to see what the guidelines were, what the envelope was that was going to be pushed."
To honor Earnhardt's legacy, Crow performed along with Brooks and Dunn, Hootie and the Blowfish, Kenny Chesney and the Goo Goo Dolls in a tribute concert that will air Thursday on Fox.
Earnhardt died in February 2001 after his car crashed into a wall at Daytona International Speedway, and the idea for a tribute concert was conceived a short time later.
Earnhardt's widow, Teresa, led the effort, said Kix Brooks of Brooks and Dunn.
"Teresa's done such an incredible job of keeping Dale's memory in the class that it deserves. Early on she wanted to do a concert to celebrate his life and asked us in the beginning if we'd be involved in something like that. And we said absolutely," Brooks told reporters.
Country star Chesney said he was honored to be included in the Earnhardt tribute.
"Dale is an American icon. Even before his death he was an American icon, and now even more so. And so I was thrilled to be a part of it," Chesney told reporters.
