This morning, Prince announced that he's performing the next three shows of his Welcome 2 America Live: 21 Nite Stand tour, all at the House of Blues Sunset (albeit at different spots within the venue). Tickets went on sale at Ticketmaster.com and LiveNation.com. The Music Hall show will be at 8 p.m., the Jazz Café at the Porch Restaurant show at 11 p.m. and a private charity event in the Foundation Room at 1 a.m. The tickets are gone (who wouldn't want to see Prince at such an intimate venue?), but at least one group of people are unhappy about it.
Grateful Dead tribute band Cubensis was dumped in favor of Prince tonight; they were booked with a Bob Dylan tribute for a “Dylan's 70th Birthday Party” event. Unfortunately, they were told just last night of the schedule change.
]
Here's the statement from Cubensis:
“We understand completely why the House of Blues would offer its club
to the Purple One, ” said Cubensis guitarist Craig Marshall, “but our
concern involves why we heard about it so late, and the monumental task
of getting word to our fans at the last minute that our show has been
postponed.”
Cubensis was on stage at the Golden Sails Hotel in Long Beach Tuesday
night when they received an urgent call from Joel Gilbert, “Bob Dylan”
of noted Dylan tribute Highway 61 Revisited, who was also on the bill
with Cubensis for the canceled show.
“Joel stated the Live Nation folks had just informed him of the
cancellation, but they could not reveal what or who might have preempted
us, ” said Marshall. “We all found out the next morning that it was to
be three intimate shows with Prince, with ticket prices ranging from
$220 to $500. That's a lot of money, but we have not yet been offered
any compensation for our inconvenience other than a resceduled date to
July 6. We'd at least appreciate tickets to the Prince show!”
The Dead tribute act typically gives away free tickets for their shows: “We're concerned about a large
number of people showing up at the club who may not have heard of the
postponement,” added Marshall.
Here's the funniest part of the release: Marshall learned that Live Nation put out a press
release on May 23 teasing information about “a special evening with
Prince on Wednesday night” without location
information. “This tells me that they knew well in advance about the
Prince appearance,” said Marshall, “because you can't just put together
an event like that overnight.”
Guess he doesn't know anything about Prince. Based on how the Purple one's “21 Nite Stand” dates have been announced, it's totally plausible that Prince just told everyone he wanted to perform this week on Monday, and decided on a venue information yesterday. Sorry Cubensis!
