Rewind Festival canned

Rewind Festival canned

The Rewind 80s festival, originally set to be held on NSW’s south coast this month, has been officially cancelled after last week being moved from Kembla Grange near Wollongong to Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion and losing several headlining acts including Sister Sledge.

At the weekend, Bananarama had also announced on Twitter that they were pulling out of the festival.

“All tickets will be refunded, please contact your ticket agent to activate your refund, A full statement will be released later,” the festival website reads.

The promoters of Rewind had originally blamed the weather for the decision to move the festival to the Hordern, but event organiser Terry Youngman admitted to the Illawarra Mercury newspaper that ticket sales were also poor.

“Ticket sales were not anything like they should have been. It was both the weather and ticket sales that led to it being moved,” he said.

A full statement from organisers regarding the cancellation is said to be forthcoming on the official website.

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3 responses to “Rewind Festival canned”

  1. Hi there, come to Hamburg Germany to ” back to The 80s ” with ABC, Spandau Ballet, alphaville, Level 42, nik kershaw on dec. 1 2011

  2. The promoters made an absolute shambles of the whole thing.

    They didn’t have the work permits organised for most of the top international acts, they didn’t even have approval to use the Kembla Grange, as it was still pending approval, they told customers who complained about the change of venue and from festival and concert that there was no refund and they should scalp their tickets and blamed some artists for pulling out when they themselves cancelled them because of the work permit issues.

    This also stuffed around many of the international artists, who had also booked secondary shows to perform. As they had relied on the organisers of Rewind to do their work permits, when they failed to do so and then cancelled on them, the artist were forced to cancel their other shows as well (Human League were very apologetic to their fans on their Facebook page).

    Many of the artists were unaware of the last minute venue changes, customer outrage or dodginess of the whole thing, some including Kim Wilde and Bananarama had to hear about it from fans on Facebook and Twitter.

    ALthough disappointing, the last few international acts pulled out after this debacle (many of whom prob never had their work permits done either), rather than be affiliated with the whole mess.

    They also had childish rants (since removed ) on their facebook page.

    The promotion was almost non-existent (I spoke to many people who were interested but had not seen any promotion).

    Having seen how great these festivals can be in the Uk, Europe and Asia (Singapore just had their Retrolicious shows 2 weeks ago with Human League, Belinda Carlisle and Bananarama headlining and recieved rave reviews), it’s disappointing how badly this has turned out, hopefully many of the artists will still be open to something similar being organised in the future but done so professionally this time (such as the Here and Now tour back in 04 with Culture Club, Kim Wilde and Belinda Carlisle amongst the many 80’s performers who gave a great couple of shows).