Bonnaroo NE Festival Cancelled

[jon galt]

Bonnaroo NE Festival Cancelled


By Katie Thomas and Glenn Gamboa
Staff Writers

June 10, 2003, 1:29 PM EDT

Citing last week's last-minute cancellation of a two-day rock concert in Calverton, promoters of an even bigger music festival set for the same spot in August announced today that they will cancel their own event.

The organizers of Bonnaroo NE, a three-day festival that was to feature acts such as Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and The Dead, said in a statement today that because of recent events, "it is impossible for us to proceed and we must cancel Bonnaroo NE. We have determined that it would be irresponsible to the artists, to the festival goers, to citizens in the community, and to ourselves to move ahead with our plans given the circumstances that now exist."

The news comes after a promoter for the Field Day Festival failed to get necessary county and town permits to hold the concert in Calverton. The concert had been planned as a two-day camping festival to take place last weekend, but last Wednesday the event - headlined by Radiohead and the Beastie Boys - was scaled back to a one-day concert and relocated to Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ.

"I'm so depressed about this," said Jill Morrison, local music director for WUSB-FM, who had been working on booking the "Long Island Locals Village" stage for Bonnaroo NE. "It's just so hard. I couldn't do anything to help. We were going to try to lobby the Suffolk County legislature, but I don't know if that would have done any good."

The Bonnaroo NE festival had expected more than 75,000 people, and Field Day was planning on an attendance of 50,000. Both events had drawn criticism from local residents, who feared the crowds would clog local roads and endanger public safety.

"It just didn't look good for anyone," Morrison said. "It showed everyone that Long Island [government] is not cool. We have such a great music scene here, but they don't want to support it."
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