Jenjie

I was also thinking about some of the other comments about unplanned encores & the like, but I think I might have mixed my Chicago threads up when i posted :embarassed:

I beat you by 1.5 hours, Ian :P already posted this in Releases :D

cool, ty :D

are those of us outside America able to join the eCommunity? :)

still had to do wiki :P :laugh3:

still had to do wiki :P :laugh3:

Even Roadie #42 doesn't know!!!

think Roadie #42 may have been reading the thread coz his latest blog seems to answer some of the comments made http://wiki.coldplaying.com/index.php?title=Roadie_42_-_Blog_14_-_25th_July_2008&rcid=7299

grrrrrr I knew 42 was gonna sneak his new blog on whilst I was on my lunch break :laugh3:

grrrrrr I knew 42 was gonna sneak his new blog on whilst I was on my lunch break :laugh3:

By Robert Webb Friday, 25 July 2008 Coldplay's second album, A Rush of Blood to the Head, was nearing completion when an excited Chris Martin arrived at the studio late one night. At the keyboard, he played the tune running through his head. Lead guitarist Jonny Buckland was impressed. "He picked up his guitar [a sure sign that he likes a song] and played these brilliant chords," Martin recalls. "It was like a chemical reaction process." The pulsing, cyclical riff – inspired, according to Martin, by the band Muse – was edgy, hectic and suggested an uneasy passage of time. The band all agreed: this was the sound to herald the next phase in Coldplay's musical development. But, for now, they had enough songs on the second album and, under pressure to get them out and running low on studio time, they quickly cut a demo of the new composition and filed it under "Songs for #3" – ideas for a projected third album. By June 2002, they were ready to hand over A Rush of Blood to the Head to Parlophone. "But it was sounding rubbish," Martin recalls. The new track, soon to be titled "Clocks", was the grit in the oyster. Still unfinished, it had thrown the whole album into perspective. Unhappy at putting out something they were not completely satisfied with, the band reached agreement with their label to delay release. After headlining that year's Glastonbury, the band returned to the studio and dusted down "Songs for #3". Phil Harvey, the band's close confidant, urged them to revisit "Clocks" immediately. "He heard it and said, 'No, you must do that song now,'" Martin says. Lyrics were written to fit the mood of urgent agitation, with Martin switching between major and minor chords: "Lights go out and I can't be saved/ Tides that I tried to swim against/ You've put me down upon my knees." The rest of the band trotted out a tense, staccato soundtrack that wound around a shifting time signature, perfectly fitting Martin's ode to lost opportunities. It was fleshed out by synthesisers and strings. A Rush of Blood to the Head eventually appeared two months late, with the newly mastered "Clocks" taking pride of place. The Grammy award-winning track was hailed as a victory, and became their biggest hit to date. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/story-of-the-song-clocks-coldplay-2002-876537.html

British comedian Russell Brand is to host this year's MTV Video Music Awards (VMA) in Los Angeles. The 33-year-old is still relatively unknown in the US, where the ceremony will be held on 7 September. Brand recently co-starred in the comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall and is currently filming the Adam Sandler comedy Bedtime Stories. Previous VMA hosts include actor Jack Black, Sean "Diddy" Combs, Chris Rock, Jimmy Fallon and Jamie Foxx. Teenage pop trio The Jonas Brothers will play at the event, while other performers and presenters will be announced at a later date. 'Televised insanity' Brand said it would be "good to preside over what is sure to be only vaguely co-ordinated televised insanity". He went on: "That's how I've made my name in this country: flying very much by the seat - and the crotch - of my pants." Brand is a former MTV host in the UK and has presented numerous TV shows and events, as well as a regular programme on BBC Radio 2. He has also performed sell-out comedy gigs and wrote a best-selling memoir, My Booky Wook, which was published last year. Last year he made his feature film debut as Flash Harry in St Trinian's, opposite Colin Firth, Rupert Everett and Emily Watson. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7524799.stm

and in Manchester G-mex days it was rumoured you'd never see a band arrive & leave because there was a secret tunnel to the hotel across the road.

What the music festival of the summer means for the Village of Pemberton By Claire Piech The quiet before the storm In 15 days, 4 hours, 13 minutes and 25 seconds, 40,000 concertgoers will descend upon the small village of Pemberton to party their brains out over three days and nights. But you would never guess that talking to Live Nation organizer Shane Bourbonnais. The Calgary-born, California-raised head honcho of operations looks startlingly calm on this sunny July afternoon as he strolls through his air-conditioned office in Pemberton’s industrial park. He speaks honestly about the concert preparation, detailing ticket sales and stage construction in an enthusiastic but mellow voice. His acute cool emulates throughout the building: fashionably dressed employees work serenely at their computers or talk to each other in an ever-so-civil manner. And this relaxed atmosphere is just how Bourbonnais likes it. “In this business, if you are two weeks away from an event and things are chaotic, you know you are in trouble. Here,” he says waving his hand around the office, “things are under control. We are in great shape for the festival.” Assuring words from the man who holds the fate of Pemberton in his hands. Like the towns of Glastonbury in the United Kingdom, Coachella in California and Bonnaroo in Tennessee before it, the tiny village of Pemberton is heading for a major change this summer with the arrival of the highly anticipated Pemberton Music Festival. Up until now, Pemberton’s economy has been based almost solely on farming and tourism. This is a village where almost no one locks their doors at night. This is a village where the Pemberton Barn Dance – complete with cowboy hats and plastic cups of beer – used to be the summer’s biggest event. And this is a village where the parking lots still have hitching posts. As the anticipated arrival of Coldplay, Jay-Z et al. draws closer and Pemby prepares to cross that heavyweight line from farming community to notorious multi-day festival host, residents are preparing for the big shift. In the lull before the storm, families are buying locally-discounted festival tickets, attending town hall meetings on traffic flow and porta-potties, and stockpiling their cupboards with enough groceries to get them through the week. And as everyone holds their breath and prepares to take the leap of faith between July 25 to 28, one big, fat question hangs in the air: What becomes of small villages that play host to large festivals? Suddenly, Bourbonnais’s cool, calm, collected attitude seems like a priceless commodity. But first, a one-minute history of Pemberton Big festival celebrity was not always in the cards for Pemberton. Until recently, this was not a place you would expect to see rock stars. The village’s humble roots began somewhere in the 1880s when a group of European settlers, tired of chasing gold, realized the soil at Port Pemberton (as it was then called, despite the lack of a port) was great for farming. They named their new home after Joseph Despard Pemberton, a surveyor-general for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Thus was spawned “Spud Valley”. Of course, long before the Europeans stumbled upon Pemberton, spread out beneath the 8,300-foot splendour of Mount Currie, the Lil’wat First Nations roamed the area. They fished, hunted, and lived harmoniously with the land. Today, band members of the Lil’wat First Nation still live in the Pemberton Valley, on the Mount Currie reserve. In 1914, more European settlers poured into town when the first passenger train rolled into Pemberton and connected the valley with the rest of the world. Agriculture and forestry became the town’s economic driving forces, and Pemberton became renowned for its seed potatoes. In 1967, the village became the first commercial seed potato area of the world to grow virus-free seed potatoes, and today Pemberton potatoes are shipped throughout British Columbia, Alberta, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and California. A major economic shift for the village occurred in 1975 when a highway was finally built between Whistler and Pemberton. Easier access to and from the village brought in workers from Whistler’s bourgeoning tourism industry, and local farmers began growing a larger variety of crops. In the wake of these innovations, another wave of migration came, highlighted in 2005 when Pemberton was proclaimed the fastest growing community in all of British Columbia. Yet despite this rapid growth, nobody imagined what was to come in the summer of 2008. Enter the Pemberton Music Festival. The big show The first public murmurs of the festival began in the fall of 2007, when a rumour spread that Live Nation Canada organizer and Pemberton local Bourbonnais was thinking about throwing a Coldplay concert in the village that summer. In November, Bourbonnais confirmed he was looking into a large scale event but nothing was set in stone. Over the next few months, gossip continued to gain steam as Bourbonnais and his crew worked through logistical hurdles. Then, on the fateful day of March 13, 2008, inside information was leaked to Billboard.com that the Pemberton Music Festival was happening. Billboard immediately posted the festival's preliminary line-up on their website. Among the musicians listed were Jay-Z, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Tragically Hip, Nine Inch Nails and Death Cab for Cutie. Later that same day, Bourbonnais officially announced the festival at Big Sky Golf and Country Club in Pemberton. “After the announcement was made, that same day I got calls from media across the country,” recalls Jordan Sturdy, the mayor of Pemberton. “That, I think, was my first inkling of really the scale we were going into.” News of the festival spread instantly. Even before ticket prices were announced, dozens of Facebook groups dedicated to the event sprung up in heightened anticipation as people across North America scrambled to organize trips to Pemberton. Phones throughout the Sea to Sky corridor were ringing off the hook, and less than four weeks after the festival was first officially announced every hotel room in Pemberton was booked out for the July weekend. “Where we haven’t gotten calls from? That would be a shorter list,” laughs David MacKenzie, general manager of the Pemberton Valley Lodge. “We’ve gotten everything, from entertainment media, to celebrities, agents of celebrities. It has been overwhelming, but it is nice to see how the word about the festival has gotten out there, far and wide.” And it is not just Pemberton hotels that are selling out, adds MacKenzie, who also operates hotels further south in the Sea to Sky Corridor, both at Whistler and Squamish. “Now, I am seeing the volume of our Squamish reservation grow," he observes. "It is a trickle down effect." Tickets, priced around $259.50, went on sale soon after the festival was announced and were scooped up quickly by buyers from British Columbia, Alberta, the rest of Canada, the United States, Australia, England, mainland Europe, and even Asia. Roughly half of the tickets sold went to people outside British Columbia. Two thousand of those were sold outside North America. As the hype for the Pemberton Music Festival grew, people everywhere suddenly knew where the tiny village of 2,283 was located. Pembertonians, used to having to always explain to outsiders that their village was 30 kilometres north of Whistler, now couldn’t get the word “Pemberton” out of their mouth before someone would immediately reference the festival. And residents were even hearing a new question asked: “Whistler? Is that near Pemberton?” “I think we’ve got to appreciate that Coldplay is the third most popular band in the world, and they have just put a new album out,” concedes Paul Selina, president of the Pemberton Chamber of Commerce. “Even in Europe, people are hearing about Pemberton. The concert is definitely putting us on the map, without any shadow of a doubt.” These effects are already being felt strongly in Spud Valley. While tourism numbers are down for most of British Columbia, visits to Pemberton are up. And the concert has not even happened yet. “I think it is going to affect positively every business in Pemberton, because everyone is connected to the local economy in one way or the other," speculates Selina. "Farmers are growing produce for it, the vendors are going to sell the produce, the restaurants are adapting their menus to be able to sell fast and hard, and the B&Bs and hotels have been fully booked for ages." Forget potatoes. Let’s make money off of rock stars As “go time” for the festival approaches, Pemberton businesses are temporarily switching from farming and tourism to concertonomics. Take the example of Victor Lee. Three weeks before the festival, the owner of AG Foods — one of the only grocery stores in town — can be found sitting down at his desk, carefully combing through the list of extra merchandise he has ordered for the upcoming event. Lee is purchasing more than twenty times his usual supply of water, ice, pop, snacks, juice, milk, coffee, and tea to make sure his shelves are properly stocked when people drive into town for the festival. “I mean, there are about 50,000 people coming to town,” exclaims Lee, referring not only to the number of concert goers, but also to the number of workers, volunteers, security personnel, roadies, entourages, and more that come with a festival like this. “Fifty thousand people! Now think about how many drinks one person would consume per day at the end of July? Let’s say the number is four drinks per 24 hours, I bet it is more, but let’s just use that number. So we are talking about 200,000 drinks a day. And then multiply that number by three and a half per day, and that is 700,000 drinks!” And that is just the number of drinks, he says. That does not even cover the amount of food people will needed to eat during the festival. Of course, the type of planning needed to be properly equipped for an event of this size is not instantly intuitive to a storeowner used to dealing with a customer base of less than 5,000. To figure out proper numbers, Lee put a call into his buddies in Merritt, British Columbia as soon as the festival was announced to get the lowdown on how they prepare for the Merritt Mountain Music Festival each year. “I asked them, ‘Okay, what can I expect to happen, how much did their business increase, and what kind of product did they sell’. And these are things they have been telling me, to stock up on water, ice. Of course, they have much, much bigger stores, so I have to take that into account,” he explains. Because Lee is ordering so much extra stock, he has transformed his own backyard — which incidentally is also near festival grounds — into a temporary warehouse of trailers. The other major complication he has run up against in his preparations is staffing. Since the population of Pemberton is so small, having to instantly increase his workforce proved to be problematic. To get more workers, Lee has enlisted students and part time employees. Despite these snags, Lee says he does not mind that the Pemby Fest is being held in his hometown. “I love it,” he beams. Other businesses in Pemberton are also modifying their business plan specifically for the three days of the Pemberton Festival. Like Lee, they are stocking up on supplies and trying to speculate on how many customers will come through their doors during the fateful weekend. Almost all plan to extend their hours of operation till at least 10 p.m., if not 2 a.m. (an extremely late hour for a village of this size). And restaurants and cafes are designing special scaled-down menus to make sure their turnaround time will be short enough to meet the demands of such a large crowd. “Nobody really knows what to expect,” says Alex Ross, economic development consultant for Area C and the Village of Pemberton. “This year I see as an educational year… Some people around here, they have never experienced a concert of this magnitude. “Next year, though, they will have a better idea of what they can offer and what people are interested in." Ross notes despite this lack of experience, most businesses she has talked with are welcoming the festival with open arms, and almost all comments she has heard have been positive. Selina adds, “I think for three or four days of the year, the dynamics of Pemberton will change without any shadow of a doubt. But longer term, the town will return back to normal really quite quickly. “It is like someone coming into Pemberton and spending millions of dollars with Pemberton businesses and then going away. It is the best tourist you could ever have.” The other Pemberton Music Festival Though most people seem to have forgotten, this is not the first time a music festival has taken place in the Pemberton Valley. From 1984 to 1989, a series of concerts took place on the Mount Currie reservation called the Stein Valley Voices for Wilderness Festival. The festival started out small, with only 500 attendees in its first year, but grew to a respectable 16,000 by its end. The Stein Valley festival was thrown to protest logging in the Stein Valley, one of the last untouched watersheds in the southern Coast Mountains of B.C. The protest worked. In 1988, a moratorium was placed on logging in the Stein, and in 1995 the area was declared the Nlaka'pamux Heritage Park, jointly administered by the Lytton First Nations and B.C. Parks. At its height, the festival hosted several well known musicians including Blue Rodeo, Bruce Cockburn, Spirit of the West and Valdy. David Suzuki also attended as a guest speaker. “The setting was perfect,” wrote Casey Clemens in an issue of UBC’s campus newspaper, The Ubyssey, “a valley tinged by majestic, protective mountains, marred on one hillside by the ugly gashes of clear cutting to remind us what we were fighting for.” Most of the Stein Valley Fest's attendees, for whatever reason, did not hail from Pemberton. When asked about the festival, most Pembertonians say they do not even remember it clearly. George Henry from the Pemberton Museum speculates this is partly because the village of Pemberton has seen so much growth over the last 20 years. And while Henry admits that he also did not attend, he does remember that cars were parked for a couple kilometres around the Rodeo Grounds, where the festival was held, and that there were lots of drunk and disorderly people. “Let's face it, when you get 10,000 people coming into a town of only 400 or 500 people, you always have a spin-off effect,” he remarks. “Lots of people came into town to buy gas and beer, even though no alcohol was allowed. People bought it anyway.” Henry’s relative Arne Siego, an environmentalist from Kelowna, did go to the concert one year. Siego says the heart of the concert really was focused on the protest. “It was a good very food feeling,” he says. “People were very positive about the situation but very angry at the government for allowing people to log it.” Because the Stein Valley Festival, unlike the Pemberton Fest, was focused around a cause, most stakeholders in this summer's festival say that few comparisons can be drawn, and Bourbonnais says he did not model the Pemberton Festival at all after the Stein Valley Fest. In fact, he has found almost no records of it taking place. Small towns with big festivals As businesses in Pemby get ready to cash in on the upcoming fest, the Chamber has also been busy behind the scenes checking how other large music festivals have impacted towns with small populations. The number one case study: The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts. “There is no other festival in North America that is like the Pemberton Festival that has come to a small town,” says Selina. “Most of the festivals in North America are near larger towns or cities. But the one festival was can draw the most similarities too is Glastonbury in the UK. “What is interesting for the community of Glastonbury, England is that the festival is their economic driver for the whole year. They are a small town, and everything is about the festival.” Adds Ross, “They build everything around that event. Year-round, it is all around that event. I can see doing something similar with Pemberton.” The Glastonbury Festival takes place on a dairy farm in the southwest of England, between the small villages of Pilton and Pylle and six miles east of the town ofGlastonbury. It was started in 1970, the same year that Jimi Hendrix died. At that time, 15,000 people attended. Today, Glastonbury is considered one of the largest music and performing arts festivals in the world and attracts a crowd of over 100,000 every year. Since the Pemberton festival was first announced, the Chamber has been in frequent communication with Glastonbury's Chamber of Commerce to find out what their experience has been. Selina even flew out to the United Kingdom to meet with them during the first few weeks of July. Another music festival the Chamber is scoping out is the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Both Sandy Ryan from the Chamber and Bourbonnais attended this year's festival. “I went out there this summer, and everyone I talked to was remarking on what a big event it is, and what a positive impact it has had on the town,” confides Bourbonnais. “Actually,” he adds, “Since we announced this festival, a lot of towns have called us and asked, 'How can we get one?' We've gotten calls from B.C. towns, American towns, some pretty significant places. Everyone wants to know, 'How do we get one of these?'” The Coachella Fest began in 1999 as a two-day event and was attended by 25,000 people. The festival took off in 2002 and now attracts about 165,000 people each year to the city of Coachella, located in the southeast of California. Like Pemberton, Coachella is a rural, agriculture community. Unlike Pemberton, however, the city has more than 38,000 residents. Ross thinks because so many aspects of Pemberton's festival unique, Pemberton will have to learn its own lessons on hosting a mega multi-day music festival. “Nobody has ever had, for example, the vision to provide as much local stuff as possible... Live Nation really did go the extra mile to use as much local stuff as possible and keep it as green as possible. It is absolutely tremendous what they have done. They are jumping through hoops to make this happen and to really set an example of how things can happen.” Whatever the lessons will be, one thing organizers have been very clear about is that Pemby Fest will not be like the Merritt Mountain Music Festival which has gained a sometimes negative reputation for the large amount of alcohol its concertgoers consume. “There is no comparison to Merritt. Merritt has a lot of negative experience attached to their concert, but that is also because it is organized differently. This is really professional, through and through,” testifies Ross. “I mean, there is an additional hospital on site and things like that.” Mayor Sturdy adds, “We expressed our concern about Merritt, and we want to ensure that is not what we are going.” My community Perhaps one of the reasons Pemberton stands so alone on the landscape of big music festivals is because its lead organizer also happens to also be a local. Bourbonnais has been living in Pemberton part time since 2003 and full time since 2005. When Bourbonnais was originally charged by Live Nation to find a new venue for a huge music festival, he looked at places like Toronto before finally realizing that the ideal location was in his own backyard. His close relationship to the village is apparent in Bourbonnais’ planning, and perhaps one of the reasons that the residents of Pemberton are mostly positive about the whole affair. “Live Nation are just so open for input from the community,” says Ross. “They are asking questions and connecting with the community and really making them comfortable with what is going to happen.” Since the Pemberton festival was first announced in the spring, Live Nation and the local government have held several town hall meetings to go over logistical details with the Pemberton public, as well as to listen to concerns. Topics covered at the meetings have ranged from what happens if a bear walks onto the festival grounds, to RCMP vigilance, to traffic flow, and to how properties surrounding the festival grounds will be protected from vandalism. Live Nation, a North American company, has also made presentations to local volunteer organizations like the Lions, the Legion and the Rotary. A link has been put on the Village of Pemberton's website to generate more feedback before, during and after the event. And a debriefing town hall meeting has already been scheduled after things wrap up to go over what went right and what went wrong. Following advice from the Chamber, Live Nation have also started a community fund to benefit local non-profit organizations. Three dollars from every Pemberton Fest ticket sold has been added to the pot of money, which now totals over $100,000. Organizers have also been adamant that the produce sold on concert grounds during the festival days be locally grown, and a farmers market has been organized on the site as well as a mini pharmacy. “The festival wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the community embracing it,” says Selina. “That is both Pemberton and Mount Currie, and the politicians. It really has been a community success story of what we can do when we all get together. “Live Nation are working very close with the Chamber in all aspects of this. We are talking with the RCMP and the emergency services. We are looking at how it is affecting the community in general. We have encouraged it from the start, and they have stepped up, and they are very vocal in the community.” The final hour Its now one week until show time, and the only evidence in the village that 40,000 people are coming to party is a series of white tents that have been erected on the festival grounds. Once cars filled with music fans start arriving at the campsite on Thursday afternoon, however, there will be no denying that the inaugural Pemberton Music Festival is going to go off. And until the festival wraps up in the early hours on Monday, July 28, all the residents of Pemby can do is enjoy the music, and wait to see how large an impact the big festival will have on their small village. “It is a big of a leap of faith here,” admits Mayor Sturdy. “We are relying on Live Nation to do a good job. We are looking to ourselves and to the public to help us anticipate problems… To bring 40,000 people to a community of 5,000, that is going to have a huge impact. I think we are all working to make sure it is a positive event. “We have a very big decision to make after this is all over. And that decision is whether to have it next year or not.” http://www.piquenewsmagazine.com/pique/index.php?cat=C_Frontpage&content=Pemby+music+fest+1530

nice new development. Unfortunately, I don't have £614,765.96 knocking around at the moment

omg! that area is amazing!!!

Wooooooooooo sneak previews :D http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/

boooooo at Mr Husband :laugh3:

you're the girls' Mum at weekends? :confused: There something you're not telling me? :laugh3:

Wow! That's impressive. Sounds like its gonna be as cool as last time, if not a million times better :D

busybeeburns isn't the girls Mum, he just found the posting and added it here :)

I think I'm more excited than I've ever been. The other tours, I've collated stuff afterwards and added to Wiki. This is the first time we're doing it as it happens. The more i read about it, the more I can't wait for my turn. Think I'll be a nervous wreck by December!! :laugh3:

ty :) I was being lazy. too many days to count til December so got Tickerfactory.com to do it for me :D

Manchester, England Images with the assistance of Google :D The View from the BBC The Town Hall Urbis (some sort of town related museum) The Trafford Centre (shopping heaven)

COULD Manchester be on the verge of staging its own annual Glastonbury- style pop festival? Big hitters in the Manchester music scene are already in secret talks to establish the inaugural music festival next summer and are confident that the event could become a regular feature on the calendar to rival the Carling Festival in Reading and Leeds, the V Festival in Stafford and Chelmsford, and T In The Park in Scotland. Although discussions are still at a very early stage, my spies tell me that a think-tank of locally-based music industry movers and shakers are formulating plans for an open-air event and are looking at a range of sites, including Heaton Park, as the potential venue for a two-day music bash. One of those involved in the early talks is Happy Mondays manager Elliot Rashman. Elliot has just joined the staff of Manchester's award-winning School of Sound Recording and it is expected that SSR's base on Downing Street, between the city centre and Ardwick, could become the organisational hub for the ambitious plan. He tells me: "It would be great for this city to have a first class annual open air music festival. Manchester has contributed more than most to the UK music scene over the years. We should aim for a great festival as an integral part of the city's summer calendar. "There are policing and licensing issues, which would have to be overcome, but I'm fully behind the idea." Insiders say that they have already had agreements in principle from some of Manchester's biggest rock and pop acts to appear at the festival - which is yet to be given a name - should the plans get through the inevitable red tape and be given the go-ahead. Organisers are hoping an established top flight music promoter will soon be on board too - possibly someone like Manchester's own Simon Moran, who runs the internationally successful SJM promotions. If they get the official green light, bands such as Elbow, Ting Tings, Doves and the Happy Mondays are expected to be on the bill alongside the most popular international and chart-topping rock and pop acts from around the world. Wendy Breakall, from SSR, says: "Manchester is regarded as the heart of the UK music industry. It's about time this city had its own established music festival to match that reputation and to rival all the other established festivals across the UK. I am certain, given the right conditions, this event would attract interest from music fans across the UK." Noises from Manchester council are also encouraging at this early stage in the event planning. City centre spokesman Pat Karney tells me: "Anything that helps put Manchester on the world map has got to be good. We are always interested in talking about bright new ideas to do just that. If the organisers want to come into the town hall and talk turkey with us - we're more than willing to get involved in formal discussions." http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/entertainment/music/s/1059338_watch_out_glastonbury