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And Finally Beef Of The Week
CMU Beef Of The Week #88: Perry Farrell v Brazil
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 25 November 2011
Jane’s Addiction frontman and founder of the Lollapalooza festival Perry Farrell found himself in hot water with the people of Brazil this week after he apparently suggested that they are “uneducated about music”.
Actually, I’m not sure he was quite as blunt as that in a recent interview with the country’s biggest newspaper, Folha de São Paolo. However, when explaining why he had not been involved in selected Brazilian bands for a South American edition of Lollapalooza in the country, he did say: “I’m learning about the Brazilians now, as you are now learning about international bands”. It’s not quite as bad as saying Brazilians are “uneducated”, but to suggest they don’t really know about artists outside Brazil is a bit, erm, uneducated.
Whatever, Brazil was unhappy. And that’s before we even mention that the website for the festival crashed when it went live on Tuesday and in the ensuing chaos hackers gained access to the personal information of people who had managed to buy tickets. Farrell, once again failing to ingratiate himself to the Brazilian people, claimed that this was because Brazil isn’t very good at running websites either.
However, he’s now seen the error of his ways, after looking through the thousands of angry messages posted on Twitter. He told Rolling Stone Brazil: “My wife [showed] me Twitter. I was going crazy. I said: ‘My God, Etty, they hate me! They are very angry with me. I messed up?’ And she told me that [even the websites of] major US companies, such as Target, [sometimes crash]”.
Add to this the announcement that Brazilian musician Labao was pulling out of the festival, due to take place in April, because he hadn’t been given the slot on the line-up below headliners Foo Fighters he says he was promised (which Farrell denies), and you’ve got one shaken up festival boss. “I’m sensitive, man”, he said. “[What with] this musician who doesn’t like me and all those [other] people [on Twitter] … this has all taken a few years off my life”.
I guess you could say it’s been an educational experience. Still, he’s over it now:
