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Gigs & Festivals Top Stories
New York magazine denies screwing up free Drake gig
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 21 June 2010
The media company behind last week’s cancelled Drake street gig in New York has denied it is responsible for the violent outburts that occurred at the event, which mainly consisted of a fractious crowd throwing bottles and such like.
As previously reported, a free gig set to feature both the Canadian actor-turned-rapper and those lovely Hanson boys was cancelled last week after nearly twice as many fans showed up for the event as organisers had anticipated. Police quickly became concerned about the risk of over crowding. The resulting delays caused some Drake fans to get a little restless.
The event was organised by Paper magazine and promoted via the title’s website. But Paper’s publishers argue that they weren’t incompetent in failing to foresee just how many Drake fans would show up. All would have been fine, they argue, had local radio stations not started promoting the free show.
Paper editor David Hershkovitz told New York gossip column Page Six: “We didn’t send out any invites. We announced it to our readers online late last week. Eventually, this info got onto the radio, which brought it to a whole different level and type of audience that didn’t really know anything about Paper”.
He added that any unrest at the cancelled show has been exaggerated, saying: “This has been characterised as a riot, but to me it was more of a riot averted. If it were a riot, a lot more people would have been injured and a lot more damage would have been done”.
Another street gig in New York was cancelled last week, though this one well before fans had turned out to see it. Jay-Z had planned to play a open-air tea-time gig on the balcony above the doors of the Ed Sullivan Theatre this week, but the New York’s mayor’s office refused permission on Friday, again over crowd control concerns.
But some open-air gigs in New York do go ahead without too much drama. Miley Cyrus and Bret Michaels played for hundreds of fans in the city’s Central Park on Friday morning, for a performance aired on US TV show ‘Good Morning America’. And yes, that’s Poison frontman Michaels back on stage performing despite him suffering from a near-fatal brain haemorrhage in April.
