Touring
Page: 121
Veteran Los Angeles concert promoters and talent buyers Brian Tarney and Liz Garo have joined forces to form Restless Presents, an indie promotion company that’s producing the upcoming Substance 2022 festival.
Previously produced by Tarney’s ticketing and marketing company Restless Nights and Live Nation, the annual celebration of dark rock, industrial, electronic post-punk will feature one of its strongest lineups to date, with performers including Jesus And Mary Chain, The Chameleons, Clock DVA, Cabaret Voltaire co-founder Steven Mallinder, electro-royalty ensemble Miss Kittin And The Hacker, Boy Harsher, Light Asylum, Youth Code, SEXTILE and Kontravoid. The festival is slated for Oct. 21 and 22 at the Los Angeles Theater.
Tarney and Garo have also launched a New York event called Flesh & Steel — a multi-venue, multi-date celebration taking place Dec. 1-3 and featuring Boy Harsher, A Split-Second, Psyche, Phase Fatale and more. Restless enlisted NYC artists David Castillo of Brooklyn venue Saint Vitus and DJ, promoter and journalist Andi Harriman of Synthicide to serve as creative directors for the New York event.
Tarney and Garo launched Restless Presents during the pandemic and have since booked shows for ADULT, Lingua Ignota, SEXTILE and Thee Sacred Souls. Substance is the company’s first festival, but both have produced the festival brand from its inception, going back to the launch of the Cloak and Dagger series for She Wants Revenge.
“I think one of the best things about these events is the broad, eclectic audience,” says Garo, who served as the lead talent buyer for Spaceland Presents for more than 20 years, booking the Echo and Regent Theater and concert series at the Getty Center, LA’s Natural History Museum and the Santa Monica Pier. (Spaceland was bought by Live Nation in 2019). Garo also co-founded and managed the long running Echo Park Rising series.
“There is such a broad age range at Substance. You’re definitely getting an older crowd that knows the classics but a young, healthy scene too that that’s pretty vibrant,” Garo adds. “People can come in and be who they want to be. It’s a very tight scene.”
The Los Angeles Theater in downtown LA’s Theater District was chosen as host venue because of its flexibility and eclectic layout, says Tarney, who hosted Substance at the venue in 2019 with headliner Gary Numan.
“It’s a blank slate and we built the whole thing from scratch. It’s got so many little weird rooms and nooks and crannies. We’re working really hard to activate all of them with buildouts including a marketplace and a record store,” says Tarney, a former booker at Spaceland and the creator of Restless Nites, an L.A. marketing agency and ticketing platform for independent promoters and venues. Tarney adds that Restless Presents was born from a need for more independent promoters in the live music industry and says his hope is to work closely with established and emerging acts to create unusual and forward-thinking live events.
“I think a lot of people are fed up with going to a small theater or small show and paying Ticketmaster fees or getting priced gouged on drinks when they’re there,” Tarney says. “People are looking for more than just big festivals, and many have trickled their way into some of the smaller venues. “That’s why we’re always looking for unique spaces. This is something that Liz is awesome at. She’s always finding cool, unique venues and places where we can come in and have more input.”
Tarney notes that Restless Presents has several new festival genre concepts in the works for 2023, including a roots roadhouse event and neo soul festival.
“Substance is the focal point this year, but there’s gonna be a lot more events and much more diverse sounds in the future,” he says.
Pop-punk lifers rejoiced upon the announcement that Blink-182 — the San Diego trio against which all other heavy-and-happy bands are measured — had reunited its classic lineup.
Guitarist Tom DeLonge is back after a split from bassist Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker in 2014 (preceded by a split in 2005 and reunion in ‘09). While the band soldiered on with Alkaline Trio frontman Matt Skiba, releasing two LPs in 2016’s California and 2019’s Nine, it was never the same, the electricity (and poop jokes) among the core trio never replicated.
But now, the group is back together and promising a new album — a bouncy new single called “Edging” just dropped Friday. An accompanying new world tour is set to kick off next year, and some fans are surely already dreaming about what the ideal Blink 2.0 setlist might look like.
Us, too! So we went ahead and built this dream setlist: 25 songs that would more than satisfy the droves of millennials heading for arenas across the U.S. and beyond next year. This setlist, which we believe the band could pull off in about two hours — pretty standard for a legacy headliner — is informed by recent tours, fan sentiment and, moreover, what we think would be freaking awesome to see.
Here’s our best-case scenario on how the new Blink tour plays out. Happy moshing!
Live Nation Urban has acquired a significant equity stake in the Washington, D.C.-based Broccoli City Festival, company officials announced Friday (Oct. 14).
Broccoli City has grown every spring since the launch of its first event in 2010; Live Nation Urban notably acquired the stake from festival co-founders and entrepreneurs Marcus Allen and Brandon McEachern.
As part of the acquisition, Live Nation Urban welcomes Allen and McEachern in executive roles. They will work alongside Live Nation Urban president Shawn Gee and his team to scale the Broccoli City brand and “catalyze the creation of new content and culture-centric live experiences and festivals,” according to a press release announcing the deal.
The Broccoli City Festival, described as “a black-owned social enterprise rooted in impact and entertainment that focuses on people and progress,” has notably featured icons such as Lil Wayne, Cardi B, Childish Gambino and the late Nipsey Hussle as well as rising superstars Lil Baby, Lil Durk, Summer Walker, Wizkid and City Girls. Based in D.C., the festival “staunchly supports environmental consciousness in the African-American community and fosters creativity through innovative initiatives at the intersection of technology, music, art, and social impact,” the release continues. “Over the last decade, it has inspired and mobilized 20 million-plus young people through events and online platforms.”
The acquisition highlights a cycle of black entrepreneurship. Beyond the festival, Gee and Live Nation Urban have focused on championing Allen and McEachern and their vision in the long run.
“For us as a company, this investment was an important one,” said Gee, noting that when Live Nation Urban formed in 2018, one of its first deals was a co-promotion agreement with Broccoli City. “I promised the guys that the success of our partnership would lead to greater things, and it was important to me to keep my word. We are not simply investing in a festival; we are investing in these amazing founders. We believe this will be the first of many brands that we will build together with Marcus and Brandon as they have an insatiable entrepreneurial spirit.”
The Broccoli City crew is “super excited about this partnership with LNU/LN, and working closer with Shawn Gee. I really appreciate him encouraging us to be big thinking entrepreneurs and brand builders… not limiting us to event producers,” added McEachern.
To position Broccoli City for further growth, “we are going to focus on curating untapped niche markets, bigger partnerships, and international expansion,” Allen added. “Our big picture goal is to create a 100-million-dollar community at the apex of live entertainment, social impact, and digital media.”