Flashback Classic Rock Tour on Hold
According to their official MySpace page, The Mystic Orchestra’s Flashback: The Classic Rock Experience tour has been suspended until further notice.
The tour is reportedly experiencing many technical challenges, and had decided to go back to the studio in an effort to work out the kinks. The tour is expected to resume during the spring of 2009, and the organizers have apologized to those who had planned to attend.
All tickets can be refunded at the place of purchase.
That’s not an exact quote, but if you’d like to see the information that was presumably supplied by the organizers of the show for one of the venues that was scheduled to host it, you can give this a look.
The tour has “technical” problems and the way to fix them is to “go into the studio” to work out the kinks?
I wasn’t doubting that the information here was accurate or that the tour isn’t making this claim. I was commenting on the claim itself. Most of the stories about this tour have been about the tour production – staging, sound, lights, etc. Those are not studio elements. Maybe they realized that an audience does not buy tickets just to see tour production.
Thanks for the clarification.
I do agree that the way it was worded does not seem to make a lot of sense, and is ambiguous with regard to what the real problem with the tour actually is.
All the press on this tour has been ambiguous. Eluding to bands playing together on stage, etc. Now they say a tour that played 6 or 7 shows and then cancelled over 40 shows is on “hold”. That is not “on hold”, that is a cancelled tour, pure and simple. Not that tours don’t get cancelled. But straight forward information has not been the tour’s strong point.
Too bad this was canceled. I saw the show and it was spectacular. I think they just didn’t get the big audiences they needed to pull it off financially. Really, the singers and the set were awesome, and showcased these great songs in an effective and exciting way. Try not to be so cynical folks.
Interesting comment, Susan.
Your experience suggests that they were not drawing big enough crowds to make the tour a financial success gives me the impression that there was indeed cause for cynicism.
Perhaps they should have come up with a better story if the real reason they are halting the tour is because they are not profitable.
This reenforces that it’s the artists that draw the crowds and not the tour manager, stage/production with a hodgepodge of famous songs performed by what amounts to group of stand ins.
The show producer claims he saw a Celine Dion huge production and a Trans Siberian Orchestra show and thought he could reproduce those shows – but somehow skipped over the the obvious factor – that the audience was coming to see those artists doing those shows – those shows were spectacular because those artists are spectacular at what they do on top of the staging. The ARTIST is the draw.
It’s as misguided as wanting to book a tour by Metalica for instance, the band declining yet the tour producer deciding to book the tour anyway, in arenas no less and say “what if you saw Metalica with MY staging and lighting” and then booked 4 unrelated guys and put on the tour.
It ain’t gonna fly. This tour didn’t fly for the same reason.
Not that it couldn’t be built from the ground up in MUCH smaller venues building the show and the word of mouth. Have a great show and THEN build the production around it.
This was backwards.
As I saw in one article, this tour reminded the writer of a Saturday Night Live skit from long ago. “Elvis’ Coat” on tour.
It’s still a Medley Cover Band. Reminds me of something I would see at my local dinner theatre without the dinner, only this show has what seems like a 17 year old whose daddy gave him an open checkbook to do a mega 4th of July show. Even if it was built from smaller venues up, think about it, there are 1,000’s Medley Cover Bands with wannabe ARTIST – all over the world. I can even go to my local bar and see a band that does the “oldies but goodies”.
What people really want to see is the “real” deal. I don’t think it will fly at much more than a small local show. The logo is cool and some of the artwork by Ed Unitsky on their website looks cool have you checked out his myspace page?
I saw this show too, with a large group of friends, every one of us being a theatrical professional and musician.
We laughed uncontrollably… a lot… and they weren’t trying to be funny.
A few people left.
It was terrible. The singers, with the exception of the female lead (who had FIRE), were not only bad, they were genuine posers (I mean, they actually POSED dramatically like they imagined REAL singers do it). The performances were lackluster, lack-talent and played wrong (and not in a good way). I laughed uncontrollably almost every time I looked up on the screen and SAW the guys “singing.” They seemed far more interested in what their faces looked like while they were singing than what they SOUNDED like when they were doing it. The guy sang DOORS songs like he’d never heard Jim Morrison do it… even once. Heck, it wasn’t even MUSICIANS onstage, it was guys who had been roadies FOR musicians.
In my opinion, it was nothing more than a BAD cover band with a big stage and a badass rig (the RIG was definitely awesome… but if that really WAS the lighting designer for Pink Floyd in Australia, it’s obvious why they left him there, and the sound guy never did bother to let us hear the orchestra).
I saw the show for free. If I had paid for it, it would have been the first “concert” in my life after which I would have demanded my money back. The only reason we stayed till the end was in the hopes that the girl who did the Janis songs would sing something awesome again… she seemed like easily the only person on the stage, with the exception of the orchestra (one can only hope, since the orchestra couldn’t be heard for the most part, that THEY were actual, hired, professional musicians… but since one could see that since the whole thing consisted of hot chicks [not complaining about that] it’s certainly POSSIBLE that “musicianship” wasn’t a big part of the auditioning process), who actually had music in her soul.
The solos and guitar parts were played without any feeling, flair, or sense of timing… just “wrong,” and not the way somebody like Jimi (Hendrix or Page) or Robbie Krieger (or even the drunk guy at Open Mic last night) would have played them “wrong.”
At the VERY least, they should have used actual SINGERS, instead of just a pair of guys who said “yup…. I can sing… my wife loves it when I get drunk enough to do karaoke.”
The reason this show has gone back into the STUDIO to fix “technical issues” is because they’re going to fix STUDIO ISSUES… as in performance and musical issues. They’re probably attempting to bring the MUSICAL quality up to the standard of the TECHNICAL production… which I would judge as “adequate,” not great. Certainly not worth a high ticket price if you’ve got ANY local dive bar where you can go see almost ANY cover band play the same songs.