Three International Bands Will Replace Blur At Big Day Out

UPDATE: Blur replacements have finally been announced – full details here!

While the replacement for UK indie legends Blur, who on Sunday levelled fans and promoters alike with the big, unfortunate news that they had pulled out of Big Day Out 2014, wasn’t announced today as previously indicated, AJ Maddah has confirmed that there will be three replacement acts.

Speaking to The Doctor on Triple J, Maddah confirmed that Big Day Out organisers have got three bands lined up, with one band hailing from the UK and the other two from the US. Unfortunately one of the US acts wasn’t able to get their contract over to promoters in time for a Friday announce.

BLUR BDO REPLACEMENTS TO BE ANNOUNCED WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON – FIND OUT EXACTLY WHEN!

As Maddah himself tells it, one of the US bands “basically pissed off on Thanksgiving weekend without giving us their contracts.” Though The Doctor put it rather aptly in saying that while two of the three bands are confirmed, “a turkey got in the way” of one of the US acts.

“We’re gonna bring you three bands very shortly,” said Maddah. “We’ve got one UK band and two US bands. The UK band dutifully came through with their paperwork and their contract…but the second [US] one basically pissed off over Thanksgiving weekend without sending us their contract.”

“So we’ll have to hold till Monday night their time to get that off them,” he added. “To be honest I’m not in the mood to leave anything to chance at this point and want to make sure that we dot our ‘I’s and cross our ‘T’s or whatever the fuck,” before The Doc asked Maddah to watch his language.

“We’re very close but all in all I’m really pleased,” the promoter continued. “We’re 58 days out from the festival…Blur didn’t leave us a great deal of notice to actually find these replacements,” later adding, “We’ve got bands to change things on their schedule on a personal and business level.”

Asked if the BDO promoters would get their money back on the toxic Blur investment, Maddah said:

“Who knows? We paid for all their international costs up front. Flights and so forth. It’s quite a few hundred thousand dollars and I don’t know if we’re gonna see that again or not. At this point in time that’s not really important. The important thing is to make sure we bring people a good show.”

“All in all,” he said, “I’m fairly pleased with the bands we’re gonna announce imminently. We’ve managed to overcome a few hurdles. The guitarist in one US band has got TV commitments, we had to hustle to get him out,” said Maddah, effectively opening the speculation floodgates.

Asked about the nostalgia aspect that Blur would have brought to BDO 2014, Maddah told The Doctor that “The UK band should soothe some of those pains.” As for who the guitarist might be, The Doc said he knew of one US guitarist who does TV and doesn’t wear a shirt very often.

Maddah replied that he wouldn’t “comment on people’s shirtlessness,” adding, “I’ll leave it to your imagination.”

Gallery: 37 Bands Who WON’T Be Replacing Blur At BDO (more info here)