Shortly after the full Soundwave Revolution line up was released on May 12th Soundwave announced that the band Thrice were pulling out of the festival.
Thrice then tweeted “Hey Australian friends. Sorry you were misled. We never confirmed anything with Soundwave and are sad to hear that you were told otherwise.”
While Thrice and their management seemed happy to let the fall out sit with Soundwave, festival organiser AJ Maddah, a man known for making his opinion public through his own tweets, decided a bit of public shaming was in order to restore the reputation of his festival. He posted an open letter to the band’s manager, Ken O’Leary stating that he had “not 1 but 2 confirmations of Thrice’s participation in Soundwave Revolution from X-Ray: The first is dated Sunday, March 27. The 2nd is dated Wednesday April 13.”
He then went on to call the band “ill mannered lying assholes” and stated that he had never wanted to work with the band again but had booked them for the festival “under heavy duress” from the band’s international booking agent, Steve Strange.
Thrice’s booking agency waited 4 days to verify on one of the Soundwave forums that the band had indeed been confirmed for the festival by someone in their office stating “Unfortunately someone in my office did confirm Thrice to AJ when we were not in a position to do so as the band never confirmed to play Soundwave to us. This was a mistake on our part and unfortunately all of this is due to us, not to Thrice and not to AJ.”
You can read AJ’s letter in full and more about Thrice’s mysterious scapegoat on the Soundwave forum
