>
>>The Afraid of Sunlight North American Tour in 1995 stopped in 16 cities,
>>yet lost an estimated $30,000, mainly due to poor support and faith from
>>the various tour promoters. If you were Marillion, would you spend
>>thousands of your hard earned dollars to tour for $12 per ticket and low
>>booking fees? The prospects for a Strange Engine Tour appeared bleak.
>
>IMHO, that was a bad move on their part. If Marillion wants to get big,
>then the band has to start playing prog festivals and build up their way up.
>Peter Renfro has been trying to get Marillion to play ProgDay for the past
>two years. I don't know why they declined. Maybe they demanded too much
>money.
>
Actually, rumor has it that they may well be playing at ProgDay this
year since they'll be in the states already. No confirmations on this yet.
It doesn't make sense for Marillion to build their way up by playing
prog festivals. Most everyone who goes to prog festivals will have already
heard them, so they won't be building on their fan base. Plus, it's very
expensive to fly to the US every few months for another prog festival.
Part of the problem with the last tour was that the local city promoters
just didn't promote them. If you're a fan who isn't on the net you probably
won't even know they're playing in your town.
On another note, the tour fund is one of the coolest things to
come along in a long time. The fans wanted a tour and actually put
their money behind their words (of course the tour CD helped, but the
average contribution is twice the minimum necessary to get a CD). There
aren't many bands whose fans would do that; though if it came down to it
I could see Ytsejammers getting behind DT like that. :-)
Steve
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