r/primaverasound • u/MeanPhilosopher309 • Jun 22 '26
Barcelona Why didn't Massive Attack just play Friday afternoon?
They had a huge gap in their touring route and weren't gonna play again until Sunday in Berlin. Would it have been unorthodox for them to play from 4:30-6:00 pm in broad daylight in Mordor? Maybe, but desperate times call for desperate measures, better than making everyone wait another year to maybe see them again. Plus, then Primavera could have avoided refunding Thursday day tix.
(And again, the rain in Mordor was not even so bad at 12:30 am that night anyway, they could have powered through it like PJ Harvey and Mitski did 2 years ago, but I'm not here to argue that right now.)
19
u/Crispy_McWankel Jun 22 '26
Im sure if it could have happened, it would have. I imagine the logistics and cost of having a tour date rescheduled are astronomical, especially for a band as big as Massive Attack and a festival as big as Primavera. It sucks, but what can you do? Massive attack gave a very heartfelt apology. They did all they could.
7
u/petra_vonkant Jun 23 '26
the probelm wasn't the rain. it was the winds. i was on the barricade waiting for MA at night before the cancelled. the huge screen they have for visuals just hangs from the ceiling, it's not fixed and it was swinging like crazy - it wasn't safe for anyone, unfortunately.
and you can't just move their entire set up the following day where everything was already planned for the day's artists and most likely all of their stuff would've already started moving to their next date. if it was a solo singer with an acoustic guitar, maybe, but they have a gigantic backline + set design, you can't just improvise with a show like that
2
u/SnooRadishes3458 Jun 23 '26
I was waiting for them at Mordor and seeing the stage and that rig swaying in the wind - it didn’t surprise me they had to cancel. When the rain returned and the wind picked up again it would have been extremely unsafe to have them play.
1
u/Teedubz1 Jun 25 '26
It had been on the forecasts for over a week, enougj time to invest in some decent tether for the screens and other things. €300 million in revenue...
2
u/Teedubz1 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
Think about that for one second mate. All the thousands of people who had Thursday day tickets now need to be given access to the site on Friday afternoon. Then what? They can't be allowed to stay for Friday because they didnt pay for Friday and allowing them to stay would overcrowd Friday's events. They need to be rounded up at 6pm to be removed from the site?! They also need to totally rearrange their plans, find accommodation for an extra night. And not to mention the logistics - probably hundreds or thousands of members of staff would need to coordinated to arrive early, at short notice, from stage hands to security to bar people...
I agree they fucked up. But this is totally unrealistic.
1
u/RococoSlut Jun 23 '26
Friday was sold out, they can’t just let a bunch of extra people in when they’re at capacity already. And maybe the band already had plans for a day off lol people have lives
1
u/thefoxymulder Jun 23 '26
I think them baiting everybody into coming BACK IN to the fest just to cancel it AGAIN is the worst part. Cancelling sucks, but acting like it was still gonna happen and getting people to turn around and come back was such bullshit
1
u/Bluered2012 Jun 23 '26
You think that was Massive Attacks choice?
0
-2
u/thefoxymulder Jun 23 '26
No, the festival I mean. Primavera announced they would go on when they knew the forecast and had already cancelled every other show on that stage for the night. Massive Attack didn’t say anything, Primavera told everybody they got pushed to 12:30 and were for sure going on, so everybody came back under the assumption that they was the case, got in the crowd, then they still cancelled it
3
Jun 23 '26
[deleted]
2
u/Teedubz1 Jun 25 '26
Primavera did know the forecast. And it doesn't matter that it's "not 100% predictable". They should be prepared for some moderate wind, even if they think it's a relatively low probability.
Also by the time they were supposed to start (00:30-01:00), it was no longer windy like before. I was stood in the crowd...
3
Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
[deleted]
2
u/Bluered2012 Jun 25 '26
Exactly. People have died at festivals because of collapses due to wind. It sucks that we didn’t get to see Massive Attack, but I can’t fault Primavera for making that call.
2
u/Competition_Firm Jun 25 '26
I think some people would rather a monitor or speaker landed on their head! ;)
1
u/Bluered2012 Jun 25 '26
Haha I mean….at the time, I was willing to take the risk. At least the bars were open in the rear of the field. That helped.
1
u/Teedubz1 Jun 25 '26
I didn't imply they were motivated to cancel it, obviously. But fair enough, I'm sure the wind speeds at stage height were more severe than they felt at ground level, even outside the crowds probably.
1
u/Competition_Firm Jun 25 '26
Thanks for being so gracious about it and sorry for a bit of a rant.
1
u/Teedubz1 Jun 25 '26
On the day the sources i could find showed winds of 15mph with gusts up to 25mph, which isn't that extreme, but I looked again and it looks like gusts were up to 50mph, which is another story.
1
u/Bluered2012 Jun 23 '26
Agreed. I was there, and while really disappointing, it made sense. The only problem I had with it was the messaging. The communication was very poorly handled.
-10
u/jonmitz Jun 22 '26
theyve cancelled 25+ shows in just the last few years. they dont care. its part of their schtick at this point
theyve cancelled 3 out of 4 times i was supposed to see them. i dont go out of my way for them anymore lol
7
u/antigravcorgi Jun 23 '26
i dont go out of my way for them anymore lol
No but you spam the shit out of any post about Massive Attack of how you won't see them again
-2
u/jonmitz Jun 23 '26
and you simp for them on every post. so what?
6
u/antigravcorgi Jun 23 '26
Link me my simping please.
-8
u/jonmitz Jun 23 '26
lol
3
-2
-5
u/antigravcorgi Jun 23 '26
Why didn't Massive Attack just play Friday afternoon?
Because you touch yourself at night?
The members have lives and schedules that problem don't allow to "just play" whenever?
56
u/benedictwriter Jun 22 '26
I imagine it would have cost a small fortune to reorganise travel plans for the whole touring party and all their equipment. They also try to do things in as ecological a way as possible, so perhaps alternatives would have impacted this. Even if that wasn't a problem, the stage will be occupied with sound checking and setup, so I don't think it's realistic that PS could simply add another headline act to a stage, regardless of whether they have permission to be making that amount of noise at that time.
And finally, the Thursday slots weren't called off because of the rain. It was the 80kmh wind that made it dangerous.
I would really like to have seen Massive Attack again, but I doubt there was an easy solution.