By Cathy Maestri
InstantRiverside.com

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival may be in an area prone to fires and earthquakes, but it’s an Icelandic volcano that may shake up this weekend’s event.

Performers and concertgoers alike are finding themselves stranded in Europe and the United Kingdom in the biggest interruption of air travel since 9/11.

Thousands of flights have been grounded and some of the region’s biggest airports shut down due to a massive ash cloud from a volcano beneath the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in a remote region of Iceland. Volcanic ash has been known to shut down jet engines.

“All the headliners are in the country and we’re in contact with the acts that are having travel issues based on the ash,” Paul Tollett, head of festival promoter Goldenvoice, said in a statement on Thursday morning.

More than 130 acts — including headliners Jay-Z, LCD Soundsystem, Them Crooked Vultures, Muse, Faith No More, Tiesto, Gorillaz, Pavement and Thom Yorke — are scheduled to play the eclectic indie festival. Tickets are sold out, with 80,000 expected to attend each of the Empire Polo event’s three days.

British band the Cribs — which includes former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr — has already had to scrap a planned Friday appearance in Indio. Singer Gary Jarman told the BBC that he was on a plane at London’s Heathrow Airport on Thursday when it was announced that the flight had been canceled.

Jarman said the group was trying to get to Indio in time to play on Saturday or Sunday. “We’re contemplating driving all the way to Amsterdam now and taking a flight at 6 a.m., but the only flights they have are executive. It’s a force of nature — you can’t really argue with that,” he told the BBC.

“I know there are a lot of British bands playing. I kind of hope a few other bands are having problems so we can steal their set time — I know that sounds selfish.”

The BBC is reporting that Scotland’s Frightened Rabbit is also having trouble getting to the States; Muse, Gorillaz, Florence and the Machine, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Little Boots are already believed to be in the US.

According to Billboard, Bad Lieutenant (featuring former New Order singer Bernard Sumner) and New Wave icon Gary Numan also had flights canceled.

“The last thing I expected this morning when I woke up was to hear that volcanic ash might be preventing us from flying to America,” Numan said in a post on his website. “At the moment the very best British Airways are offering us, and this without any guarantee, is to put us on a Sunday flight that gets in to Los Angeles in the afternoon on Sunday. That is one step away from useless and means that, if we are very lucky, we might just make it to the festival site (a three-hour-plus drive from Los Angeles) in time for our slot but without a single second of rehearsal with Robin Finck, the American-based guitar player for the US shows, who has never played with us before, and no real chance of collecting and checking the equipment that we have hired for those shows, which includes all the keyboards, guitars, drums, etc. etc.

“We are still waiting to find out if British Airways can offer any better alternatives. Very upsetting though to see such a huge opportunity slipping through your fingers. I am glued to the TV news at the moment.”

Performers aren’t the only ones scrambling. “Aah people in the office returning from Heathrow, not able to fly to Coachella!” @Lawro tweeted from London.”Devastating :-(”

Filed under Voxpop, Entertainment, Headline

Thursday, April 15, 2010

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