If you’re not a Bowienet subscriber, you might still be under the impression that David Bowie will be performing at the New York City High Line Festival this spring. After all, the official announcement on Bowienet that was made nearly nine months ago stated that Bowie will not only be curating the festival, but the event will “culminate in an enormous outdoor David Bowie concert, his first full show in New York City since the Reality Tour hit Madison Square Garden on December 15, 2003.”
Since then, news of the event has been (and continues to be) extremely scarce, even with it looming a mere 3 months away. The High Line Festival website is still nothing more than a splash page. And according to a Google search, the last public statement about the High Line Festival on Bowienet was made back on August 14th, when it was posted that “there are currently no plans for any other live performances by David Bowie before next May’s High Line festival.” That is it. No other promotion. No line-up of performers. Compare the Coachella music festival which is 4 months away and has had a complete list of performers posted on their site for quite some time.
So if you were like us, you might have been thinking that Bowienet is the best source of information about David Bowie, regardless of whether or not you are a paid subscriber. Well, guess again. Sites like BrooklynVegan.com and BowieWonderworld were the first to let the general public know that Bowie is, in fact, snubbing his own festival. According to the sites, BowieNet News Editor Total Blam Blam posted a news update on January 22nd stating that “Due to ongoing work on a new project, David Bowie has announced that it will not be possible for him to perform at the Highline Festival in May.” Where this post was public on Bowienet for a short time, it wasn’t long before the update was set to only appear for the logged in subscriber.
So if Bowie’s not playing the festival, who is? At this time, we’ve found only two artists with confirmed performances at the High Line Festival listed on their own websites: Daniel Johnston, best-known for the documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston, and Bang On a Can cellist Wendy Sutter. BrooklynVegan.com has also reported that Deerhoff will be playing at the High Line, but their performance has not been confirmed by either their MySpace page or their own website.
If that isn’t enough, some articles like this one by The Villager are suggesting that the High Line Park itself won’t even be ready to open until the spring of 2008. So good luck hearing Wendy’s cello over the construction equipment.