Indipendente Ramps Up For Radiohead

Indipendente promoters Corrado and Sandro Rizzotto have convinced the Milan authorities to agree to increase the capacity of the Arena Civica by creating more exits.

To overcome the local city council’s hesitation toward them knocking more holes in the 200-year-old listed building’s walls, the Pordenone-based company is making it easier and quicker to leave the arena by installing temporary ramps up to the top of its low walls and having temporary steps leading down the other side.

The usual capacity for a rock show at the Civica would be about 10,000 but the Rizzotto brothers and their builders have managed to get it increased to 18,000, enabling them to sell 36,000 tickets for their June 17-18 Radiohead shows.

The tickets went on sale in early February and were gone by the middle of the month.

The company also has upcoming sellout shows with Portishead and Queens Of The Stone Age, with Mars Volta, Simple Plan, The Kooks, Gutter Twins, Laura Marling and Feist in the diary.

On the domestic front, Indipendente has taken on the booking of Afterhours, one of Italy’s leading rock bands, which on May 2 starts a national tour taking in Bologna, Rimini, Roma, Naples, Bari, Florence, Pordenone and Milan. The previous day, the band will play the trade union-organised May Day celebrations that take place every year in Rome’s Piazza San Giovanni.

Subsonica, another big national act, is currently on the second leg of its L’Eclissi Tour, which is 15 small arenas with a total capacity of about 70,000. The first part was at the end of 2007 and saw the act play to more than 70,000 across nine shows in eight cities.