Australian News 10/24

NZ Festival Sees The Sun

New Zealand’s three-day Rhythm & Vines (Dec. 29-31) is taking advantage of a great marketing opportunity – attendees will be first in the world to see the first sunrise of 2010.

It is held at Waiohika Vineyard Estate in Gisborne. The bill includes Moby, Roots Manuva, The Editors, Empire of the Sun and John Butler Trio.

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Short Notes

The original lineup of Pavement will return for Handsome Tours for five dates March 4-10. They last toured downunder in 1998.

Feel Presents is bringing Cat Power for eight festival and club dates Dec. 30 to Jan. 10.

Michael Coppel added second shows for Taylor Swift’s visit in February.

Initial demand for original KISS guitarist Ace Frehley’s November shows saw Red Ant postpone the trek to February to reschedule dates and add two more cities to the itinerary.

Advance orders for Pink’s “Funhouse: Live In Australia” DVD were enough for it to be certified 11 times platinum and debut on the charts at No. 1. The DVD was filmed in Sydney mid-year during her three-month tour, which shifted 650,000 tickets for Michael Coppel Presents.

Jessica Mauboy, already up for seven ARIA nominations, won the female artist, album and single at 15th annual indigenous Deadly Awards at the Sydney Opera House Oct. 15. Gurrumul Yunupingu took male artist and band of the year for Saltwater Band.

Frontier Touring has revamped its Web site (frontiertouring.com) to allow greater interactivity with users, personalized information on presales and profiling advertisers. The site is rated by Hitwise as having the greatest traffic of all Australian music promoters’ sites.

Billy and Jackie Cross who run the Summafieldayze dance festival were included in the list of the Gold Coast’s 100 most influential people.

The Oct. 19 edition of ABC-TV show “Australian Story” focused on the ill health of Mandawuy Yunupingu, leader of indigenous act Yothu Yindi. The act had a global hit in the early ’90s with the club hit “Treaty.”

According to the show, Yunupingu’s alcoholism has seen his kidneys shut down and operations needed to save his eyesight. He has been writing songs recently with INXS’s Andrew Farriss.