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aberdeen-music

Dundee Blues weekend.


Trikelops

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Sad to learn that the Dundee Blues Bonanza has been cancelled for this year due to health problems among the organisers.

Doesn't stop Chris Simmons from stirring the shit about them though.

It must rankle him that something that someone else has done for so many years is still successful, it is after all the biggest FREE blues festival in Europe. That is despite Chris repeatedly trying to cash in by putting his own bands into pubs that don't participate in the event.

He successfully screwed up the Arbroath and Aberdeen blues scenes already, so canna see his problem.

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There might be some value in the OP's thread if it included a credible link.

 

What we have so far, is an unsubstantiated rumour, leading to the airing of a personal greivance.

 

This is not a personal grievance by any means. I have been around the blues scene for many years and can assure you that Chris has taken every opportunity to bad mouth the Dundee event and it's organisers via his e-newsletter, to which I am no longer privy as I disagreed with him a couple of times. It is a great newsletter which Chris has total control over, you cannot post back to it per se, any reply you make only goes as far as him.

Each year, he has put bands in to pubs in Dundee that are not taking part in the Bonanza, even having the nerve to approach bands that were already contracted to play for the event's organisers on several occasions. He was warned by the organisers about this and since then has had a personal vendetta against them.

Don't ask me who his bands are because I have never been to one of his gigs as I support the DBB solely. But...if they are anything like the bands he used to put on in the Lampie with boring regularity, it would probably be a guitar hero and supporting cast masquerading as a blues band.

The Aberdeen blues scene, for what it was, all but vanished because of the same sort of thing, people who liked blues music turned up and were treated to a good rock band instead of what they paid to hear.

The Arbroath scene was a pretty good, if small, annual event known as the Smokie Blues Festival. Again, Chris went to pubs not taking part and put in bands of his choice and eventually talked the main body of publicans out of using the event organiser and using him instead so they could charge entry fees at the door and therefor make money. After a few years of this, due to dwindling crowds, the publicans came crawling back to the original organiser asking if he would run the event again, but he politely told them where to go.

 

These are the facts as I have been told them over the years, if there are any inaccuracies, please feel free to correct me, if you have proof otherwise.

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A friend of a friend had applied for a gig for this year's festival and was notified that the festival was not going ahead this year. Out of curiosity I contacted the organisers and was told that they have taken a decision, regrettably, that because of health issues, they will not be going ahead with the festival this year.

That is as much as I know, but I will look at their website to see if any announcement has been posted there. I'll post here if any such statement has been issued, or anyone can look up the website themselves to see if it has been announced as yet.

Please don't shoot the messenger.

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