Legendary Australian rock band and agitators Midnight Oil
today announced their first show in South Africa in over two decades. They also
unveiled plans to release three archival box sets including a collection called
“The Overflow Tank” which will contain more than 14 hours of previously
unreleased and rare material.
The Johannesburg show is included as part of the SOLD OUT
“The Great Circle 2017” World Tour, featuring the group in its classic lineup.
The world tour kicked off in mid-April and Midnight Oil will be performing over
30 gigs around the world reaching Johannesburg on Saturday the 29th of July.
During the world tour they will share festival stages with artists like Arcade
Fire, Sting and The Pixies.
These will be Midnight Oil’s only shows in the last 15
years. It will also be the group’s most extensive world tour since their
classic late 80’s/early 90’s albums like “Diesel & Dust”, “Blue Sky Mining”
and “Earth & Sun & Moon” sold over 10 million copies around the globe.
All info on the Johannesburg concert is listed below.
Extensive anti-scalping measures are being taken around this tour so fans are
also formally advised to only buy tickets from the official ticket agencies
listed on the band’s website to avoid possible fraud and needless overpayment
via so called “reselling” sites.
The band have also announced the impending release of a
remastered CD box set called “The Full Tank” featuring all of their existing
albums and EP’s plus a mammoth new 4 CD/8 DVD trove called “The Overflow Tank”
which will include over 14 hours of previously unreleased and rare material.
Both of these box sets will be housed in replica miniature water tanks like the
one featured onstage at so many ‘Oils’ gigs. The band also unveiled their first
ever complete Vinyl collection which will feature 11 remastered LP’s and two
12” EP’s all cut at Abbey Rd Studios in London. The three box sets will be
released around the start of the tour but full track-listings and pre-orders
are available now via www.midnightoil.com.
Anyone with even a passing knowledge of music knows the
basics of Midnight Oil’s story and how these musical innovators and social
justice brought us anthems like “Beds are Burning”, “The Dead Heart”, “Blue Sky
Mine”, “Forgotten Years” and “Say Your Prayers” plus a string of other hits.
Their music makes you feel. Their lyrics make you think. And the combined
impact live onstage is nothing less than a call to action.
In a dangerously warming world of Trump, Hanson, Petry and
Le Pen the voice of Midnight Oil clearly takes on renewed relevance; they have
always been a band that both reflects and shapes “the temper of the times”.
Clarion calls like “it’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees”
may have been intended for earlier eras but they resonate more than ever in
these days of ‘alternative facts’.
In keeping with the band’s longstanding commitments, their
carbon footprint during “The Great Circle” World Tour will, of course, be fully
offset and sustainability initiatives will be undertaken at all shows. Midnight
Oil will also continue their collaborations with local and international
environmental organizations including Greenpeace, supporting their campaigns on
crucial issues like dangerous climate change and the imminent threats to Australia’s
Great Barrier Reef.
At one level “The Great Circle 2017” simply reflects the
geographic reality that the tour will loop around the world and circle
Australia. At another level the name clearly implies the planet itself but it
has a further meaning too. Sailors, and airmen use “the great circle” to
navigate the globe because on a sphere the shortest distance between two points
is not usually a straight line. How appropriate for a group who has always been
deeply engaged with the world around them but whose career path has never been
linear.
Midnight Oil is more than just a rock’n’roll band. In 2017
they will finally bring things back to where they all began. The circle remains
unbroken.
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