music etc fest

Rip It Up, Issue 21, 1 April 1979, Page 3

music etc fest

Every two years the New Zealand Students Arts Council holds the country’s biggest arts festival on the campus of one of its members. This year, the Festival is going to be held in and around Canterbury University and Training College, at llam, Christchurch. As in previous years, a large part of the Festival programme is given over to rock and roll. Virtually every major-league New Zealand band will be featured at the Festival, as well as hosts of up-and-comers. Auckland acts confirmed already include Citizen Band, Schtung, Plague and the Phantoms, but there will almost certainly be others. As well as music, the Festival contains every area of the performing and visual arts movies, drama, multi-media, dance, video, painting, sculpture, and debating are all included and the whole thing retails for fifteen dollars, which ensures free entry to every event of the eight-day programme. With an average of thirty completely separate shows each day, no one is going to be bored. Tickets are already on sale at the nearest University, Training College or Technical Institute, and they will be able to give you details on travel arrangements and billetting.

Dire Straits, who are currently riding a massive wave of world-wide popularity, tour in September. Concert Promotions have the band booked for three dates: September 15, YMCA Auckland; September 16, Wellington Town Flail; and September 18, Christchurch Town Hall. Cheap Trick have now cancelled both the NZ and Australian dates that were to follow their Japanese tour. It’s now hoped that a separate Australasian tour can be arranged for later in the year. And a reorganised recording schedule for The Cars has meant that dates in this part of the world now appears highly unlikely. The contract for John McLaughlin’s tour in June is, however, signed and sealed, although dates and venues are still to be announced. Limbs, the highly rated Auckland dance company, hit the road this month in a tour that takes them as far south as Dunedin and includes dates in Hamilton, Palmerston North, Wellington and Christchurch. They will feature at Christchurch’s University Arts Festival in May. This tour, organised by the NZ Student’s Arts Council, follows a highly successful North Island tour last year.