LAMC Productions is proud to announce that legendary Australian Rock band and agitators, Midnight Oil, will be bringing their The Great Circle 2017 Tour to Singapore for the very first time on Wednesday, August 16, 2017 at The Star Theatre, The Star Performing Arts Centre.
The Great Circle 2017 World Tour will see the veteran group’s classic lineup (Peter Garrett on vocals, Rob Hirst on drums, Martin Rotsey on guitar, Jim Moginie on guitar and keyboards, Bones Hillman on bass) circle around our overheating planet for six months, starting and ending with gigs in Sydney.
Tickets go on sale Friday, May 12 9am through Sistic at www.sistic.com.sg, and 1am via hotline (65) 6348-5555 and at all Sistic authorised agents.
The Great Circle 2017 World Tour marks Midnight Oil’s first shows in 15 years, apart from two stadium benefit concerts (and their related small warmup gigs) in Australia in 2005 and 2009. 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.
The announcement of the Singapore show coincides with the impending release of a remastered CD box set called The Full Tank, due May 12, featuring all of their existing albums and EPs 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.
Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Australian culture knows the basics of Midnight Oil’s story. They are the incendiary post-punk band from Sydney’s northern beaches who shunned pop TV shows, forging a fierce bond with their audience through nonstop gigging and jagged Ozrock classics like “Back On The Borderline”, “Bus To Bondi” and “Don’t Wanna Be The One”. They are the musical innovators who turned high tech, anti-jingoistic polemic into hits like “Power & The Passion”, “U.S. Forces” and “When The Generals Talk”.
They are the activists whose social justice campaigning includes “The Dead Heart”, “Redneck Wonderland”, “Beds Are Burning” and hijacking the 2000 Olympic Games Closing Ceremony with their “Sorry” suits. They are the committed humanists and environmentalists who brought us anthems like “Blue Sky Mine”, “Forgotten Years” and “Say Your Prayers” plus a string of protests from the Tasmanian wilderness and the Jabiluka Uranium mine near Kakadu to mid-town Manhattan where they unforgettably stopped traffic outside the Exxon building after the Alaskan oil spill.
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 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.
