David Byrne

MELTING DOWN

by David Byrne | April 28, 2015

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Hello all. I'm curating the Meltdown festival in London the last two weeks of August this year! It takes place at the Southbank Centre—a sprawling complex that includes three theaters, multiple lounges, bars, terraces and even a library where every music-related book I own will be available!

Today, the first batch—it's a very large batch—of acts is announced. It’s very eclectic and very exciting.

There are acts many music fans will recognize—and many others that I suspect will be completely new. When I showed Brian Eno where we were a week ago, he remarked, "This looks good. I've never heard of any of them." (I think he may have been exaggerating a little.) The Southbank folks have been a joy to work with—then again I also like this sort of Tetris puzzle of trying to figure what will fit where and what the budget might be to support all this. But, they do all the heavy lifting.

More acts will be confirmed in the next couple of weeks.

Here is a wonderful, short film on what the Southbank site was not too long after WWII and what it is now—it still retains some of that hopeful legacy. The site became a place for the Festival of Britain, which was a response to the horrors of war. A response that was not militaristic, vengeful or power hungry, but rather, an attempt to counter death with life, to counter war with culture and social openness. As if to say, "We are better that that.”