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Olympics gigs: Underworld score while Islington objects

By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 8 December 2011

Underworld have been booked to score the music for the opening ceremony of next year’s London Festival Of Mega-brand Sponsorship, aka the Olympics. This possibly isn’t a surprise given film director Danny Boyle – a previous collaborator with the Underworld guys of course – is overseeing the big opening bash of the London games.

Says Underworld’s Karl Hyde: “We want to leave people with a musical memory of the show rather than a purely visual one. It’s a great honour to be asked to do this and we’re taking it very seriously – it’s certainly not something we’ll get the chance to do again”.

Elsewhere in Olympics news, Islington Council has criticised plans by Live Nation – which is staging various entertainment events around London during the Olympic period – to stage a ten day Jamaican-themed festival in Finsbury Park from 3-12 Aug. Although one day and weekend events are routinely staged in the North London park, the council says the length and scale of the proposed event are “excessive” and will have a big impact on the local transport infrastructure and community.

Finsbury Park actually falls under the remit of Haringey Council, so it’s that local authority that will consider Live Nation’s licence application for the proposed event, but the Islington authority says it will have the biggest impact on their communities who live near the park, and have therefore lodged an official objection to Live Nation’s proposals.

The Haringey Independent also quoted a couple of local residents who expressed concern about what an event of this scale would mean for the local community, who would lose use of a big chunk of the park during the summer holidays, as well as having to tolerate noise and a strained public transport network.