Riot Fest announced its 2016 line-up last week, sneaking a few interesting surprises in among already-announced acts like the long-in-the-making Misfits reunion. Among the most interesting: The announcement that Morrissey would be appearing at the festival’s Chicago instance, marking 2016’s sole North American festival appearance by the notoriously gunshy artist.
But today brings a reminder that you don’t get to be Morrissey by going all willy-nilly and showing up at concerts that someone said you were going to show up at. A post went up recently on True To You, the official fan page for the former Smiths star, reading, “As of this date (May 23), Morrissey is not a part of this year’s Chicago Riot Fest.” The site didn’t give any further context for the announcement, although we can only guess at what might have made Moz back out. Cat emergency? Political considerations? A wicked case of bulbous salutations?
We’ve reached out to Riot Fest PR about the cancellation. Hopefully, we’ll soon have some more details about what presumably meat-adjacent indignity caused this wholly precedented pull-out to occur.
[via Pitchfork]