Australian music legend Bon Scott is to get the epic tribute he deserves in March next year, when 10km of Perth’s Canning Highway is to be closed for eight hours to host the world’s longest music festival stage: a roving concert, rolling from one end to another, devoted to AC/DC covers.
On March 1, 10 semi-trailers — eight topped with live bands playing AC/DC songs — would be taking over the highway’s southern portion, between Canning Bridge and Fremantle: The same regular pilgrimage Scott would make in his youth, heading from his Fremantle home to rock ’n’ roll hangout the Raffles hotel.
The stretch of highway was immortalized in 1979’s Highway to Hell, nicknamed for the fatal crashes that plagued its most dangerous intersection.
However, the event itself — which was announced yesterday — is as much a tribute to the film clip of an earlier AC/DC hit, It’s A Long Way To The Top, which featured the band playing on the back of a flatbed truck as it drove through Swanston Street, Melbourne.
For the concert — which marks the 40th anniversary of the singer’s death, and closes the 2020 Perth arts festival — two lanes of the stretch would be devoted to the “hit parade” of local and international acts, moving at 4kph with regular stops.
The other two lanes would be for the public, who would set up picnic rugs and vantage spots to watch the bands. Four other parks and stops along the route would be devoted to special events, including a mass singalong of Highway to Hell, and rock patch-making sessions with the local embroiderers’ guild.
Next year marks the first of four Perth festivals to be helmed by new artistic director Iain Grandage, an internationally renowned music director and composer who was born and raised in Perth.
The idea for Highway to Hell came to him when he was new to the job, but, he told the Guardian, he was not sure they could pull it off.
“The kicker was when we found out that the [festival closing] date was 40 years to the day” of Scott’s ashes arriving at Fremantle Cemetery, Grandage said.
“It was like: ‘We just have to do this,’ despite the ridiculous size of it,” he said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese