M.I.A. Outraged by Top-Billing of Tenacious D

Tenacious D

We didn’t report on this a couple weeks ago since we thought it was a local story, but recent events and press have turned this into an international story.

Several weeks ago, Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival in San Francisco announced that The Beastie Boys had to pull out of the show because of Adam Yauch’s cancer treatment. Replacing the Beasties at the top of the bill for the August 30th show is none other than Jack Black and Kyle Gass - Tenacious D.

This change has drawn ire from the artist second on the bill for the show, M.I.A. She recently send a series of tweets from her Twitter account.

p.s I originally booked on shows coz Beasties were headliners, but now they ain’t doing it and I jus wanna say, we have to go hard!!!

Can’t believe they replaced Beasties with Tenacious D??? And if I pull out they sue! So really? Tenacious D after me?

So me and Jack Black are back to back, Beasties get well soon!

You’re all welcome on stage from the get go, fuck it! I’m takin ‘Bird Flu’ out of the set! Just to make a point!

M.I.A.’s disappointment with not being on the bill with The Beastie Boys is understandable, though obviously they didn’t drop because Jables and Kage forced them off the bill. Yauch has cancer! And now M.I.A. is whining about the high-profile replacement.

The irony for those of us in Fratville is that M.I.A. broke through into the mainstream only after her song “Paper Planes” was featured in the trailer for Pineapple Express. The same movie produced by Jack Black’s buddy and sometime producer, Judd Apatow.

It’s true that M.I.A. has had it pretty good in the last year. Her “Paper Cuts” song went Platinum and her contribution to the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack landed her an Oscar nomination. But her most recent album still hasn’t gone Gold yet and she hardly has Jack Black’s name recognition. And, comparing musical apples to apples, it may be worth noting that Tenacious D’s first album has gone Platinum, selling more than a million units (albums… not singles…) according to the RIAA database.

Anyway, I expect The D to take the high road. But if M.I.A. disses them at the show I wouldn’t be surprised to see a response.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 7:41 am and is filed under Jack Black, Kyle Gass. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.