Rockin The Bowl‘s head honcho Steve Hughes has called on all fans to support the festival and help bring bands back to Sheffield and South Yourkshire!
“Calling ALL South Yorkshire rock and metal fans! In fact, calling ALL FANS!
Over the years South Yorkshire has seen the absolute best rock and metal bands performing in the area…just think back to who has played City Hall, Sheffield Arena, Boardwalk, The Corp, 02, Don Valley Stadium etc. List them all and we would be the envy of half the planet!
THOSE DAYS ARE GONE! Every time we see a tour announced, Sheffield and South Yorkshire are almost always missing, every time we see comments saying ‘why the fuck don’t they play Sheffield?’, and ‘Oh! no Sheffield again I see’, and so on.
So why?? Short answer is that Sheffield is unofficially blacklisted among people within the industry. It’s a bad investment; it isn’t economically viable for the bigger bands and hasn’t been for a good while now. Even medium sized bands are starting to stay away. The reasons for this are not important (we do know why as we have spoken to people within the industry).
What is important is we try everything we can to reverse this and bring back the bands.
Rockin the Bowl started here partly to try and bring back the bands and make them see that the Steel City is back! Over the last 3-4 years it is starting to work….each year our bands are bigger than the year before and for next year we are already getting interest from bigger bands than we have had so far.
‘But I’ve not heard of half of the bands you have here’ I hear you cry.
‘Ok, so what! That doesn’t mean they aren’t fucking great bands and well worth seeing…something different to another covers band doing another ‘Paranoid’ and ‘Smoke On The Water’…again’.
This year we have Terrorvision, we have Blaze who was with Iron Maiden doing a Maiden set, We have members of Thunder, we have ex members of ACDC, we have doom/stoner legends Orange Goblin, we have the mighty Diamond Head (no Diamond Head, no Metallica), we have bands who have played Download and Bloodstock…..right here in Sheffield in September. All for the price of a few Netflix movies, a pizza and a handful of beers!
And this is where the problem lies! We know money is tight. We have ploughed literally tens of thousands of pounds of our own money into RTB to bring rock and metal back to Sheffield. We HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO GIVE! This means that if this year’s festival doesn’t get the support it needs there will NEVER be another.
So please, please support us this year…even if you haven’t heard of some of the bands, even if you don’t like some on the bill, there’s always others and next year could be full of bands you love. It’s a great fun weekend…if you’ve been you will know, if not, come along and see for yourself. Spread the word, tag people here who might not know about us. This group/page has over 5,000 members. If a third of you came it would be enough. To those of you who have bought tickets, we thank you from the bottom of our black hearts.
Together we have the chance to make The Steel City the Rock city again.
The words ‘use it or lose it’ have never been as relevant to Sheffield as they are right now.”
Tickets for this year’s Rockin The Bowl are available: here
ROCKPOSER DOT COM! 
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