Back on June 8th, Ears To The House asked a pretty straightforward question. Which Derrick was due to appear at Futur Festival at the start of July – Carter, May or both? We posed this question due to literature and promotional material from the festival themselves mentioning both names, but never together.
Futur Festival were emailed 48 hours before that post was published – ample time to clear up the confusion. They declined – providing us with three posts on the subject instead of just one, and causing confusion for Derrick May’s Italian fans who might have thought they were going to see him play.
Well, we can now finally bring this unedifying episode to a close by confirming his appearance has indeed been cancelled. Set times for all the stages on Friday, Saturday and Sunday have been released, and May’s name does not appear on Saturday’s Futur stage lineup, or anywhere else for that matter…
So how did May end up having his appearance cancelled? A regular Ears To The House source in Detroit who knows him told us “Derrick found out last weekend. Someone from the festival called to tell him – not sure who. I heard him ranting about ‘#MeToo motherf***ers’, as he called them. He really does seem to think he’s been treated unfairly.”.
And is this one of the reasons why some of the Detroit techno scene imploded over the past week? The source says “Yeah, basically. That’s about right. Carl, Omar, Juan and some of the others think Derrick has been convicted in a white man’s court just for being black. But no matter what they do to help Derrick out, it doesn’t work. And they’re tearing themselves apart trying to work out what else they can do. A lot of them owe their careers to him.”
“They blame Annabel [Ross] and Ellie Flynn for all this, but Annabel more because she’s more involved in dance music. That’s why they attacked her online this week – they knew you’d kick back but didn’t think Annabel would. Then you kicked back really hard and so did Annabel. Carl and Omar have been left looking really stupid. Even those loyal to them are asking questions, which they don’t normally do.”.
It’s one less gig in a not very packed 2022 schedule for Derrick May…
