Gorillaz Reveal World Tour Dates, Talk About Transitioning Into ‘Human’ Band

Last week we shared the news of Gorillaz‘s “Escape To Plastic Beach” World Tour which includes a ton of North American dates. However, the when and where details were only recently revealed. As previously mentioned, they’ll be kicking it off on October 3rd in Montreal at the Bell Centre and making sure to stop by the major venues such as New York’s Madison Square Garden on October 8th and Los Angeles’ Gibson Amphitheatre on October 27th.

The Gorillaz frontman also shared his thoughts on how much better their headlining experience at Glastonbury could have gone and give some hope to hard core Blur fans. More details are after the jump!

It will continue to be a busy year for Gorillaz with all the promotion they’ve been doing for their latest album, Plastic Beach. Their third official single, “On Melancholy Hill” has been revamped with a remix which is currently on iTunes. They were also the headliner for the gloriously massive Glastonbury Festival over in the UK but Damon Albarn did admit that they could have done better. According to BBC’s Newsbeat (via Spinner), a main factor was their struggle in transitioning from their well known cartoon film versions on stage (with them behind the backdrop) to an actual “human” band in front of an audience. Crowds were thinning during their set and Albarn only had himself to blame. An attempt to improve their human status was through more interaction with the crowd at the following festival in Denmark:

“Basically, the difference between that [Glastonbury] and the next gig we did at Roskilde, which was the same sized audience, same age demographic, was I just communicated with the audience more [...] I didn’t take for granted that if these people were going to be at the front then there had to be some kind of human interaction. It evolved into something with more human interaction. I know what people were reacting to.”

Gorillaz will be heading overseas to Europe, Australia and New Zealand after North America but we hope they have some downtime to actually bring us that sequel to Plastic Beach. Also, for you Blur fans, we’ve got some good news although we don’t know how much weight we can put on Albarn’s words… When asked if the four Blur members would be working together again, his desires seemed to match ours as he answered: “Yes, at some point. Definitely.”

Hang in there whether you prefer Gorillaz or Blur. There’s bound to be more new material coming our way. For now, check the tour dates out below:

Gorillaz’s North American Tour Dates:

10/03 Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre
10/05 Wallingford, CT @ Oakdale Theatre
10/06 Boston @ Agganis Arena
10/08 New York City @ Madison Square Gardensale August 6
10/10 Camden, NJ (Philadelphia) @ Susquehanna Bank Center
10/11 Fairfax, Va. (Washington D.C.) @ Patriot Center
10/13 Detroit @ Fox Theatre
10/14 Toronto @ Air Canada Centre
10/16 Chicago @ UIC Pavilion
10/17 Minneapolis @ Target Center
10/19 Houston @ Toyota Center
10/20 Dallas @ Verizon Theatre
10/22 Austin @ Frank Erwin Center
10/24 Denver @ Wells Fargo Theatre
10/26 Phoenix, Ariz. @ Dodge Theatre
10/27 Los Angeles @ Gibson Amphitheatre
10/30 Oakland, Calif. @ Oracle Arena
11/02 Seattle @ Key Arena
11/03 Vancouver @ Rogers Arena

Will you be attending any of the Gorillaz concerts?