The Urbana Sweetcorn Festival will be celebrating its 40th year in Downtown Urbana on August 28th and 29th. In the past, the Urbana Business Association has brought in a national act to headline the main stage on Saturday night.
This year, the UBA is bringing in a two headliners — one to perform on Friday night and one to perform on Saturday night.
“Since we’re celebrating 40 years of the festival, we wanted to do something big,” said Cynthia Chandler, executive director of the UBA. “So we decided to get national headliners on our Main Stage on both Friday and Saturday nights of the festival — historically we’ve only had a big name on Saturday night.”
Well, big UBA has gone, as two international acts are part of the first announcement of headlining acts. Performing Friday night will be Brits, The Psychedelic Furs, who will be supported by Australia’s The Church.
The London-based Psychedelic Furs, most famous for 1981’s “Pretty In Pink,” will bring their blend of new-wave and post-punk to Urbana’s main stage. “Pretty In Pink” inspired the John Hughes film of the same name, and drove the Furs to re-release the track in 1986 to coincide with the film.
The Church, who just released a new record in 2014, are probably most well-known for “Under the Milky Way” which hit #2 in the US in 1988.
The Saturday headliners, along with the rest of the entertainment schedule, will be announced later in the summer.
The just-announced tour featuring the Psychedelic Furs and the Church is already gaining national attention as influential music blog Brooklyn Vegan just made a post about it and included their stop in Urbana:
