Cancelled 2007 Virtual Tour

The Gorillaz virtual tour was a planned holographic world tour that was proposed by the band in 2006 after the release of Demon Days that was eventually cancelled due to a realization that it would be too costly and likely suffer major technical difficulties (such visible glitches, low video quality and even sudden shutdowns).

History
In 2005, Gorillaz announced plans to embark on an immersive 3D world tour starring the virtual band starting in 2007. The tour was to take place in 2007 and 2008 and was to cost £8 Million to launch, with the final show lasting “just over an hour”. The tour would have seen Gorillaz projected at 20 feet tall, potentially even playing in multiple venues (including stadiums) at once.

In a 2005 interview, Jamie said that the tour would portray a story with animation showing what it was like for the characters on the road. Due to the large cost, corporate sponsors would have needed to assist in financing the project. In the end, Jamie and Damon found the tour to be too costly and technically infeasible at the time, the plans for the tour were scrapped.

=Cancelation= In 2006, it was announced that the Gorillaz hologram tour had been cancelled due to its cost, despite their efforts. Specifically, Albarn and Hewlett have mentioned that such a bass centric band embarking on a hologram tour could see the bass frequencies causing a significant decrease in visual quality, or even cause the visuals to shut down mid performance, so they would either have to sacrifice bass (the foundation of Gorillaz) and volume, or a passable quality visual. This was seen by the duo in person during Gorillaz’ 2005 hologram performance of Feel Good Inc., where although the performance looked and sounded great on-screen, the band needing to be at such low volume meant that the actual crowd could barely hear the band in person. To this day Albarn calls it “the quietest show we’ve ever played”.

Trivia

 * The 3D performance of Feel Good Inc. in 2006 dubbed as “holograms” were not actually holograms, but actually optical illusions created by centuries old technology called Pepper’s Ghost.


 * The same technology used to create the Gorillaz performance was later used for holographic performances by other virtual artists such as Hatsune Miku and Studio Killers as well as dead artists such as Tupac Shakur, Eazy-E, and Michael Jackson.