A champion has been declared in the epic battle of Gary vs. The Volcano. Hint: the one that spews magma won. Sadly, this means that the New Wave legend not only missed the weekend’s Coachella festival, but that he’s canceled the U.S. mini tour that was to follow. I’d written a preview for Wednesday’s L.A. gig. Read it if you wish, or make the jump to peruse Numan’s announcement.

• Region: Miracle Mile
  Music: Gary Numan
  Vitals: El Rey Theatre on Wednesday, April 21
  (details at LA Weekly)

From Gary Numan’s NuWorld:

I’m extremely sad and disappointed to have to announce that our short US Mini Tour has had to be postponed. We obviously have not been able to leave the UK as the airspace is still closed and so we have no option but to admit defeat and let you all know the bad news as soon as possible. Thank you all for your words of support and encouragement over the last few days and thank you also for your many bits of advice on different transport avenues to try. We investigated them all, including the possibility of taking buses and trains from the UK through France and into Spain, and even into Portugal, and trying to get flights to the US from those distant places. But, as we found pretty much everywhere, getting our group of ten onto the trains wasn’t possible as of yesterday and, even if we had been able to get to Spain in time, we couldn’t find a single carrier still flying out of there or Portugal that had a single seat to sell, let alone ten. It’s been a most unpleasant, and shockingly expensive, experience.

We are already talking to our US agent and the promoters to rearrange these shows for later in the year, most likely September time. That doesn’t include Coachella of course although I hope that we will be invited back to the 2011 festival next year. Anyone wanting a full refund will have no trouble getting their money back and, as I understand things at the moment, people can keep their tickets if they wish as they will be valid for the rearranged shows. As soon as I have more information on that I will post it but, for now, I would advise checking in with the San Francisco and Los Angeles venues. Everyone involved understands that the volcano erupting and causing the disruption that it has is a very rare phenomenon and, mostly, people are being very helpful, for which I’m enormously grateful.

Thank you to everyone that bought tickets to come and see us, either at Coachella or for our shows in San Francisco or Los Angeles. We are all deeply sorry that we haven’t been able to get there and I hope that we will be able to see all of you again when we do tour later in the year. We hope to make that September tour a much bigger affair than the three shows we had in place this time.