Catz N Dogs Blocked By US Immigration Officials
Polish tech-house stars Catz N Dogs were forced to cancel two shows in America this week after US officials failed to renew their work visas in time.
“Due to unforeseen Visa delays we have to postpone our Boston and Chicago shows this weekend,” they announced on Facebook, “Really disappointing but we will reschedule these cities as quickly as possible.”
Stressing on his private page that they had always previously performed with correct business visas and multiple ‘smooth years of travelling’, Voitek from the duo was nevertheless philosophical, declaring ‘I really feel like everything in life has to have ups and downs.”
“Last weekend (referring to his latest co-produced event Wooded Festival in Wroclaw) was just to good so this has to happened,” he said.
News of the duo’s unexpected visa problems emerged just two weeks after Richie Hawtin announced on Facebook that “due to an unexpected long delay’ in receiving his US Visa, ’he was unable to perform at Detroit’s Movement Festival.
Berghain resident Marcel Dettmann was similarly blocked by Immigration officials when he was booked to play Movement in 2013, while techno legend Laurent Garnier at one point boycotted US gigs after repeatedly struggling with bureaucracy and red tape.
Chatting to Skrufff several years ago Laurent branded United States customs and Immigration the ‘big winners for rudeness’ explaining ‘The better your visa will be on your passport, the more they will screw with your head.”
Though nowadays travelling there again, he recalled some particularly memorable experiences on earlier US trips, including ‘being left alone in the streets of New York without any money, luggage, hotel or a plane ticket to get home by a real fuckwit of a promoter’ and playing parties ‘where the police came and raided the parties with CS gas, guns and very heavy-duty behaviour’.
“I have played at a gig in Detroit where a guy was shot dead outside the party,” he also recalled.
“After that we all had to lie on the floor for 10 minutes waiting for the police to come whiles a gang was outside shouting bullets thru the windows.”