Aerosmith yesterday canceled next Wednesday's Maui show, leaving local fans to "dream on" about seeing aging rock bad boys Steven Tyler and Joe Perry perform live.

The band was mum on its reasons for scrapping the show, which reportedly was nearly sold out. But the cancellation put another notch in a short but notable list of high-profile concerts here that have been canceled or postponed over the past couple of years.

In March 2006, U2 postponed the final 10 dates of its Vertigo tour, including an April 8 show at Aloha Stadium, because of an illness in guitarist The Edge's family. That concert was eventually rescheduled for Dec. 9. But the new date went down almost a year after the show was initially announced in January 2006.

Rescheduling wasn't possible for a Thanksgiving eve Rolling Stones show planned at Aloha Stadium last year, canceled three weeks before showtime because of singer Mick Jagger's throat problems. Other shows on the Stones' A Bigger Bang tour were rescheduled in New Jersey, California and Canada. Honolulu was the only show on that leg of the tour that was nixed outright.

The Stones concert had been reportedly hampered by sluggish local sales, likely due to high-priced tickets (topping at up to $350 each) and a holiday schedule stuffed with other high-profile concerts, including U2, Pearl Jam and Billy Joel.

Poor ticket sales also prompted the cancellation of a June concert at Aloha Stadium by K-pop mega-star Rain, weeks after they went on sale. The event's local promoters later sued the Korean vocalist and his Seoul-based handlers, accusing them of never actually intending to produce a concert here.

And just last week, garage rock duo The White Stripes canceled its entire worldwide tour, blaming a bout of "acute anxiety" that left drummer Meg White unable to travel. The cancellation affected an October date at the Blaisdell Arena that had been announced just a day earlier.

HAWAI'I NOT SINGLED OUT

Are cancellations such as these isolated incidents, or part of a larger "hex" on concert dates in Hawai'i that's connected to our island circumstances?

Michael Sponberg of local promotions company King Michel Concerts LLC said Hawai'i's concert market is, for the most part, not all that different from others when it comes to cancellations or postponements.

"You see cancellations everywhere," said Sponberg, whose company primarily brings in mid-level acts such as Huey Lewis and The News, Foreigner and Los Lonely Boys.

But he does acknowledge one hurdle Hawai'i presents to touring performers: "The difficulty with Hawai'i is the amount of gear that has to come in, especially on large shows," he said. "You have a lot more travel issues than you do on the Mainland. You can't bus things from one site to another. And you've got to fly gear or barge gear here."

Sponberg said that Hawai'i is as susceptible as other large markets to cancellations resulting from poor ticket sales.

"When large shows like the Stones and Aerosmith come in, if tickets go on sale and they don't pace quickly out of the box, the reality of the shows doing well enough to make it a very solvent show become very quickly diminished," Sponberg said. "If a show goes up and sells quickly in a span of one or two days, then you know you're OK. But if you open just OK, you know that there's not enough behind (the concert) for it to do what it needs to do on the back end."

A LITTLE DICIER HERE

When this happens in Hawai'i, the plug needs to be pulled more quickly.

"For shows as big as Gwen Stefani and Rolling Stones ... if people don't buy in advance, you know that there's trouble ahead," Sponberg said. "That's just the reality, because the (Hawai'i) market is too small. ... It's not uncommon that a show is canceled. But I think that here where risks are higher ... those bigger shows are going to cancel quicker."

HONOLULU GIG PRIVATE

The Aerosmith concert, which was scheduled for the Maui War Memorial Stadium next Wednesday, was the band's only Hawai'i concert date open to the public.

A private O'ahu concert by Aerosmith at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa's Les Murakami Stadium for more than 6,000 nationwide dealers attending a Toyota Motor Sales corporate meeting here this month will go on, said Cindy Knight, a Los Angeles-based marketing and public relations manager for the company. The contract for the band's show for Toyota had prohibited it from doing a public Honolulu show.

Events related to the Sept. 20 through Oct. 3 Toyota corporate dealer meeting in Honolulu will be held at the Hawai'i Convention Center, Cooke Field, Les Murakami Stadium and the Stan Sheriff Center.

Knight said other entertainers may be involved in dealer meeting events, but she would only confirm that Aerosmith is headlining the Sept. 29 concert. She also said Toyota Motor Sales is working with UH and the Honolulu Police Department to make sure that people are aware the O'ahu Aerosmith show is private.

"It's important to note that the University of Hawai'i is ... closing the area off and (will be) issuing a memorandum to that effect," Knight said. "It's a security issue for them and also for the police department. ... (HPD) called us to find out the details of the meeting so that they could do an assessment of the security issues."

A spokesperson from the UH athletic department — whose athletic director Herman Frazier negotiated with Toyota for use of campus athletic facilities for meeting events — would confirm only that a public memorandum was "under consideration."

Reach Derek Paiva at dpaiva@honoluluadvertiser.com.