2009 Summer Festival Updates

Time to check back in with the 2009 festival set. Lollapalooza pulled their usual B.S. this spring, putting tickets on sale about a month before announcing the initial artist line-up. They were generous enough to start tickets at $175, but since that bracket is now sold out, you can currently get them for $190. Still, that’s what tickets started at in 2008, so it’s not bad. Rumors have spoken of a decent line-up, and Tool might be one of the headliners (which I would enjoy). But other headliners might be Beastie Boys, The Killers, and Jane’s Addiction, which would be kind of pathetic in my opinion. Perry Farrell (Jane’s Addiction frontman, who helped start Lolla in the early ’90s) always has to stick his stupid neck in odd places because he thinks he owns the festival. Your day is way over, old man. It’s time to pass the torch.

Fans at Rothbury 2008

If the rumors hold, highlights will include Animal Collective, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend, the Decemberists, Metric, MSTRKRFT, and Tenacious D (fuck yeah!). But there’s something  a bit odd about the rumored line-up that I found. I recognize way too many artist names. Lollapalooza’s line-up is usually at least half total mystery, those attempted tastemakers that they are.

Other news: Pitchfork Music Festival 2009 is slowly filling in its artist line-up. The bands I’d go to see at this point would be The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, M83, and Grizzly Bear. Oh, and the Flaming Lips also got added as headliners on Sunday night, which is awesome. It was a humble (and smart) move on Pitchfork’s part, given that the Lips aren’t exactly the hippest band anymore. Hell, they’ve played pretty much every festival in the country by this point.

Friday night will feature sets by Yo La Tengo and three other bands, and the songs played that night will be picked by fans on the web beforehand. Tickets are $35 per day, $60 for Sat/Sun, or $75 for the whole shebang.

Rothbury hasn’t added any names to their artist line-up, and I can’t wait to see the final list. Tickets remain $250 for the 4-day festival. They did just extend their layaway plan for another week, if you were thinking of doing that. And that was nice of them, given that the economy sucks and nobody has cash falling out their pants. Meanwhile, All Good Festival keeps adding bands to their list — Galactic and Robert Randolph & the Family Band are among the most recent additions. All Good advanced tickets are still a sexy, affordable $129.

That’s all for now…(can you tell I’m exhausted and/or lacking my regular constant input of new music?)

Tags: all good festival, lollapalooza, pitchfork, rothbury

All Good Festival: The Recession-Friendly Fest

As I already explained on my other blog, my computer hard drive crashed last week. Since the password to this blog is a random alpha-numeric code stored on my hard drive, I therefore had no access to the blog. Luckily all my data was backed up and the repair was finished earlier this week, so I can continue…

Last time someone claimed I hadn’t made a point; I thought I had, even though I did ramble a bit. My reply: “I’m not totally satisfied with the once-emergent-but-now-practically-stagnant music festival culture in the U.S.” Maybe I should apologize. I didn’t know people read this blog. Or at least they hardly ever speak up.

The point, once again: a part of me wants to push forward, beyond the corporate-run, new-media-approved, approaching-$300-ticket-price festivals that currently dominate the “scene.” Another part of me wants to return to the roots of these festivals, to the Bonnaroo model circa 2002: mostly jam bands, promoted largely by word-of-mouth and grassroots efforts, and produced because of the artistic and cultural value, not for commercial profit.

The first part was expressed in detail in the last blog post, about wanting a line-up of “progressive, hybridized, experimental music.” The second part is directly related to what All Good Festival continues to be. Their initial line-up was released last week, and tickets went on sale on Tuesday. This year’s will actually be the thirteenth incarnation of the festival, so it started long before these gatherings became trendy.

The line-up is comprised of All Good regulars, the type of musicians who tour for a living, and who don’t care about temporary fluctuations in the music industry. Call them jam bands or whatever you want — these are musicians who make stage performance their utmost priority. Headliners are Ben Harper & Relentless7 and Bob Weir & Rat Dog (the latter were members of the Grateful Dead). Bands that I’d go to see include STS9, Les Claypool (of Primus), Yonder Mountain String Band, Tea Leaf Green, and Bassnectar.

All Good is the little festival that could. They seem to have close ties with these musicians, but they claim to take audience suggestions into account when developing the artist line-up. The setting is key, in the rolling hills of West Virginia in mid-summertime. And they still plan on announcing more bands. Of course, the main draw is the price: ONLY $109 FOR A 3-DAY FESTIVAL. I recommend the early arrival pass (an extra $20 this year) to come on Thursday. They have a few shows that evening, and it boosts the weekend to four nights.

I guess it’s a question of what drives you to attend a festival. Sure, it doesn’t sound cool when you tell your friends you went to All Good Festival. It does sound cool to utter the word Bonnaroo in a tale of personal experience, but there’s over 100,000 people, extended walks to concerts, and unbearable heat. And a bigger festival has more bands…but after you’ve purchased your ticket and they finally release the band schedule, you realize that you can only see half the bands you wanted to anyways, because of overlapping sets. All Good, on the other hand, has no overlapping shows at all.

So there’s my two-part mega-point. I’m sure all of this is just an attempt to distract myself from this extremely long winter we’re experiencing in Michigan. When I can’t ski in winter, I go a little nuts, and all I can do is daydream about upcoming music festivals. If my calculations are correct, Rothbury will be the next to release their line-up (they’re actually the week before All Good, over 4th of July weekend). And I have a feeling that they might combine the two opposing sides of my music festival theory, thus resolving my qualms about the current festival culture.

Tags: all good festival

Coachella Line-Up Sets Disappointing Tone for Coming Year

Well it’s that time of year again, when music freaks check for major festival line-up announcements on a daily basis. Langerado’s initial artist list came late in 2008; headliners are Death Cab for Cutie, Snoop Dogg, and Modest Mouse. The bands I’d go to see include Broken Social Scene, Holy Fuck, Deerhunter, The Disco Biscuits, and Lotus. That festival takes place in Miami in early March.

Langerado is great (I went for a single day at the 2007 incarnation), but I wouldn’t consider it to be one of the most vital festivals. The Big Three — as I’m now referring to them for the first time ever — would be Coachella (in southern California in April), Bonnaroo (in Tennessee in June), and Lollapalooza (in Chicago in August). Each has something unique to offer, and each represents an important aspect of the new festival culture that has evolved over the past decade.

Click to enlarge

Naturally (due to its time of year) Coachella is the first of these three to release their artist line-up. That simple act of releasing the band list has been a phenomenal event in itself over the past few years, as it sets the expectations for other festivals. So you might imagine how I would be upset at seeing the following headliners for Coachella 2009: Paul McCartney, The Killers, and The Cure. Or maybe you can’t imagine. Maybe you’re screaming for joy. I just don’t think it’s that thrilling.

But I guess Roger Waters was the only one who seemed worthy last year (compared to Jack Johnson and Prince). When I say worthy, I don’t mean as an artist; I mean as a headliner of one of the Big Three. Look at 2007 and you’ll see Bjork and Rage Against the Machine, with Red Hot Chili Peppers as the only unenthralling inclusion. In 2006, two of the three were Daft Punk and Tool (the third was Depeche Mode); 2005 saw Coldplay (but with Nine Inch Nails); 2004 featured Radiohead (and 2009’s headliner The Cure).

So it’s possible that I’m just not a fan of Coachella’s all-around headliner choices. Or maybe the American music festival phenomenon is losing some of its appeal. Perhaps we’ve reached the limit of what these massive events can offer us. Most headliners I’ve ever seen at Lollapalooza have been let-downs. But I have to attend Lolla to see the vast array of bands that I yearn for. Unfortunately it’s with 200,000 other people in the middle of the Midwest’s largest urban metropolis (aka Chicago). I’d much rather be camping in the mountains, like at All Good Festival, a 20,000-person camp-out in July in West Virginia. I’ve gone there twice, and it’s incredible — except that it’s almost exclusively jam bands.

Last year Rothbury Music Festival presented a nice alternative. We got a good mix of jam bands, indie rock, and electronica in an incredible locale near Lake Michigan. I wrote an essay about its awesomeness back in August. But even there we had to deal with these watered-down headliners, put in place to ensure high enough ticket sales to make event production worthwhile for the investors. In 2008 it seemed like Jack Johnson and Modest Mouse had been elected as High Chancellors of the Universe. You would have thought so by the number of festivals they headlined or were featured at.

So what’s the point of this bitching? I’m not quite sure yet, but it has something to do with still feeling manipulated by some type of music corporation. Up until I got to college (i.e. – 2001) my only access to music was through FM radio. Things got a lot better as 89FM The Impact and the Internet opened up new channels of music discovery. And music festivals seemed like a great way to gather with other music fans and see a bunch of currently hot bands in one place, all while having a huge party. But another problem is that most people attending festivals are there more for the scene or the party than they are for the bands. Instead of die-hard music addicts, we see semi-interested dullards lining up by the thousands so they can brag to their friends back home that they went to Bonnaroo.

(Even Rothbury produced a bunch of Internet bragging, like these nerdy kids felt superior for having been at the festival’s first incarnation. They inflated the cool-factor just because non-attendees had no way to verify the reports. Is this just a new kind of hipster-dom, for those who don’t want to move to the city?)

Meanwhile the companies are reaping the benefits. AEG Live produces Coachella, All Point West, and Rothbury; C3 produces Lollapalooza; Superfly produces Bonnaroo. But these festivals started as places where hippies and open-minded music freaks could celebrate independent music away from the confines of commercial music land. Alas, the grasp of capitalism misses no chance for a cash-in. My brother pointed out the irony of the situation, and I stand by it.

But what is the alternative? Stop going to festivals? Perhaps the national recession will act as a culling device to weed out whichever festivals are unworthy to exist. Or maybe the Big Three will be left with an excess of power and a lack of concern about putting on a truly great event. I think that’s where Coachella stands. They’re not concerned about their well being, so they didn’t try as hard to create an artist line-up that is representative of the advancements in modern music.

[UPDATE: Pitchfork reported on 2/3/09 — after I wrote this article — that Langerado "has been cancelled due to poor ticket sales." I guess my prediction might be dead on. But this is one time that I would rather not be right...]

I could be wrong though. All I know is, if All Good Festival secures even a decent line up in 2009, I will be buying tickets in a heartbeat. I’ll relax with a handful of other like-minded people and escape the mainstream madness of the Big Three. I’d rather be in a place that you don’t have to brag about, because you know all that matters is the moment. It’s impossible to communicate it to those who weren’t there. But we keep on trying, don’t we?

(To see the complete list of Coachella artist line-ups from throughout the years, just visit the Wikipedia page.)

Links:
Langerado
Coachella
Bonnaroo
Lollapalooza
All Good Festival
Rothbury Music Festival

Tags: all good festival, bonnaroo, coachella, lollapalooza, rothbury