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That’s the word from Jeff Leeds at the New York Times, who penned a story on the fact that there may be something of a summer-rockfest glut hitting the U.S. over the coming months. With the lousy economy putting the hurt on potential cabana sales and the overlapping lineups making each festival less of a destination, can America handle “more than a dozen” parties based around the consumption of music? The answer seems to be “it depends on the lineup”–apparently the jam-band-heavy Mile High Festival is selling like gangbusters, while the promise of two Radiohead shows isn’t helping tickets to the New York-adjacent All Points West festival move as quickly as one might have hoped.
Meanwhile, Charlie Walker of Lollapalooza promoter C3 thinks that this country hasn’t seen enough huge music extravaganzas; “It’s a big marketplace,” the Times quotes him as saying . “We’ve got a little ways to go before we see any saturation.” But that tune might change once his festivals start feeling the hurt that Coachella was rumored to be feeling this year (before the announcement that Prince would play, at least): Coachella promoter Paul Tollett called last year’s sellout “an anomaly” prompted by Rage Against The Machine being on the bill, and he was wary of more festivals cropping up because “everyone [could] have the same bill and the same sort of feel at the festival. … If every one of them is just a McFranchise, there’s a specialness that’ll be lost.” Something tells me that he’s feeling the sting of his festival going the “booking Roger Waters in an effort to be different” route–an expensive mistake, if the rumors that Prince’s $4.8 million payday for headlining the festival’s second night are true.
This all seems like a matter of perception to me. Back when Lollapalooza was a tour and there were a couple other big Summer package tours like that, noone complained that the same handful headliners were playing at different festivals all over the country, because it was all under one banner. Now that each fest location has its own brand, there’s an expectation that their lineup needs to be unique or ‘exclusive’ to justify its existence. It’s silly, it’s not like any of these fests is going to become an iconic Woodstock-style event if they manage to put together a great bill noone else has. As long as their headliners aren’t playing the same market 2 months later and people actually buy tickets, the only problem here is a matter of image.
Not sure that the overlapping lineups make these festivals less sexy…fact of the matter is, gas prices are ridiculous and if a great lineup is playing too far away, most folks ain’t drivin. However, if that same lineup comes to their city, they may go out and represent.
I still don’t understand who the hell would wanna deal with festival nonsense just to see Jack fucking Johnson!
Is the guy in front blowing a snotrocket?
@Al Shipley: But way back then, those big summer package tours were unique and distinct. Lollapalooza was alternative, HORDE was more jammy, Warped was shitty, etc. They were essentially traveling festivals with their own brand. When you take away the “traveling” part of the equation, those festivals had better still be unique. Otherwise, I’m not going to spend $500+ on tickets, travel, and camping at a festival on the opposite coast when I can see the same bands all together in my backyard for half that. And anyway I think the whole problem now is that they aren’t selling tickets unless they have some unique headliner (a la Rage at Coachella last year).
That 5 festivals too many…