You are in charge of organizing a music festival. What bands do you bring to it?
Taking all of the previous festivals that i’ve either been to or seen the lineup for as the a priori distribution, it would appear that the overwhelming majority of festivals can be classified into one of two categories: a festival to sell out or a festival geared for a specific genre. A festival to sell out is something like Lollapalooza or Boonaroo or Bamboozle or Coachella or Virgin or really any other of these huge festivals that they throw in gigantic fields or raceways where the whole purpose is to bring in as many people as possible with big name acts and a couple smaller bands who’ve had their music used as the background for a “The Hills” episode you saw a few weeks ago. On their extremely flashly website, they’ll have a countdown and a whole bunch of crap how it’s festival dedicated to the music and whatnot. Yet, we all know the real reason they bring in all these artists and have them alternate play on separate stages on the complete opposite side of the field is so that the 50k+ attendees are forced to walk past the T-Mobile booth in the middle about 2^31 times. Conversely, the festivals aimed to hit a specific genre or two are more set on just bringing in a bunch of bands that all play the same stuff because they are slightly more about the music. I’m not going to completely absolve them from selling out because, at the end of the day, no one is going to throw a festival if they are going to lose money on it. Rather, their profit margins are slightly smaller because they don’t attract as many people.
To prove how righteous I am, of course, I am going to throw a festival where we only slightly sell out (taco bell, mountain dew, and hershey’s will be the sponsors because they all give away delicious free samples at their booth. on a related note, my friend and i made it two days at the x games without purchasing a single thing since we were able to sustain ourselves solely on soft tacos and 8oz samples of mountain dew and cookies’n’cream milkshakes.) and pick bands that all play a certain style.
Now, the difficult decision is: which genre? i would pick ska, but ska is dead so forget that. none of the bands even play with horn lines anymore, except for Reel Big Fish, but they have recycled the same tired live set the last 4 times I’ve seen them. Not worth it. A heads up to bands -> If you don’t care about your own music, no one else will either. I kinda wanna make a festival that Thursday could play at, but I just don’t like enough other screamo/hardcore bands to warrant making a whole festival just for them.
Ah! I got it. I’ll make a girl singer festival. Only bands headed by girl singers are allowed to play. Perfect. i love it. So, clearly, Paramore will be the headliner. They have a big enough name that at least some people would show up. If possible, I’d also get No Doubt since they are touring again, but I get the feeling they would be super hard to book if you didn’t have a giant venue since they are a pretty big name and in high demand since they recently started touring again (on another related note, paramore is opening for no doubt at the tweeter on june 11th. it’s gonna be awesome. lawn seats are only $10. you should come.).
there’s a trillion other sweet girl bands I’d get to come as well:
The Sounds cause they are swedish
and
The Hush Sound cause the only time i saw them live they only got 30min
set which blows cause they are waaay better than Panic!
and
Lykke Li cause she is also swedish……i see a trend developing.
and
Ore Ska Band cause they are a bunch of super talented japanese girls
that seem to be the happiest people in the world. just watching their
music videos makes me exponentially more happy
and
Scandal cause they are also an all girls Japanese band that rocks hard
and
Flyleaf cause they are a sweet band i would’ve brought to the hardcore festival
with thursday but i didn’t originally think of them
and
The Vincent Black Shadow cause i mentally associate them with Flyleaf
since i found out about both bands the same week and that was a great week
and
Zolof and the Rock & Roll Destroyer cause they are super peppy/fun live band
and
finally, i’d try super hard to get Ghost Town Locals back together cause they
are probably my favorite girl fronted band of all time. shame they had to split.
they had so much talent!
yea….good festival.
