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Lollapalooza ‘08, as of print time, is just four hours old, and you are not there because…
1) Ticket prices were too high due to insufficient corporate sponsorship
Sure gas prices are a bitch this summer, but tickets… whew! How can we be expected to pony up $200 for three days of music unless AT&T, Budweiser, and friends lend a bigger hand and put their names in more nooks and crannies? Write your Congressman and as him to vote for more endorsements to help make tickets more affordable. Outright selfish.
2) Everyone there is just like you.
The experience will remind you that everyone else will also blog out it for weeks to come, likes the same bands as you, and has at least three songs they’ve recorded on GarageBand sitting in their computer at home just waiting to be uploaded to myspace.
3) You’re too old for this.
You won’t admit it, but even during the first three years that you did go to Lollapalooza, you wished you were at home with a margarita that didn’t cost a week’s pay, air conditioning and predictability. You went so you didn’t have to avoid eye contact w/ friends who would come back the next day and say, “Oh, I saw [this band], and [that band], and [this other band] rocked…”. But don’t worry - they secretly wanted to stay home all along, just like you.
4) You’re too young for this.
This isn’t a Phish show, so don’t expect to walk into Grant Park and magically get high, or find some dude hocking pot brownies and rough crispies. That’s what you go to shows for anyway, so stay at home and don’t burn through the political capital you have w/ your parents… you’ll need it when they find your poorly hidden stash.
5) You don’t know any of the bands there.
Wait, that was Pitchfork… you mean…
5) It’s not indie enough.
You’ve seen Wilco before, so who cares? No one over 21 really likes the Raconteurs anyway. It’s just too mainstream.
So that’s why you’re at home wondering what you and your friends are going to do tonight. Maybe a Lollapalooza after-party! But that’s kind of lame seeing as how you didn’t go to the party in the first place. Fuck you.
ABC News recently posted its guide to this summer’s “hottest, must-see concerts.” It’s pretty dead-on. Make sure to save up your money to see Hootie and the Blowfish (”hear some great music and feel good doing it!”), the Jonas Brothers (”the ultimate family concert experience”) and the Warped Tour (combining “rockin’ music with extreme sports to create a high-octane summer-must” [is that the new scent of Axe Body Spray?]).For what it’s worth, ABC does include Lollapalooza and Glastonbury. And Bon Jovi.
Here’s the full lineup (finally!) for the 2008 Lollapalooza, held in Chicago August 1-3. I have starred the bands I am excited about seeing, since I know you all care.
Radiohead*
Rage Against the Machine
Nine Inch Nails*
Kanye West
Wilco*
The Raconteurs
Louis XIV
Love and Rockets*
Gnarls Barkley
Bloc Party
The Black Keys*
Broken Social Scene
Lupe Fiasco
Flogging Molly
Mark Ronson
Cat Power
The National*
G. Love & Special Sauce
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
Explosions in the Sky
Brand New
Gogol Bordello
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
Dierks Bentley
Okkervil River*
Amadou & Mariam*
Blues Traveler Read more »
rumour on these here intarwebz is you can pick up a track from every single band playing this year’s SXSW festival right here. hurry up before the powers that be take it down. those bastards.
breaking insider info, dear readers:
This year’s Pitchfork Music Festival will take place on Friday, July 18 through Sunday, July 20, 2008. The location remains the same — Union Park, Chicago, IL — and the tickets will go on sale this Wednesday, March 12 at noon CDT.
Friday
Pitchfork Music Festival and All Tomorrow’s Parties Present: “Don’t Look Back” - featuring Public Enemy performing “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back”
Saturday
Animal Collective, !!!, Vampire Weekend, Dizzee Rascal, No Age, Atlas Sound, Fleet Foxes
Sunday
Spiritualized, M. Ward, Boris, Extra Golden, El Guincho
well meh. public enemy’s a pretty cool score, of course. and i love me some spiritualized, but that’s really all i am excited about so far. and yes, that includes animal collective. go ahead and sue me for being a bad indie hipster.
Applying to a Big, Ugly, Loud, Laborious Shit-Hot Industry Trade Show (or B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T.S.) like South By Southwest or this month’s CMJ New Music Marathon is a tricky proposition for a small-time independent rock band with little to no label support–ironic, since these festivals were originally started, allegedly, to showcase new, up-and-coming, undiscovered talent. Well, i’m not shattering anyone’s preconceived notions by pointing out that this hasn’t been true in awhile; after all, who are Spoon, Xiu Xiu or M.I.A. hoping to be discovered by at this point? So, sorry to say it, small-timers, but there usually is no room at the party for your stupid little band.
Still, every year, legions of hopefuls apply to hope beyond hope (that’s a lot of hope, y’all) that the genius of their unique take on Hot Topic-accessorized mallpunk or NPR-approved accordion-and-banjo driven crapass Americana “alt-country” will tickle the right ear at CMJ, and will be magically extended the Golden Ticket to Manhattan or Brooklyn. And how will they apply? These days, through SonicBids, the online Electronic
Press Kit (EPK) networking service that “has become one of the fastest-growing music communities on the web trusted by over 70,000 artists and over 6,000 festivals, music conferences, and clubs from over 100 countries” (or so says their website). For only $35 every six months, you and your band can enjoy access to quick and easy application processes for each of those festivals, all of which will charge you entry fees on top of the SonicBids subscription price! That’s right–SonicBids affords you the opportunity for quick and efficient application to and rejection from SXSW, CMJ, Milwaukee’s Summerfest, and many others!
Now, before you think i’m being unduly harsh on the bands that subscribe to SonicBids and use it to place themselves on their knees, mouths open and gag reflexes at the ready, at the gross, veiny cocks of hundreds of aforementioned B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T.S., it’s time for full disclosure–we’re one of those bands too. Or, at least, i am. The SonicBids subscription comes out of my pocket because i think it’s sort of ridiculous to ask the band to shoulder something that stupid. So, why do i do it? More full disclosure–it’s worked for us. Our SonicBids application secured us a slot at the 2005 CMJ New Music Marathon, playing Chinatown’s 169 Bar at 1:30 in the morning on the last night of the festival in front of 18 appreciative(?) concert-goers…15 of whom we knew personally. But, um, hey, exposure! Right? Eh? Eh?
Sigh. I kid, though; the entire experience was actually pretty fun and i’m glad we did it. But any notion that playing a CMJ showcase did anything whatsoever for our “career” (ha) is naive at best, delusional at worst. Still, this did not discourage me from humbly submitting the band to the mercy of the CMJ selection committee once more this year.
Unfortunately, little did i know that the recording of our next full-length would eventually get delayed until October–this weekend, in fact–when i applied. Since we’re all saddled with those albatrosses known as day jobs, taking days off for recording and a road trip to New York in the same month wasn’t going to happen, so i wasn’t very disappointed when we finally got our rejection notice (although, wow, having played before doesn’t guarantee you a future slot, eh? Good to know). What i wasn’t expecting, though, were 15 replies to the rejection notice, each from a different rejected band, each hitting “reply to all” to emphasize the fact that CMJ forgot to blind carbon copy the email addresses of 671 rejected applicants.
Uh, oops.
