This sounds a bit crazy, but since I have been to the FYF fest, I have the impression I have seen everybody already! Okay I didn’t see the bands in very good conditions, I haven’t seen their entire sets sometimes, but I have seen so much in two days, I actually took a break from shows for a week to clean my brain.
I was browsing the web for upcoming shows and there are a lot of bands which will be playing soon and which I have already seen: The Orwells are playing at the Center For Arts in Eagle Rock on September 22nd,… just saw them, No Age is playing on September 25th,… just saw them, Lemuria is opening for Titus Andronicus on September 12th,… just saw them. By the way I saw Titus at the same FYF fest two years ago. I could have seen the Yeah Yeah Yeahs a few months ago, Hunx & his Punx, Warpaint, Fucked Up, Wavves, Of Montreal, Ra Ra Riots, Cults and others have all upcoming gigs, and I all saw them at diverse festivals like Off Sunset, the FYF fest, Filter Culture Collide, and Make Music Pasadena. Sure there is no My Bloody Valentine concert in view, but I am wondering, are festivals that necessary or are they just a waste of time? Why are festivals even existing? You end up seeing all these bands anyway one day or another, and in much better conditions, so why bothers? Why getting tired, walking all day in a complete dehydrated and starving state, that could you make buy MGMT for Pink Floyd or the Foo Fighters for Nirvana. It’s true, after your 30th something band, there is no way you can make sense of what you see and hear.
However, I see music festivals flourishing and spreading around Los Angeles as if they were the new addition on the Starbucks menu, and getting sold out before I can open their web page. I don’t really understand this insane popularity. Why is Coachella instantaneously sold out? Do we need the Port of Los Angeles Lobster Festival, Epicenter 2013, Beach Ball festival, the Abbot Kinney Festival, the Newport Folk festival, the Eagle Rock Music festival, the Culture Collide festival, and the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zero’s Big Top, and I am just talking about September and October? It’s getting out of control!
Still I want to mention a few festivals around LA, which have mysteriously disappeared. What happened to the LA Weekly detour festival? It was alive, downtown LA around 2006-8 and had an awesome lineup (Beck, Queens of the Stone Age, Blonde Redhead, Justice, Bloc Party, The Mars Volta, Gogol Bordello, Basement Jaxx among others) then it vanished in thin air. Arthurfest existed only one year and brought us Sonic Youth, Sleater-Kinney, The Black Keys, Yoko Ono, Spoon and Cat Power in the heart of Los Angeles, ATP America, which was around LA for a few years, also vanished and of course we all know what happened to the Sunset Junction Fair which disappeared in 2010 due to bankruptcy. So I guess festivals are an unavoidable reality, some are successful, others very successful and some will die out. Promoters are gonna try to give birth to more of them as long as people buy tickets to see live music. But this is a crowded and tough market, a strong natural selection is going on, and only the best adapted will survive.
However, I haven’t answered my question, why so many people bother to attend music festivals? Of course, it barely has anything to do with music, people go there for other reasons. There was an interesting survey by MSN early this year, asking people about their festival habits. 47% of the 2,000 people polled said they had done something they would have ‘never considered doing outside of the music festival environment’ while at a festival! And these things included sleeping with a stranger, taking drugs (sure a big element), drinking heavily, or even fighting. Music festivals are social romping, they are a place where people go to put aside their taboos and push their social boundaries, and the bigger the festival, the better. Sure there are still some music lovers attending Coachella and Bonnaroo, but the subcultures that develop inside these giant festivals are the main attraction, people search for this annual (or weekly) ritual, this 2-day vacation from their real life… Me? I hate rituals and I am all for vacation, but this is different, I cover festivals and they are a lot of work.