San Diego Summer Festivals: The Good, The Bad and The Unannounced Lineups
UPDATE: I've posted the Street Scene lineup, with MP3 links, here.
The Independence Jam full lineup has been announced, as have the ticket prices. A ticket, with fees, will cost you 45 dollars. I was wavering, because contrary to my drunken source's reports, Spoon was not involved, so the Flaming Lips are the only band I would particularly want to see. $45 dollars also seems like it should be better applied towards more than half of your Street Scene ticket. But then I saw on the FM 94.9 homepage that the show "Benefits FM 94.9's 'About The Music' Fund." In that case, I will take 12 tickets. Nameless, purposeless funds are always a great way to rally the masses around your cause. It would be even cooler if they just lopped off the second 2/3rds of that quote to make it just "Benefits FM 94.9"
Moving on to Street Scene, the festival has a myspace page, where a large number of people are currently speculating or suggesting acts they would like to see. Kicking this about with some friends last weekend in the Mission Bay Hilton hot tub, we were at a loss for how to put together a solid, unique festival this year. Obviously, you want to have a band like The White Stripes was last year, a huge name with credibility. The candidate for this position we thought of was Radiohead, since they are touring this year, but they are coming to San Diego in June, so an August reprise would be unlikely. The Strokes also probably fit this position in a lot of people's minds, but are pretty boring live and aren't particularly a great outdoor festival band.
Then you have reunion acts, like the Pixies last year as well. Who is out there that I'd like to see play a comeback show, and who would choose the Street Scene as the place to do it? Credibility acts like Spoon or the Flaming Lips are for most festivalgoers to ignore while 311 or Social D plays. The Flaming Lips playing at the above Indy Jam means this is unlikely as well. You can always count on some interchangable rap and punk acts to fill things out, and it seems like you could probably count on Damian Marley being there this year.
I'm not really sure how I'd go about assembling my ideal line up. There seem to be so many festivals these days that it's important to try and do something unique from the others, but there's always bound to be some overlap. In the years that I've lived out in San Diego, the festival has moved from downtown, rapidly reduced in size and scope, and abandoned all pretense of being about diversity or home grown talent and instead opted to feature Wyclef, Jack Johnson and the Black Eyed Peas. Of course, as far as I'm concerned these all balanced out just fine if you can convince The White Stripes or The Flaming Lips or Radiohead to come play, the acts always overlap anyways. But what haven't I mentioned that could potentially be the highlight of this years show?
The multiple Radiohead mentions probably got you excited, so over at The Rawking Refuses To Stop are three new songs that they debuted at their last concert. Go nuts.
Comments
If they can get the bands like My Bloody Valentine, Smashing Pumkins, Lemonheads, and possibly a few other groups that Coachella was close to doing but came up short I think it would be worthwhile.
Posted by: Travis | May 4, 2006 09:58 AM
CityBeat reported that The Futureheads, The Editors, Bad Religion, G Love, Matchbox Romance and Michael Franti & Spearhead are all playing this years festival.
Posted by: Conor | May 5, 2006 06:56 PM