"Oldchella"

most years of coachella, back to the beginning, had a "reunion show" or semi-retro act in one of the headliner slots

most music festivals buffer their ticket sales in some way, but they really built on that formula. smaller ones in the midwest that are supposed to be "indie" or w/e end up having a jam band headliner or afternoon heavy with that shit because jam band ppl will indiscriminately go to anything with jam bands

On another note, I still have nightmares about the dude I talked to at coachella who was like, "yeah, Prince is pretty cool, not really my thing, but..." who then proceeded to wax philosophically about Jack Johnson and how cool his set was for about five minutes

The guy from LCD Soundsystem has more gray hair than anyone from Oldchella

I wonder how much the person who is paid to iron the acts before they go onstage is getting?

yeah nothing nostalgic about LCD who definitely sound nothing like the Talking Heads. "indie" ppl definitely won't "indiscriminately" go to anything with "indie" bands, and no "jambands" are "independent" or anything. festival-goers in general won't "indiscriminately" go to these package-deal festivals with often-competing acts playing typically-abbreviated sets in often-unideal conditions without examining whether the price (before lodging, etc.) is less or more than they'd pay for the acts individually. however overpriced or not, though (i fortunately or otherwise got shut out and don't patronize secondary markets), the oldchella tickets aren't substantially more expensive than those for coachella (which was $379 GA, $835 VIP this year) or most other major festivals, they were definitely bought by a healthy number of young people both for themselves and for family trips, and the cheapest (3-day) tickets were the first to sell, not the last.

"most years" of coachella have not "had a 'reunion show' or semi-retro act in one of the headliner slots" - that's only been true of 5-6 of 17 festivals. the first 8 iterations were straightforward "alternative rock" festivals on the lollapalooza model, albeit with a greater penchant for Euro(/pop?) acts. there then followed a few years in which a confluence of factors - bigger budgets, package deals with the parent company's touring division, and rising competition from other major festivals like decidedly non-"alternative" Bonnaroo - led to the booking of less "alternative"-identified and often older "classic-rock" or for lack of a better word "bro" (which may misdescribe the gender balance of their audience) headliners like Waters and Jack Johnson (and Prince) in '08, Macca (and perhaps The Killers) in '09, The Who (replaced by Jay-Z pre-announcement) in '10, Kings of Leon in '11, and perhaps Black Sabbath (replaced by Dre and Snoop pre-announcement) in '12. but the Coachella people were also capturing additional revenues by following the segmentation by taste and age of the market, spinning off Stagecoach in 2007, hosting the Phish festival in '09 and the Big 4 in '11, and planning from 2012 for non-Coachella festivals including this one in obtaining additional land and permits in Indio and elsewhere (a site in Orange County that's never really gotten off the ground, and the recent deal for Rose Bowl access that looks like it will lead to a new festival next June). simultaneously, the festival was establishing itself as a brand that could sell independent of the lineup, with 2010's attendance record followed by 2011's first-time sellout in less than a week (a week, lol), and the lineup accordingly got smaller-time and somewhat indier or at least newer at the top. my suspicion is that they could have booked any of the Oldchella acts at Coachellas (or Stagecoaches) between then and now, like when they semi-publicly negotiated with the Stones in what i'm not sure wasn't kabuki theatre for 2013, but held off with the intention to produce something of this sort because they didn't have to book any of those acts to sell out an increasingly young- (and less male-)skewing festival that wants to see relative contemporaries like Drake and Calvin Harris, who are going to sell to that audience for much longer, or so their people hope. even the older/reunion headliners they've booked since - AC/DC, GNR, Outkast, the Stone Roses - are relatively young (and as much or more 'hard' or 'alt' than 'classic") compared to these guys; it's Gen Xers and late boomers who are now the old folks. maybe this is a one-time thing, but i expect that you'll see more non-Coachella Coachellas, whether in Indio or Pasadena, with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Bruce/Tom Petty, Brian Wilson, etc. in following years.

gab how many music fests have you been to

I need at least 1k words, no just posting digits here