LOLLAPALOOZA HEADLINERS REVEALED!

i thought it was always in july. whoops.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/19/arts/music/summer-music-festivals.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=1

“We come back with some complaints that boil down to our area of greatest knowledge: music. Some clever person reminds us that these festivals aren’t about music. And because we are nobody’s fools, we say sure, right, of course, but then we still feel short-handed. We have lots of dialogues, internal and otherwise, about what music critics are for. They’re for, among other things, registering seismic pop events. But they’re also for not registering them, as a critical gesture.

“This year we are not registering them. Instead of covering the biggest festivals reflexively, we’ll cover a number of smaller festivals with purpose.

“In terms of numbers, festivals on the scale of Bonnaroo and Coachella are major events: 80,000 to 90,000 people for a weekend (for Coachella, two weekends in a row). They are still rites of passage for college kids. Yet they give a music critic less and less return. Their bookings used to be somewhat exciting, if exciting means special and special means rare and rare means meaningful; they aren’t anymore. Each of these festivals, as well as the many others that have sprung up in the last 15 years… has its own essence, to some degree. But that essence has more and more to do with variations in clothes, drugs, topography and regional weather, and less to do with the sounds coming from the multiple stages.”