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After bouncing from a stadium to the suburbs to an Indian Reservation, this will be the Langerado Music Festival's first year in Miami. A press release calls the Magic City the festival's new home. This year's events--running March 6 through 8, with late night concerts scattered at downtown Miami clubs--will take place at the famous Bicentennial Park (capacity 45,000).
In an answer to last week's announcement of Sundance's 2009 line-up, its little sibling Slamdance has now announced its own film slate. Slamdance was founded under the auspices that Sundance had become too commercial and features films that aren't really independent. Its requirements include a $1 million or smaller budget and no contract for theatrical distribution. Because of this, it's rare to be aware of the directors or actors unless you know them personally. There's usually less polish, but far more variety than what gets shown at Sundance.
The second annual All Tomorrow's Parties (ATP) festival has been re-scheduled for Sept. 11-13, 2009 (moved from Labor day weekend). The festival takes place at Kutsher’s Country Club in Monticello, New York and follows the huge success of last year's festival with co-curators and performers My Bloody Valentine.
Sundance may not be the biggest film festival around, nor is it even the most independent anymore with the preponderance of festivals like Slamdance. But it probably has the most cultural cache, and even with the current independent film distribution problems it's still one of the places people search for new talent. With the festival only 42 days away, the folks behind it have announced its selection of 118 feature-length films. Below are the films in contention for documentary and "dramatic" (i.e. non-documentary) features.
Early announcements are being made for San Francisco's Noise Pop Festival for 2009. The 17th annual film and music festival is set for Feb. 24-March 1 at venues sprinkled throughout the city.
Nick Cave sure is busy these days. After the critically acclaimed release of Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! (accompanied later by a little book) and a tour filled year, Cave has announced plans to release a new book entitled The Death of Bunny Munro. This will be, of course, his second work of fiction after releasing And the Ass Saw the Angel in 1989.
This weekend, the town of Silk Hope, North Carolina (near Raleigh/Chapel Hill), will play host to more than 40 bands and performers at the Fall Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance.
Billboard has announced that Coachella plans to move their regularly scheduled music festival up by two weeks, to April 17-19. The location of Empire Polo Field in Indio, Calif. is not set to change.
Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno will make its premiere at this year's CMJ Music Marathon and Film Festival. CMJ announced its initial line-up today, along with their inaugural Cinemini Short Film Contest, and another first: a partnership with the Broadway rock musical Spring Awakening.
It's not quite the resuscitation of that famous Manhattan venue, but a different CBGB is coming this fall to satisfy musical needs.
Paste favorites The Bridges are just one of the 250-some artists spanning a melange of musical genres gathered in Nashville for the third annual Next BIG Nashville festival, which kicked off today and runs through Sunday.
SXSW may be more popular, but it certainly isn't the only music festival rocking Austin, Texas, yearly. Beat the heat (and the crowds) at Transmission Entertainment's Fun Fun Fun Festival, which is held in Waterloo Park Nov. 8-9, features punk-rock legends (ALL, Flipper, Bad Brains) rubbing elbows with newer indie bands (Deerhoof, St. Vincent, The National), plus a whole host of other activities including band dunking booths, tattoo stands and comedy shows.
If you want the most bang for your music-festival buck, look no further than The Real Big Deal Festival in Gainesville, Fla.
It takes little more than a (rare) fogless fall day to make a trip to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park worth quite a trek, but the long list of artists gracing its green fields during the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival might help considerably if travel plans were somehow still in question. Oh, and the shows are free.
The great irony of power pop acts is that, well, most of them aren't all that popular. Most of them are outsiders, even unabashed nerds like Cheap Trick or Weezer, trying to take over the airwaves with a skewed version of Top 40 songcraft. They're far too often the kids with big dreams and bigger hooks, left wondering why they can't break through to the big time.
As far as summer indie-music festivals in the middle of Wisconsin go, Forward Music Festival in Madison really seems to take the cake.
New York City does it big, and music festivals are no exception. Sure, the rest of the country has Sasquatch, Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, and countless other shindigs worth hitting up, but New York likes to thumb their suspenders with a mid-fall event called the CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival that's just about the biggest gig, well, anywhere.
Update: Something Jay-Z is good at: rap battles. Something Jay-Z is terrible at: retirement. 
As readers might have noticed, we at Paste sort of have a crush on local music shops. They energize a local arts community in a way that even one thousand Best Buys and Wal-Marts could never match. One fine such example is Goner Records out in Memphis, Tenn., which is putting on its fifth annual music festival extravaganza this fall.
Not to be left out of the music festival bonanza that is summer 2008, Denver, Colo., will host the first Mile High Music Festival this weekend on July 19 and 20. Five stages at Dick's Sporting Goods Park will hold approximately 50 bands, including headliners Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Dave Matthews Band.
Jam-banders, take note. The men of moe. are set to wrap up summer once again with a weekend's worth of meandering guitars set against the scenic backdrop of the Adirondack mountains. The festival, scheduled for August 29-31, will be held at Turin, N.Y.'s Snow Ridge Ski (with chair lifts a-running!), with hosts moe. playing six sets over the course of the three days.
When Muddy Waters referenced a "gypsy woman" in the song of the same name, he was giving a shout out to traditions of Louisiana's long-standing voodoo culture. New Orleans continues to celebrate those traditions with its 10th annual Voodoo Music Experience. And while the name may sound rather ominous to those not in the know, the experience is more of the musical variety than the hexing one.
With its built-in wooden stick for convenient one-handed transport,
and soft, delicious casing that prevents the traumatic puncture wounds often
inflicted by skewered meats or vegetables, the corn dog (its origins as
debated as those of man himself) was obviously conceived supernaturally for
the purpose of consumption amidst throngs of schoolchildren, circus-goers and,
finally,
While music-festival goers around the country were busy wallowing in all the dust, sweat, and performances in Manchester, Tennessee this past weekend, Lollapalooza was hard at work compiling the schedule for its 2008 line-up.
All you need is not love, apparently, but Morrissey, who sways with a tambourine in the music video for his latest single, "All You Need Is Me," hitting #24 on UK charts this week. "You hiss and moan," he croons, "and you constantly groan. And you don't ever go away."
This summer, it seems any place and any reason are game for a music festival. We've had Memorial Weekend Fest in Bend, Ore., Bang on a Can Marathon (N.Y.) and Israel @ 60 (D.C.) most recently. The Wordless Music Series (N.Y.) will be going on through the end of June, and Corndog-O-Rama (Atlanta) this month as well. We are celebrating things with song like never before, and honestly, it's pretty sweet.
Even though the town of Manchester, Tenn. will be jam-packed with fun things to do this weekend, festival goers can start things off right on Bonnaroo Eve by traveling up the road to Nashville. The Official Bonnaroo Kick-Off Party, presented by Onitsuka Tiger, Budweiser, Going.com and Paste, will feature all-girl cover band, Lez Zeppelin, with support from Knoxville-based The American Plague.
Tis the season for music festivals. And while it might be easy to associate these these rock-infused bacchanalias with the summer months, they extend well into the breezy autumn as well. Case in point, Austin City Limits, which kicks off its seventh year on Friday, September 26.
