Countdown to Summer: Your Guide to Summer Festivals

All of this damn snow has me trapped in my house dreaming of the warm summer months to come. The best part of summer? The music festivals (and Yankees baseball, of course.)  South by Southwest kicks off the festival season in just a few short weeks, and from then on, your spring and summer is covered with great live music.  

Here is what you have to look forward to in the coming months. Now you can put being snowed in to good use, and start making your plans for checking out as many of these awesome festivals as you possibly can. 

South by Southwest
Is one of the largest music festivals in the country and has helped the career of many independent bands and artists.

• When: March 17th-March 21st
• Where: Austin, TX
• Who You’ll See: Over 1400 performers in 80+ venues across Austin. Tickets: Prices vary. Check the website for schedule and performances.
• Website: http://www.sxsw.com
• Countdown: 19 days

Bamboozle

Traditionally a punk and emo festival, this year’s lineup includes pop and hip-hop artists as well.

• When & Where: Anaheim, CA March 27th & 28th
• East Rutherford, NJ May 1st & 2nd
• Chicago, IL May 15th
• Who You’ll See: 50+ bands including Weezer, Paramore, Drake, Ke$ha, AFI, Something Corporate, Story of the Year, Angels & Airwaves, We the Kings, Mayday Parade, The Bouncing Souls, Hanson, and more…
• Tickets: CA: Single Day Pass: $45, 3-Day Pass: $82, VIP Package: $200
• NJ: Single Day: $57, 3-Day Pass: $116, VIP: $300
• IL: General Admission: $35

**The California and New Jersey shows are selling a limited amount of VIP Packages that include VIP entrance, access to special viewing areas and lounges, backstage tours, meet & greets with various artists, a complimentary ticket to Hoodwink Festival and more.
Website: http://www.thebamboozle.com
Countdown: 4 weeks & 1 day until California, 9 weeks until Jersey, and 11 weeks until Chicago

Hoodwink

The Hoodwink Music Festival is a kick-off concert for the Bamboozle festival where bands cover music by other bands.

• When/Where: March 26th in Anaheim, CA; April 30th in East Rutherford, NJ
• Who You’ll See: Say Anything playing the music of The Misfits
• Circa Survive playing the music of Nirvana
• Motion City Soundtrack playing the music of Nine Inch Nails
• Eye Alaska playing the music of Kayne West
• The Summer Set playing the music of Taylor Swift
• and more!
• Tickets: $25 in CA, $27 in NJ
• Website: http://www.thebamboozle.com

Big Ears Music Festival

This festival started with a few bands last year and is back for round two and bigger than ever.

• When: March 26th-28th
• Where: Knoxville, Tennessee
• Who You’ll See: Over 40 bands including Andrew W.K., Joanna Newsom, and Vampire Weekend.
• Tickets: Single Show: $10-$32
• Inner Ear Pass: $249.50 and includes Access to all concerts, workshops, and other events
• Outer Ear Pass: $100 and includes access to some of the venues
• Travel Package: $899 for 2 people and includes 2 Inner Ear Passes, 2 nights in a hotel, posters and t-shirts
• Website: http://www.bigearsfestival.com
• Countdown: 27 days

Coachella

Coachella is like the Woodstock of the millenium. They land all of the best bands and have the perfect mix of pop, rock and hip-hop; plus you can camp out right there!

• When: April 16th-18th
• Where: Indio, CA
• Who You’ll See: Over 100 bands/artists including Jay-Z, Grizzly Bear, Muse, MGMT, Thom Yorke, Ra Ra Riot, Coheed and Cambria, Corinne Bailey Rae, Tiesto, Grace Jones, MUTEMath, Gorillaz, Phoenix, Vampire Weekend, and much, much more.
• Tickets: $272 for the entire festival and includes a $3 charity donation
• The website also offers various travel packages including on & off-site camping, hotels, house rentals, shuttles to the shows, and more.
• Website: http://www.coachella.com
• Countdown: 49 days

Movement: Detroit Electronic Music Festival

For all of you electronic music fans, this festival boasts newcomers and renowned artists alike.

• When: May 29th & 30th
• Where: Detroit, Michigan
• Who You’ll See: Lineup TBA
• Tickets: TBA
• Website: http://www.myspace.com/detroitmusicfest
• Countdown: 13 weeks, 1 day

Sasquatch! Music Festival

Screw the shore, Sasquatch! is the place to be for Memorial Day Weekend. They say the Gorge Amphitheatre is one of the sickest venues in the country, and they’re so excited about it that they added an exclaimation point at the end of Sasquatch.

• When: May 29th-31st
• Where: George, Washington
• Who You’ll See: 75+ bands including Pavement, Vampire Weekend, OK Go, My Morning Jacket, DeadMau5, Nada Surf, She & Him, and more.
• Tickets: $70 for a single day pass, $170 for all 3 days; and $99 for a weekend camping pass
• Website: http://www.sasquatchfestival.com
• Countdown: 13 weeks, 3 days

Bonnaroo

This festival is held on a 700 acre farm that is said to be “the home for all the cool kids and hippies.”

• When: June 11th-14th
• Where: Manchester, Tennessee
• Who You’ll See: Over 100 bands including everyone from Dave Matthews Band, Kings of Leon, Weezer and Norah Jones to Jay-Z, Kid Cudi, Tenacious D and the Flaming Lips.
• Tickets: General Admission: $249.50 for all 4 days and includes camping accommodations.
• VIP: $1349.50 includes 2 tickets, preferred camping accommodations, VIP dinner and kick-off party, VIP viewing areas, and more.
• Website: http://www.bonnaroo.com
• Countdown: 15 weeks

Siren Music Festival

The Village Voice hosts this music festival for indie artists, bands, and DJs every year.

• When: July 10th
• Where: Coney Island, Brooklyn, NY
• Who You’ll See: Lineup TBA
• Tickets: FREE!
• Website: http://www.villagevoice.com/siren
• Countdown: 4 months, 9 days

Pitchfork Music Festival

• When: July 16th-18th
• Where: Chicago, IL
• Who You’ll See: Modest Mouse, Pavement, LCD Soundsystem, Raekwon, and more bands to be announced.
• Tickets: $40 for single day, 90 for 3-day pass
• Website: http://www.pitchforkmusicfestival.com
• Countdown: 4 months, 15 days

Lollapalooza

Created by Jane’s Addiction frontman, Perry Farrell, this festival has always been one of my favorites until they stopped touring in 2004.

• When: August 6th-8th
• Where: Chicago, IL
• Who You’ll See: Over 50 bands in the hip hop, pop, alternative and rock genres including Jane’s Addiction, Tool, The Killers, Depeche Mode, Kings of Leon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Snoop Dogg, Ben Folds, Ke$ha, Asher Roth, Kid Cudi, Rise Against, Silversun Pickups, Kevin Devine, The Decemberists, and many, many more.
• Tickets: $175 for a 3-day festival pass
• Website: http://www.lollapalooza.com
• Countdown: 23 weeks

Warped Tour

Probably the most popular, touring festival, Vans Warped Tour, fans can enjoy a mix of famous and unknown punk rock bands at any of the dates all summer long.

• When: June 24th- August 16th
• Where: Various cities across the US
• Who You’ll See: Sum41, All American Rejects, The Cab, Reel Big Fish, The Summer Set, We the Kings, Mayday Parade, Motion City Soundtrack, Dropkick Murphys, Anti-Flag, Streetlight Manifesto, Rocket Summer, Anarbor, and much more…
• Tickets: TBA
• Website: http://www.vanswarpedtour.com
• Countdown: 16 weeks, 5 days until tour kicks off

"A Hiatus Is Forever Until You Get Lonely or Old" The Future of Fall Out Boy

“I’m not in Fall Out Boy right now…Whether we play again or not, I don’t know,” singer Patrick Stump told Spin magazine on Tuesday. ”I quit too,” Andy Hurley followed up via Twitter. Hurley later confirmed that he didn’t really quit and that he doesn’t really know what the status of the band is.

Basically what it comes down to is that Fall Out Boy is taking an indefinite hiatus before coming back to reevaluate the situation in a few years. While most of the band seems hopeful that they will get over the bullshit and play together again, all of the reports started after Pete Wentz took to his Twitter and blog on Monday night.

“A hiatus is forever until you get lonely or old. I don’t plan on either. I can’t imagine playing in Fall Out Boy again…as a band we grew apart,” and “letting go of this giant part of my life has been hard.”

As an outsider looking in (and without the bias of being a hardcore fan) this doesn’t come as a total shock.When Fall Out Boy first came on the scene, they were making great music and they had an original setup in the sense that their lead singer (Stump) wrote and organized all of the music, while Pete Wentz, the band’s bassist, wrote the lyrics and served as the band’s frontman. They put out a few good albums, (“Take This To Your Grave” and “From Under The Cork Tree” were the best) but as they rose to stardom, it seems it became more about the fame to Wentz and less about the music in the last few years.

If I were Patrick, Andy and Joe, I would be tired of living in Wentz’s shadow too. Now mind you, this is only speculation and my opinion on the matter, and the members of Fall Out Boy don’t even seem to know what’s really going on. But to further my point, all of the members have gone their separate ways and they are all working on their own projects.

In his downtime, Pete Wentz recorded a song for the Alice in Wonderland soundtrack with Mark Hoppus from Blink182 (Blink182 is another band who recently went through a public breakup then make up situation). Guitarist Joe Trohman and drummer Andy Hurley formed The Damned Things with members of Anthrax. Hurley also formed The Burning Empires. Stump is hard at work on a solo album. I just hope he’s not too shy this time around to head up his own project. So, while the future of Fall Out Boy is still unknown, the members of Fall Out Boy will still be making music, and according to Hurley, “I’ll still be touring the world, somehow, someway.”

Conspiracy Theory

This is a throwback for those of you suffering from finals madness right now…

“No Sleep til…(duhn duhn) Brooklyn,” the immortal words of the Beastie Boys, and the catchphrase that best sums up finals week, not just at F.I.T., but all over the world. Students are stressed out, sleep deprived, and carry trendy bags under their eyes. Sound familiar? Of course it does, every college is the same. In fact, now that i think of it, it’s the whole college setting that breeds lunacy, finals week just adds to the excitement.

Growing up they brainwash you to think that a college education is necessary if you don’t want to be yet another homeless person on the streets of New York. So, your senior year in high school, what do you do? You apply to college! Because if you don’t, guidance counselors, teachers, parents, and everyone else on God’s green earth is breathing down your neck to get those transcripts in the mail or else…you won’t have a future. You will never amount to anything.

As graduation approaches, you actually feel like you made a good decision because you can’t wait to get the hell outta school, not to mention your hometown. You’re sick of the same old people and the same small minds. So, August rolls around and you go off to college, and the insanity begins. They throw you into a mock real world setting with a bunch of strangers, some of them old enough to be your mom, some young enough to be your little sister, and some stupid enough to be your dead dog. Next, they load you up with 18 credits and TONS of work. Textbooks become your mortal enemies. They sit mocking you while you attempt to read a bloody passage that’s in the foreign language of “educated.” And don’t even think about money, that becomes a thing of the past. All of a sudden you are fantasizing about the change you found in the payphone today instead of your significant other. Looks to me like we college students become quite close in comparison to the homeless of NYC.

Now of course, college isn’t all school, expensive books, and professor’s dirty looks. There is a plus side- partying. Now not only are we subject to cheap, disgusting cafeteria food (FIT failed health inspection not once but twice), but even our nightlife is a reminder that we are poor, college students. Keg upon keg is filled with Beast, the cheapest possible beer you can find. Once your drunk enough, it tastes like hell with an airconditioner, so you really don’t mind all that much. But there are some times, in which you are about ready to lick the sweat off of one of those homeless people just to get a taste of a nice, cheap vodka that you still can’t afford. So, please tell me how people consider college to be the best possible option?

At the close of every semester, students are fried zombies, missing hair from stress, ready to jump from a window, and shaking from two weeks of IV caffeine drugs, but we are stupidly happy. We look foward to the month off. It’s not worth it though, because the break ends too soon and we are thrown into the same routine again in the spring.

So, finally after four hellish years, you graduate. By the time you get out of college, you are so traumatized that you actually think the four years of college were the party capital of your life. If you call snorting lines from a textbook while the strobe light of your computer screen glares in your face, and the lovely bass sound of your fingers drumming on the desk a party, then count me out. But, it’s still exciting because you have a college degree, so it’s easy to finds a job, right?? Wrong. Not to mention you’ll probablly be paying off the loans from school for the rest of your life.

I am still clueless as to why it is necessary to get a college education, so I’m thinking along the lines of this being yet another one of the government’s schemes that we aren’t supposed to know about. The technical definition of conspiracy is, “The act of joining in a secret agreement to be unlawful or wrongful or an act that becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement.” The government’s secret agreement is that college is a means to fry people’s brains so that they are too oblivious to realize what is going on in the world around them.

Upon graduation, students are legally insane. They are too brainwashed with thoughts of their major, getting a good job, and money. They are unable to function beyond these thoughts. Therefore, they have no time to think about what’s going on in the world around them. Let’s go back, waaaaaayyyy back, to the days of the Depression. Everyone sat around their radios and admired what FDR had to say. They hung on his every word. These days, you couldn’t get anyone to watch the President on television, unless it was the resurfaced, pornographical video of Bill and Monica. What’s wrong with this situation? I’ll tell you what it is; it’s the damn need for college education that everyone has beaten into their heads from the time their head appears in the birth canal. And, frankly, it pisses me off…

**Several hours later**

After peeling my face from the keyboard, I got to thinking. Maybe there really is no government conspiracy. I mean finals week is approaching. Maybe this is a product of finals week lunacy. It has been a long, caffeine saturated, sleep-free weekend.