Summer of Love's spirit blossoming in green movement | Reuters/Billboard, 6/16/07: "Willie Nelson's biodiesel company (we predict) will influence virtually every tour to travel green within five years.
MusicMatters introduced 'carbon offsetting,' planting trees and supporting alternative sustainable energy sources equal to your sins of emission.
The Vans Warped tour is using solar-powered sound. Bonnaroo, Coachella and Lollapalooza give prizes for recycling. The Hove Festival in Norway has pledged 100 percent carbon neutrality. The Wakarusa Festival will include a sustainability symposium. And on it goes."
Showing posts with label coachella. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coachella. Show all posts
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
The lure of the live music experience
San Francisco Bay Guardian, 5/23/07 - Show me: "Pavlov's e-mail robot knows what gets me salivating — aside from those wolf beach towels on Amazon.com (wintry wolves and hot sand go together about as well as infants and live grenades): namely, live music. Drive blearily into the Mojave for Coachella, jump through hoops to get to Seattle for Bumbershoot, make the red-eye to Austin for South by Southwest, take the midnight train to Tennessee's Bonnaroo, hock yourself for England's All Tomorrow's Parties, hazard reindeer sashimi for Reykjavik's Iceland Airwaves — take note of the chart; I have a history of doing anything for a life-altering show."
Friday, May 11, 2007
Coachella history
I just found this, though it came out a few weeks ago. The article gives a good overview of Coachella' history (read the entire article -- I've just included some excerpts). An on-going purpose of this blog is to show how festivals come together: what people have learned along the way in terms of successes and mistakes.
thedesertsun.com 4/27/07| Coachella evolves through the years: "Tollett, a soft-spoken native of the region who wears a trademark baseball cap, had been booking concerts since 1982. In 1993, he and his business partner, the late Rick Van Santern, booked Pearl Jam at Empire Polo Club because the Seattle band didn't want to perform in Los Angeles.
About 25,000 people showed up, but the polo field was so huge, Tollett said the crowd 'looked like 1,000.'
That's when he knew a big music event in Indio could be done. But, could it be successful with less popular bands? ...
In 1997, Tollett sketched some plans for the type of regional festival he'd like to stage.
He and Van Santern had worked the Lollapalooza festivals and knew the logistical problems of a traveling musical marathon. But they saw there was an audience for music that couldn't be heard on radio.
'There's actually a really big crowd of people who like small, different bands. Maybe if you put a bunch of them together, that might be a magnet for a lot of people,' Tollett said.
He began scouting locations, considering the Santa Fe Dam in East Los Angles before returning to Empire Polo Club.
'We were blown away how it was just calling our name to do a festival there,' he said of Empire....
They wanted to pattern their event after European festivals featuring simultaneous acts on multiple stages....
'We just went for it," Tollett said. "We didn't really have any business plan - just do a big show. I'm glad we did now.'
They booked bands they wanted to hear even if they weren't big record sellers or concert attractions like the acts at the recent Woodstock festival. The top bands over the two days were Tool and Rage Against the Machine and Beck and the Chemical Brothers.
'There were two different factors on (programming) - the European festival feel and the rave scene,' Tollett said.
'A lot of that had nothing to do with the Billboard charts. A couple of the bands were on radio, but the other 80 weren't, and I knew it was those 80 that were going to make the show really have a life in the future.'
... 20,000 people showed up the first day ...
'The show turned out so well - not draw-wise, but just how fun it was,' said Tollett. ...
Tollett later said Goldenvoice lost $800,000 that first year."
thedesertsun.com 4/27/07| Coachella evolves through the years: "Tollett, a soft-spoken native of the region who wears a trademark baseball cap, had been booking concerts since 1982. In 1993, he and his business partner, the late Rick Van Santern, booked Pearl Jam at Empire Polo Club because the Seattle band didn't want to perform in Los Angeles.
About 25,000 people showed up, but the polo field was so huge, Tollett said the crowd 'looked like 1,000.'
That's when he knew a big music event in Indio could be done. But, could it be successful with less popular bands? ...
In 1997, Tollett sketched some plans for the type of regional festival he'd like to stage.
He and Van Santern had worked the Lollapalooza festivals and knew the logistical problems of a traveling musical marathon. But they saw there was an audience for music that couldn't be heard on radio.
'There's actually a really big crowd of people who like small, different bands. Maybe if you put a bunch of them together, that might be a magnet for a lot of people,' Tollett said.
He began scouting locations, considering the Santa Fe Dam in East Los Angles before returning to Empire Polo Club.
'We were blown away how it was just calling our name to do a festival there,' he said of Empire....
They wanted to pattern their event after European festivals featuring simultaneous acts on multiple stages....
'We just went for it," Tollett said. "We didn't really have any business plan - just do a big show. I'm glad we did now.'
They booked bands they wanted to hear even if they weren't big record sellers or concert attractions like the acts at the recent Woodstock festival. The top bands over the two days were Tool and Rage Against the Machine and Beck and the Chemical Brothers.
'There were two different factors on (programming) - the European festival feel and the rave scene,' Tollett said.
'A lot of that had nothing to do with the Billboard charts. A couple of the bands were on radio, but the other 80 weren't, and I knew it was those 80 that were going to make the show really have a life in the future.'
... 20,000 people showed up the first day ...
'The show turned out so well - not draw-wise, but just how fun it was,' said Tollett. ...
Tollett later said Goldenvoice lost $800,000 that first year."
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Coachella and its debt history
Financial risk has played a role in the Coachella Festival. (And according to one account, the first year of the Stagecoach Festival, the country music version that is being held this weekend in the same location, will also start its history with a loss.)
Alexander Haagen III - Coachella - Music - New York Times, 5/1/07: "[Owner of the Empire Polo Club, Alexander Haagen's] first encounter with accommodating a big rock concert was in 1993, when Goldenvoice helped arrange a performance on the polo grounds by Pearl Jam. Six years later, Mr. Tollett sought out Mr. Haagen again when he needed a locale for Coachella. But the first festival posted a loss, forcing Goldenvoice to the edge of financial ruin.
AEG Live, a bigger concert promoter, acquired the company in 2001 by absorbing its debt, which exceeded $1 million, according to executives involved in the deal. Goldenvoice had been unable to mount a festival in 2000, but returned to the polo fields with Coachella in 2001 and has every year since.
... the Haagens ultimately made their reputation by building retail shopping centers in the inner city.
By the late 1990s, though, the company was laden with debt. An affiliate of the investment bank Lazard agreed to purchase a stake in the Haagens’ company for $235 million in 1997, and then bought the family out."
Here's more background. The Billboard Q&A: Paul Tollett
This article says that the first Coachelle in 1999 lost $800,000, and was still losing money after AEG bought it in 2001. This year, 2007, was the first year the event sold out far in advance.
It also mentions how the Stagecoach Festival came about:
"I had seen a small country show at Empire Polo Field in the '90s. It seemed like a fun local event. There were rumors last year that the polo fields were going to be sold, so I talked to the owners and said, 'If I commit to two big festivals, will that be enough incentive for you to not develop for now?' They said, 'Yes,' so we developed the country idea."
Alexander Haagen III - Coachella - Music - New York Times, 5/1/07: "[Owner of the Empire Polo Club, Alexander Haagen's] first encounter with accommodating a big rock concert was in 1993, when Goldenvoice helped arrange a performance on the polo grounds by Pearl Jam. Six years later, Mr. Tollett sought out Mr. Haagen again when he needed a locale for Coachella. But the first festival posted a loss, forcing Goldenvoice to the edge of financial ruin.
AEG Live, a bigger concert promoter, acquired the company in 2001 by absorbing its debt, which exceeded $1 million, according to executives involved in the deal. Goldenvoice had been unable to mount a festival in 2000, but returned to the polo fields with Coachella in 2001 and has every year since.
... the Haagens ultimately made their reputation by building retail shopping centers in the inner city.
By the late 1990s, though, the company was laden with debt. An affiliate of the investment bank Lazard agreed to purchase a stake in the Haagens’ company for $235 million in 1997, and then bought the family out."
Here's more background. The Billboard Q&A: Paul Tollett
This article says that the first Coachelle in 1999 lost $800,000, and was still losing money after AEG bought it in 2001. This year, 2007, was the first year the event sold out far in advance.
It also mentions how the Stagecoach Festival came about:
"I had seen a small country show at Empire Polo Field in the '90s. It seemed like a fun local event. There were rumors last year that the polo fields were going to be sold, so I talked to the owners and said, 'If I commit to two big festivals, will that be enough incentive for you to not develop for now?' They said, 'Yes,' so we developed the country idea."
How the popularity of rock reunions explains the joys of live music
Rock Reunions - Music - Column - New York Times, 5/6/07: "In fact, if it weren’t for sentiment, if it weren’t for our strong but ultimately inexplicable desire to be in the same room as people making music, we might not bother to go to concerts at all. In that sense, a reunion show is the ultimate rock ’n’ roll concert: a sensory experience overwhelmed by an imaginary one; a musical event that is merely a pretext for a social one. Those people onstage are old friends, in a sense; they have been living in our heads for years or decades. (That’s why substitutions are so irritating: what’s the point of being reunited with someone you’ve never met?) At a reunion show, those figments turn back into real people for a few hours."
The above column was in response to this column, published several weeks earlier.
Not Reunions, Reinventions (Back and Better. Really.) - New York Times, 4/22/07: "Ashley Capps, who helps produce mid-June’s Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tenn. — which has booked the Police as one of its headliners this year — put it in a slightly simpler way. 'When I was growing up, the release of an album was an event,' he said. 'We’ve moved away from the notion that the release of a recording is an event. Somebody can release a great album and get fantastic reviews and everybody’s talking about it, but how long does that last? Six weeks? In that sense, live performances are becoming the important event.'
Gary Bongiovanni, editor of Pollstar, the concert-industry magazine, is so used to old acts propping up the industry that he doesn’t believe this year’s picture is substantially different. 'Last year you had Bob Seger, this year you have Genesis,' he said evenly over the phone recently. He is not sure whether new bands — Arcade Fire, say — are striking deeply enough into the soul of the culture to necessitate their own reunions down the road. I think context will determine it. If there are lots of great new bands in the next 10 years, we won’t feel we need an Arcade Fire reunion. If there aren’t, we will.
It seems now that the audience position for rock is coming closer to that of jazz around the mid-1970s. Most of the forefathers are still with us; increasingly, they seem to have something important to teach us. And we are developing strange hungers for music of the not-so-distant past that might be bigger and deeper than the hunger we originally had. That feeling people talked about during the Pixies shows a few years ago — the word 'eerie' was used a great deal — seems similar to descriptions of the feeling generated in the Village Vanguard when Dexter Gordon played his comeback shows there in 1976, after living abroad. Since then, jazz has advanced into a culture of incessant re-experience, endless tributes. Actual reunions are barely noticed: a huge percentage of the music refers to great moments of the past. Yet that doesn’t mean that jazz can’t still be fantastic, even transformative. It is, all the time.
We have to allow for the possibility that Rage Against the Machine — or the Police, or the Jesus and Mary Chain — could be as good as it ever was, if perhaps a little more wizened, a little more skeptical. (It will depend on their practicing of course.) If you’re still looking for something sacred, it probably can’t be found in their values or politics or cult significance. It’s in you: It is your own reaction to how they sound. Nobody can take that away from you."
The above column was in response to this column, published several weeks earlier.
Not Reunions, Reinventions (Back and Better. Really.) - New York Times, 4/22/07: "Ashley Capps, who helps produce mid-June’s Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tenn. — which has booked the Police as one of its headliners this year — put it in a slightly simpler way. 'When I was growing up, the release of an album was an event,' he said. 'We’ve moved away from the notion that the release of a recording is an event. Somebody can release a great album and get fantastic reviews and everybody’s talking about it, but how long does that last? Six weeks? In that sense, live performances are becoming the important event.'
Gary Bongiovanni, editor of Pollstar, the concert-industry magazine, is so used to old acts propping up the industry that he doesn’t believe this year’s picture is substantially different. 'Last year you had Bob Seger, this year you have Genesis,' he said evenly over the phone recently. He is not sure whether new bands — Arcade Fire, say — are striking deeply enough into the soul of the culture to necessitate their own reunions down the road. I think context will determine it. If there are lots of great new bands in the next 10 years, we won’t feel we need an Arcade Fire reunion. If there aren’t, we will.
It seems now that the audience position for rock is coming closer to that of jazz around the mid-1970s. Most of the forefathers are still with us; increasingly, they seem to have something important to teach us. And we are developing strange hungers for music of the not-so-distant past that might be bigger and deeper than the hunger we originally had. That feeling people talked about during the Pixies shows a few years ago — the word 'eerie' was used a great deal — seems similar to descriptions of the feeling generated in the Village Vanguard when Dexter Gordon played his comeback shows there in 1976, after living abroad. Since then, jazz has advanced into a culture of incessant re-experience, endless tributes. Actual reunions are barely noticed: a huge percentage of the music refers to great moments of the past. Yet that doesn’t mean that jazz can’t still be fantastic, even transformative. It is, all the time.
We have to allow for the possibility that Rage Against the Machine — or the Police, or the Jesus and Mary Chain — could be as good as it ever was, if perhaps a little more wizened, a little more skeptical. (It will depend on their practicing of course.) If you’re still looking for something sacred, it probably can’t be found in their values or politics or cult significance. It’s in you: It is your own reaction to how they sound. Nobody can take that away from you."
Friday, April 27, 2007
A look at the potential impact of the Coachella and Stagecoach music festivals
thedesertsun.com | Marquee weekends: Local economy could get a $24 million boost "With 29 hotels and motels and 2,000-plus hotel rooms in Indio, many visitors must seek accommodations on west side of the valley."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
