A Mother's Day Festival Guide

It's Mother's Day, and to honor all of our moms and their concern for our health and safety, the New York Times has published an article all about...this summer's festivals; lovely venues where drugs are more common than potable drinking water and at least one person dies at most events.

To be fair, I find festivals to be a pretty fun time provided you can stand being quite filthy for a whole weekend of "camping" and the smell of patchouli doesn't bother you. I can't say I'm an avid festival goer, though I've been to a few and I'll enjoy a few more.

Out of all the festivals (and tour announcements as well) mentioned in the article, I'd have to say I'm most curious to see how Rothbury goes. It seems that in years past, Bonnaroo and Coachella were the dominant festivals people made a point of traveling to. However, with a more 'eclectic' line-up every year at Bonnaroo, with headliners this year including Pearl Jam, Metallica, Jack Johnson, Panic, Kanye West, and Chris Rock, the more hard-core festival-goers are looking for a less main stream place with bands that will feel more at home with 150,00 'screaming' hippies (I don't remember seeing a lot of Hippies...hell, ANY hippies the last time I saw Metallica).

This leaves room for Rothbury. Though it still has quite a wide range of genres represented by it's headliners (DMG, Panic, John Mayer, 311, Phil Lesh & Friends, Primus, Thievery Corporation, Snoop Dogg, and Modest Mouse), it seems like it is a combination that will go well together and isn't forced, like Bonnaroo's.

And with ticket prices going up each year (I remember when I though $120 was a lot for a ticket), people can't afford to go to every festival or even 2 or 3 like they may have been doing in the past, which makes picking where you spend your inebriated weekend even more important as you'll likely only be going to one festival.

However, there are a great deal more events going on this summer than just the three I mentioned, so go check out the NYTimes article and see where you might like to head this summer. Who knows, maybe your mom will even want to go with you...but probably not.

Arcade Fire Cleans up the PLUG Awards

The PLUG independent music awards were held this past Thursday in Philadelphia. PLUG is "a cartel" of various people connected to the indie scene who put together nominees in categories that range from "Album of the Year" to "Music Blog of the Year". After the nominees are chosen, the general hipster public is allowed to vote online for the winners. And the big winners are:

Album of the Year- "Neon Bible" by the Arcade Fire
Female Artist of the Year - St. Vincent (Annie Clark)
Male Artist of the Year - Andrew Bird
Americana Album of the Year - "Shepherd's Dog" by Iron and Wine
Hip Hop Album of the Year- "None Shall Pass" by Aesop Rock
Artist of the Year - Radiohead
Live Act of the Year- Arcade Fire
Music Festival of the Year - Coachella


...you can probably guess the rest of the winners, or if not just ask that guy wearing girls pants and girl hair with noise-canceling headphones on drinking fair trade coffee, checking the updates on the Pitchfork Media website (the obvious choice for Music Website of the Year) on his Macbook Air as he glares at you because you're judging him.

Animal Collective was nominated a number of times, winning only "Indie Rock Album of the Year" for "Strawberry Jam." (Wait...aren't all of these albums indie)? If you haven't given Animal Collective much of a listen to, this would be a good one to start with. It's one of their more accessible albums, and probably my favorite. The website is worth a visit- I have heard at least a bit of a lot of the artists nominated, but there were many I haven't heard before, so if you're always on the prowl for some new tunes, this site is great because they provide streaming clips of all of the winners and nominees.

I was glad to see "Iron and Wine" receive some credit, as well as Andrew Bird. Cliches aside, all of the winners were definitely deserving. When it comes to picking trendy music, hipsters know whats up. But short shorts on guys will never be trendy in my book.