So far, it's still a virtual wasteland this summer. No real sparkle. Nothing to get excited about.
The only new name popping up is John Legend for a Wednesday show in July. No venue confirmed, but it won't be Multifest and it's unlikely to be Mountain Stage.
FestivALL is still exactly what is was --though the civic center has a convention for the Jehovah Witnesses (a return engagement) and Dora The Explorer (that screams art and culture). Jeez, makes you wonder if the civic center has it in for the city's arts and music festival. A big (er... medium) name, mainstream (or attractive alt act) show would do wonders for the thing. Surely, someone has thought of this.
Of course, maybe music is a lot harder sell in this area than I thought, not that anyone appears to be trying very hard to draw a crowd. For example, Huntington has Molly Hatchet coming to Riverfront Park in August. You might be thinking, "Holy shit. I thought those fuckers were dead." Yeah, that's what I thought, too. Apparently, not dead enough.
I guess Black Oak Arkansas was booked.
Ah well... maybe you should go ahead and get those Booker T and the MGs tickets. If you're going to spend your money, you might as well give it to them. Nothing else is going on.
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I think what the problem is, is that it costs too much to bring decent people here anymore, and the organisers never recoup their costs.
ReplyDeleteEven if you *did* spend the cash to get someone good, where would you put them? The Civic Centre can only hold so many, and tickets would need to be extortionate in order to pay off the band, the licenses, the equipment operators and the guy who picks the brown M&Ms out. And if they're extortionate, nobody can afford them. It's Catch-22.
We're just not big enough to attract anything above and beyond a Molly Hatchett, unfortunately.