Coachella

Is it just me, or does the lineup for Coachella get worse and worse each year (hell, the header for the link is a drawing of a bunch of loser hipsters who all look alike, that's when you know it's bad))? I can only count a few bands that I would be interested in seeing for three whole days worth of music. And they're charging $270 for the weekend or $99 for a day? Ridiculous. There was a time when the Coachella music festival was known for having big-name, big-talent bands that were there to show the direction that music would be taking. If this is the direction that music's going, I don't know if I want to join that caravan. There are a few bastions of hope left in the music festival world, though they too are slowly turning into the mass-marketed events meant to promote a trend rather than good music. Two of these are located in Austin, Texas. If I had the money and the time, I'd be attending South by Southwest. Sure, just a music pass is $650, but it's five days of music all over the city of Austin with literally hundreds of bands playing into the wee hours of the morning. SXSW is the place to go if you're a band trying to get noticed by record labels. Birdmonster (if I remember correctly) was one of those bands. But the festival takes music, film, and other forms of art and roll it all into one huge event. Coachella puts on the appearance of an important music event where the biggest of the big names congregate for three days of rock. What the festival actually demonstrates is an event wherein the "biggest of the big" are a handful of overly popular bands with limited amounts of talent outshining the more talented bands that somehow got mixed in and continue to go unrecognized because most at the festival are looking forward to RAtM's "only" reunion show (apologies to any rage fans out there). I'm not sure what Coachella's all about these days, but it used to be a festival I wanted to visit. Nowadays the five to ten bands I'm interested in seeing don't even pique my curiosity enough to shell out $99-$270. Maybe one day I'll get in for free if ever I get to photograph or write about it. Even then I'm not sure I'd be too thrilled. Give me ACL, Bonnaroo, Sasquatch, Pickathon, Lollapalooza, anything's better than what Coachella's turning into (though ACL is slowly slipping, but they maintain respect because they get lots of both the big names and the good small names).