Fans Pour In To See Bands At Mega Shows, Particularly In California
The biggest trend in the nightlife industry right now is music festivals and events.
It now seems as if there’s a mega event or festival every single week, with new ones piling up like empty beer cups in trash bins.
PubClub.com’s e-mail box offers plenty of evidence of this trend – this week alone press releases have come in on the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas, KAABOO in San Diego, a huge block party in downtown Vegas called Life Is Beautiful, a solar-powered event (the Sunstock Solar Festival in Los Angeles) and, finally, a Hard Rock Cafe around-the-world block party called Hard Rock Rising.
There’s also Lightening In The Bottle (house music) and BottleRock (rock and wine in Napa Valley).
For the most part they are multi-day events with numerous bands and DJs on several stages, often with three to four blockbuster headliners.
If you’ve noticed a trend in locations, then yes, mostly it’s California and the Western USA. In fact, Coachella in Southern California has not just expanded to Stagecoach but now has added Oldchella, a Coachella for “oldies” that features the Rolling Stones, The Who, Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney.
Southern California hardly holds exclusivity on these events – one has to look no further than Creamfields in England and of course Jazzfest has been rocking in New Orleans for decades – but it certainly seems to be the main stage for them.
Just this weekend, in fact, May 20-22, there’s the Doheny Blues Festival on the beach in Orange County and music is the big draw at the Temecula Wine & Balloon Festival.
These are not cheap events, either. Not by a long shot. Oldchella – officially and ironically called Cheap Desert Trip – costs more than $1,000 for a three-day ticket. Most of these events are $300-500 and here’s the thing: they all sell out within minutes. Well, the GAs anyway.
So they are obviously popular. And when something is popular, we’ll continue to see more and more of them.
Well, time to get back to work and see how many more press releases on music festivals have arrived in the in-box.
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