Large scale music festivals were a relatively new concept in the 1960's and 1970's. Although there have been smaller festivals for years all across the United States it wasn't until the 1960s when this scene exploded. The most notorious music festival seems to be the Woodstock Music and Peace festival. This took place in the small farming town of Bethel New York in August 1969. This festival drew an excess of 500,000 people to the small town. This monumental event sparked interest in music and art festivals across the World. Music festivals during the late 1960s and 1970s showed the world just how powerful musicians were. To draw such big crowds of especially younger people it showed how big of an influence music had upon their lives.
Although festivals and festival culture seemed to die off in the 1980s and 1990s it has made
an astonishing return within the last decade. It must be that the economy that is causing many music fans to go to festivals rather than seeing their favorite bands individually. For example a 3-day festival ticket could cost you about 200-300 dollars whereas a single concert ticket could range anywhere from 70-1000 dollars for a single show. This has caused an increase in the number of festivals in the US along with festival attendance. In the past few yea
rs concert attendance has declined but festival attendance has steadily increased. Many popular festivals in the United States include ULTRA, Bonnaroo, Coachella, Burning Man, SunFest, Lollapalooza, DMB Caravan, Bamboozle and numerous others. Each has their own interesting list of headliners and supporting acts. The interesting lineups keep bringing more and more young people to festivals every year.
I am actually going to the DMB Caravan festival in Atlantic City this summer. It's taking place at Bader Field which is actually an abandoned airport. The location reminded me of the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway. This is going to be my first festival experience and I can't wait to see all my favorite acts along with seeing some new ones. I think the amount of variety in festivals draws young people like me to them. Along with their bargain pricing its hard for a young person interested in music not to want to attend a festival. Festival culture has changed alot since the 1960s and 1970s. Festivals have been alot harder on illegal drug and alcohol use than they were back in the day.
3 comments:
Great job, Christian! It was really interesting to learn about music festivals. Woodstock is really interesting to me, so I'm glad that you mentioned it in you article. It was really cool to see that music festivals are still taking place today. I hope you have fun at DMB Caravan!
Good job, Christian! This was a very informative and interesting blog. After reading this blog I learnt more about the music festival Woodstock
Ok, Christian. But this does omit festivals of the 70's and 80's. You should go back and add some material about the US festivals, which were put on by Steve Wozniak of Apple Computer fame....
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