Sasquatch is coming to The Gorge

No hints, no games, no meager announcements– the Sasquatch! 2012 Music Festival has attacked with another stellar lineup for 2012. Jack White minus the White Stripes and man-child Beck are going to be headlining The Gorge this year. Bon Iver, Girl Talk, Beirut, The Shins, Pretty Lights, Feist, Silversun Pickups, The Roots, Metric, Mogwai, and Explosions in the Sky will play backup along with another whole mess of other bands (see below).

Tickets for the May 25-28, 2012 show are currently at $315 for all four days and go on sale February 11th at 10:00 AM PST. Move fast because Sasquatch! will definitely sell out despite the Internet whining on message boards that “this lineup sucks compared to the one four years ago and I’m not going” type of rants.

via Sasquatch

Sasquatch! 2012 Lineup

JACK WHITE
BECK
BON IVER
PRETTY LIGHTS
TENACIOUS D
THE SHIN
BEIRUT
GIRL TALK
THE ROOTS
PORTLANDIA
FEIST
SILVERSUN PICKUPS
METRIC
THE HEAD & THE HEART
EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY
MOGWAI
NERO (DJ)
M. WARD
JOHN REILLY AND FRIENDS (FEAT. BECKY STARK & TOM BROSSEAU)
CHILDISH GAMBINO
ST. VINCENT
THE CIVIL WARS
THE JOY FORMIDABLE
LITTLE DRAGON
TUNE-YARDS
BEATS ANTIQUE
WILD FLAG
BLIND PILOT
WOLFGANG GARTNER
APPARAT
THE WALKMEN
CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH
MARK LANEGAN BAND
SPIRITUALIZED
BLITZEN TRAPPER
THE CAVE SINGERS
SHABAZZ PALACES
JAMEY JOHNSON
FUN.
GROUPLOVE
TYCHO
SBTRKT
TED LEO & THE PHARMACISTS
DEER TICK
IMELDA MAY
DUM DUM GIRLS
THE HELIO SEQUENCE
KURT VILE
CLOUD CULT
CHARLES BRADLEY & HIS EXTRAORDINAIRES
ALABAMA SHAKES
BEN HOWARD
HERE WE GO MAGIC
ZOLA JESUS
THE WAR ON DRUGS
SHEARWATER
CASS MCCOMBS
ACTIVE CHILD
TRAMPLED BY TURTLES
ARAABMUZIK
STAR SLINGER
LA RIOTS
COM TRUISE
UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA
I BREAK HORSES
WALK THE MOON
DRY THE RIVER
ALLEN STONE
HEY MARSEILLES
GARY CLARK JR.
PURITY RING
YELLOW OSTRICH
NOBODY BEATS THE DRUM
ELECTRIC GUEST
COEUR DE PIRATE
LORD HURON
PICKWICK
STRFKR
WE ARE AUGUSTINES
SALLIE FORD & THE SOUND OUTSIDE
BEAT CONNECTION
THEESATISFACTION
THE SHEEPDOGS
HEY ROSETTA!
SAID THE WHALE
HOWLIN RAIN
GARDENS & VILLA
FELIX CARTAL
CRAFT SPELLS
VINTAGE TROUBLE
POOR MOON
BLACK WHALES
GOLD LEAVES
GREYLAG
AWESOME TAPES FROM AFRICA
DYME DEF
FRESH ESPRESSO
THE PHYSICS
SOL
METAL CHOCOLATES
GRYNCH
SPAC3MAN
DON’T TALK TO THE COPS
SCRIBES
FATAL LUCCIAUNO
FLY MOON ROYALTY
KATIE KATE
NICK KROLL
TODD BARRY
BEARDYMAN
ROB DELANEY
PETE HOLMES
JOHN MULANEY
HOWARD KREMER

The four day festival in Barcelona takes place from May 30-June 2, 2012. The price of for a four day pass is currently 190€ which doesn’t include the booking fee.

via Primavera Sound

I will leave no trash on the ground at outdoor concerts and will encourage my friends and neighbors to do the same.

This sounds slightly classier than my pledge:

Pick yo shit up.

To take the Clean Concert pledge, head over to the official website and put your name on the board.

via Clean Concert

The 2012 Electric Forest lineup is here…

The String Cheese Incident, Bassnectar, STS9, Thievery Corporation, Girl Talk, Santigold, Steve Akoi, and Ghostland Observatory are all at the top of the initial Electric Forest lineup announcement. See below for the full list of the highly anticipated electronic/jam/world music festival held in Rothbury, Michigan from June 28-July 1, 2012.

Tickets are on sale now for $229.00 and will go as high as $242.50 if you wait. All tickets include a 4-day pass that comes with camping. More information on that over on the official Electric Forest site.

Electric Forest 2012 First Round Lineup
THE STRING CHEESE INCIDENT (3 SHOWS)
BASSNECTAR
STS9 (2 SHOWS)
THIEVERY CORPORATION
GIRL TALK
SANTIGOLD
STEVE AOKI
GHOSTLAND OBSERVATORY
RICHIE HAWTIN
WOLFGANG GARTNER
MAJOR LAZER
THE TRAVELIN’ MCCOURYS FEATURING KELLER WILLIAMS
DADA LIFE
BIG GIGANTIC
DATSIK
ZEDS DEAD
ROB GARZA (OF THIEVERY CORPORATION)
12TH PLANET
BORGORE
IVAN NEVILLE’S DUMPSTAPHUNK
MIDNITE
MIMOSA
EOTO
DAS RACIST
REGGIE WATTS
PAPER DIAMOND
FELIX CARTAL
GARY CLARK JR.
BALKAN BEAT BOX
BIG FREEDIA
NIT GRIT
THE INFAMOUS STRINGDUSTERS
NICKODEMUS
CHALI 2NA & THE HOUSE OF VIBE
ALVIN RISK
THE SOUL REBELS
SEE-I
GLASS CANDY
BATTLES
GRAMATIK
ELEPHANT REVIVAL
URSULA 1000
MINNESOTA
NOBODY BEATS THE DRUM
CONGO SANCHEZ
FRUIT BATS
THE M MACHINE
CHROMATICS
PICTUREPLANE
AUTOEROTIQUE
NATHANIEL RATELIFF
ADVENTURE CLUB
AFROLICIOUS
VIRTUAL BOY
THE FUNK ARK
FRANKI CHAN
BROTHERS PAST
CRIZZLY
HOTTUB
ZOOGMA
CHERUB
FRANK MITCHELL JR.
THE KNOCKS
VAU DE VIRE SOCIETY
MORNING TELEPORTATION
DRFAMEUS
ROBERT RICH
QUIXOTIC
CHUCK FLASK & KEITH KEMP
DJ SOLO
ATAXIA
THE CRANE WIVES
SECRETS

More artists: Noah & The Whale, Meteronomy, Wretch 3, Azealia Banks, Beardyman, Death in Vegas, Chic featuring Nile Rodgers, Etienne De Crecy, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Busy P, Gesaffelstein, Riton, and The Cuban Brothers.

This intimate festival won the NME award for “Best Small Festival” so expect to have a good time from June 8-10, 2012. Tickets are on sale now — check the site.

via Rockness

Austin Psych Fest takes place at Emo’s East & Beauty Ballroom in Austin, Texas from April 27-29, 2012. Tickets right now are running $120 for the weekend.

via Austin Psych Fest

Much like a prison inmate, we love getting mail. Head over here to send us your music festival questions and we’ll do our best to dig up an answer (I should note that “our best” is about 50%).

Hal asks:
What happened to Rapids Jam in NC? Is it happening in 2012? I thought it was to be an annual event?

It’s not looking good for the Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina country music festival which debuted last year. The official site and Twitter account have disappeared, which is usually a sign that you should be looking for other entertainment this June. Further adding to the confusion, other music festival have erroneously posted dates for Rapids Jam — you’ll note that all the dates on our festival list have confirmation, although if you do find a error, please contact us.

Chip Asks:
Looking to start our year with an awesome festival. We are gathering a mob of fans and will have the SSrockboat.com. Attack Cruiser loaded with gear and Crew ready to archive some great memories and action. Its great to know we can count on you folks to get us right where the action is. Our maiden seasonal voyage will be somewhere around a 200 mile trek from Richmond Va. What can we look for April -May? Rock On!

We love this question as it lets the hard working MFJ staff show off some of the new 2012 features of the festival guide like searching by month or state(see links below). The GrassRoots Festival in Pittsboro, NC seems to be right up your alley as well as DelFest in Cumberland, Maryland.

Check out the following festival categories often as we are always updating them:
Music Festivals in April
Music Festivals in May
Music Festivals in North Carolina

[Name of Unknown Band] asks
Hi! I’m an [Name of Unknown Band] looking to get submitted to your festival…blah, blah [insert form letter].

I know this is mostly spam as we receive dozens of these a days, but just to be clear, we don’t have anything to do with festival lineups.

A reunited Ben Folds Five will be touring this summer.

The initial lineup for Mountain Jam has been released and there’s a solid chunk of names announced for the eighth annual New York festival. Legend Steve Winwood and one of the hardest working bands in show business, Gov’t Mule are headlining. Mountain Jam mainstays, Michael Franti & Spearhead will rock for their seventh consecutive time while The Roots take a break from backing up Jimmy Fallon. The other big news — newly reunited Ben Folds Five has been added to the bill. Also on hand, The Word, a supergroup featuring Robert Randolph, John Medeski, & North Mississippi Allstars.

The four day show will take place Memorial Day Weekend (May 31-June 4th, 2012) at Hunter Mountain in New York. Tickets are on sale now for $150, but will definitely go up as it gets closer to the show.

Lots of other fantastic names in the lineup like EOTO, Zach Deptuy, Trombone Shorty, Mariachi El Bronx, and Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe. Check out the MFJ Mountain Jam Festival Guide for an updated lineup.

Mountain Jam Initial Lineup Video

via Mountain Jam Festival

BONNAROO: WHAT, WHICH, THIS, THAT, THE OTHER – The Bonnaroo Book is available in the Bonnaroo Store for $19.95.

The Wanderlust Yoga and Music Festival

The classic Wanderlust takes place July 26-29, 2012 at Squaw Valley in California. Before that you have the option of July 5-8 at Copper Mountain in Colorado or June 21-24 at Vermont’s Stratton Mountain Ski Resort. Having been to each of these locations during the winter for snowboarding trips, I can vouch that each location offers outstanding scenery and awesome mountains.

Artists and yoga instructors are constantly being added to the lineup. Stay up to date with the official site or click through to one of the MFJ Wanderlust Festival Guides:

WANDERLUST CALIFORNIA 2012
WANDERLUST COLORADO 2012
WANDERLUST VERMONT 2012

If you’re All Tomorrow’s Parties, then it’s never too early to start planning for a music festival. The UK based promoter announced dates for December 7-9, 2012 at their now classic Somerset, UK location.

If January of 2012 sounds a little early to announce dates, how about a headliner while they’re at it? Yep. They got one. Ohio-raised and Brooklyn-based, The National, will be curating this edition of ATP.

Oh wait, there’s even a partial lineup to boot: Kronos Quartet, The Antlers, Owen Pallett, Boris, Time Hecker, Sharon Van Etten, My Brightest Diamond, Wye Oak, Lower Dens, Buke and Gase, Megafaun, Suuns, and Dark Dark Dark. ATP is promising a final count of about forty artists.

Surely, we’ll have to wait for tickets to go on sale. Nope. Super early bird tickets already have come…and gone. Check the site for some scraps of the early bird sale. Quick heads up — this festival isn’t going to be cheap for us stateside folks with a price tag of £170-£180.

ATP concerts typically differs from your standard festival in that that a super-hip bands picks the lineup for a night, ATP curates another night or two, and occassionally even the fans get to decide who plays.

Chamillionaire is a no-show. Heatwave is unable to obtain a liquor license. D12 is missing members. Tech N9ne’s set is cut short. Then Kid Cudi takes the stage and all hell breaks loose when his mic is turned off twenty minutes into the set.

Want to see what happens? Of course you do:

Well, he trashes the stage. But at least Kid Cudi has a reasonable explanation on his blog:

If my set is EVER cut short at any show, im trashing the stage. Not out of anger, it takes a lot to get me furious nowadays, but out of principle. The fans always deserve a full set at all shows, especially when they spend their hard earned money on expensive tickets. A lot of artist wouldnt do what I did in Australia, but I will. Spread the word. No matter the circumstance, cut my set short, im breaking shit. And next time im startin a riot. Me and my fans. Cause promoters will sometime take advantage of the artists, and u gotta let em know what time it is. Cutting nobody any slack.

Oh wait, he wants to start a riot? Promoters have got to love that.

Speaking of promoters, the Heatwave guys have been too busy pulling down negative comments on Facebook to issue any apologies. But oh no, that fickle creature known as the Internet is beholden to no corporate suits. Facebook fan pages like HeatWave = Biggest F*ck Up Of 2012, Fuck You Heatwave, and HeatWave = Biggest Music Festival Failure ever have popped up on the Interwebs demanding refunds from festival.

According to the Heatwave Facebook page, everything is sunshine:

Despite a few media sites who have been riding us since day 1 and focusing only on the negative parts not the bulk of the festival which has been great! We know thousands of you had a GREAT time at a very affordable price.

A festival attendee tries out the new digital wristband.

With over 200 acts, the big star of The Netherland’s Eurosonic Nooderslag Festival may have been the high tech digital wristband used for admission. Debuting for the first time at the Dutch pop music fest, fans were able to breeze through lines with the RFID enabled bracelet. Last summer, electronic wristbands were rolled out at North American music festivals including Coachella and Electric Zoo.

Welcome to the future of music festivals…and are you ready for it?

The most obvious immediate benefits to promoters is to cut down on counterfeits and speed up lines, but this is just the beginning. Organizers are salaviating over cashless money — load a wristband up with cash so that you can saunter to the front of the beer line and wave your arm for payment. Intellitix, the mastermind behind the scenes, also touts social media integration (who isn’t). For instance, dashing through the gates of Bonnaroo may trigger an automatic Facebook update.

Not everyone is fully stoked on the technology. For the convience of leaving your wallet at home, you’re essentially delivering gobs of personal information to corporations who, let’s face it, rarely have your personal interests at heart. Michael Eavis, the founder of Glastonbury, is considering the new wristbands for 2013, although he has some reservations. According to BBC 1:

“All the commercial implications of the chip are slightly worrying aren’t they?” he said. “I don’t want to take people into a land they don’t want to go into. And using information about people, I wouldn’t be happy about that.”

Whatever the case, we the fans, will most likely have little voice in the upcoming overhaul. But we want to hear your thoughts anyway down below. Convenience or privacy? What say you?

The Olympics are coming to London this summer and shock waves are being felt throughout the UK music festival community. First Glastonbury took the year off – not huge news as the largest greenfield festival in the world usually takes the occasional break to let the land recover from the festival fan onslaught.  But now we’ve got the Big Chill announcing that they will also take the summer off because of the Olympics.

Melvin Benn, the head honcho of Big Chill, posted a short statement on the website.

“It is with a considerable amount of regret that I have decided not to go ahead with The Big Chill in 2012.

I looked long and hard late last year at moving the date so it didn’t clash with the Olympics but the mix of the festival fans desire to keep the date and an inability to find an alternative date that works I plumped for maintaining the existing weekend. Sadly, the artist availability and confirmations we were achieving led me to conclude that I couldn’t risk going ahead with the event as an outdoor event this year. Efforts are being made to look to bring a smaller event indoors this year with the anticipation of Big Chill being back outdoors in 2013.”

Has the bubble finally burst on the UK music festival scene? Or do you think this is just an isolated incident due to the Olympics? Also: post your predictions for the next cancellation below.

Get your Snowball on March 2-4, 2012 and pick up tickets for around $160 dollars through the website. This is the second year of the event, so I’m curious to see what changes this year. I caught portions of the show last year in between an awesome weekend of snowboarding at Beaver Creek — see that story right here.

via The Snowball