Feeling Groupie

When looking at the festival lineups for this year, the first response is likely to judge the lineup based on personal interest in the artists; while I often discuss the lineups from a booking standpoint in the podcast, I also think about the artists I like in the lineups and if it is something that interests me.  Another reaction that might come up if looking at festival lineups is that a lot of major festivals have a lot of crossover between their lineups.  This year, notable artists that have been booked for several major festivals include Foo Fighters, Kendrick Lamar, SZA, Odesza, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lizzo, The Lumineers, The 1975, Alanis Morrisette, Maggie Rogers, Queens of the Stone Age, Noah Kahan, and 070 Shake.  While I have never discussed this in depth on either the blog or the podcast, this is not a new trend; in fact, there is a very logical reason most do this:  it is financially responsible. In general, it makes sense for a festival to target arti...

Many of the longtime readers of Feeling Groupie or listeners of Groupie and Harmony are probably aware of the fact that I am an avid concert fan who tries to see as many as possible depending on schedule and cost.  Something related to this that I don’t think I express enough is that I absolutely love concerts at smaller venues.  While it might be easy to cite seeing acts like August Burns Red or Frank Turner at venues that are standing room only, I’m referring to venues that are even smaller.  Some of my favorite memories from these type of venues are Silent Planet accidently breaking a mic stand and talking about Chinese food while waiting, Dying Wish encouraging a mosh pit of 4 people in an early show after Covid, This Wild Life asking for everyone to show pictures of their dogs, Bent Knee laughing and having the time of their life during their set, The World Is a Beautiful Place and I’m No Longer Afraid to Die (also known as The World Is a Beautiful Place…) performing...

Recently, I was looking at several music festivals to consider attending.  My general view of whether attending a festival is worthwhile is by comparing how much I would pay to see each act versus several festival expenses (I won’t go into exactly how I calculate it, because that is too much and will give an extra clue into how insane I am, but you get the idea).  I always felt like this was the most practical way to compare several festivals to determine which was the best for me, I came across an issue I never considered prior.  When calculating for one festival, I realized that I would say that I would spend more than $1200 on the acts performing at the festival.  While the festival did contain several acts that I loved, I realized that my manner of determining the prices was incorrect. There are typically two adages I have heard about festivals with very few in between:   festivals are overly expensive in price because of how much they cost or that festiva...

With Bridgeport, Connecticut’s Sound on Sound festival returning for a second year on September 30 th -October 1 st and there is going to be an announcement regarding the festival on Tuesday (though it might not be a lineup announcement), I compiled several acts that make sense for Sound on Sound.  While I discussed some acts in more depth on my most recent episode of Groupie and Harmony , I listed several acts that would make sense and grouped them into categories by the likelihood of being booked.  I did not consider any acts that performed the festival last year and often focused on acts that either make sense with the genres of the festival last year or feel like a natural act to consider.   Headliner, confirmed John Mayer   Headliner, possible These acts fulfill the festival organizer’s criteria of having music played on a Connecticut classic rock station (99.1 WPLR), not having played in CT for 20 years, and being a stadium size headliner. AC/DC ...

Obviously, there were several massive news stories and events that occurred in the world of music festivals over the past few years.  While several received massive headlines (including the pandemic changing the world, Astroworld, and Fyre Fest), even more didn’t get the attention I expected (such as Woodstock 50 not occurring and the inaugural Blue Ridge Rock Fest dealing with all sorts of issues), and others largely only getting attention from me (especially a tornado going through Epicenter).  There is one story that I find fascinating that doesn’t seem to be getting a ton of attention:  Stevie Nicks being a massive name at festivals.  She has been booked for several big-name festivals over the past few years, including Sound on Sound, Austin City Limits, Bonnaroo, BottleRock, Ohana Festival, and Governor’s Ball, being near the top of the billing of each.  A few reasons this is intriguing is because she wasn’t promoting an album (her last studio album was rel...

This past week on my podcast Groupie and Harmony, I predicted the winners of several awards for the Grammys.  This is a recap post that includes every award I predicted.  While I don’t give background regarding why I have certain acts winning, I also do have ranking from most likely to least likely to win for every nominee of the awards I’m predicting. Two things to note:   first, the rankings are not predicting where I think they will finish in the voting, but which I think is most likely to win (while it might not seem like a major difference, I do deem it to be notable).   Second, for each nomination, I only listed the performing artist as the nominee.   In reality, there are several nominees for each release that are not the artist.   While I didn’t list them on here for ease of reading and viewing the nominees, I do just want to acknowledge that the nominations would not have been possible without everybody who was nominated and many who were not, no...